Dell UltraSharp U2410 24” Monitor Review

$1099

4 stars

Dell’s dazzling new screen comes through with flying colours, but at the price point will mostly appeal to design professionals

After reviewing five 23-inch full HD widescreen monitors for a local computing magazine recently, I swore off any further reviews of monitors for a while. My eyes were bugging out, my testing room looked like the aftermath of a bomb in a computer shop, and I just couldn’t bring myself to stare at any more movement video clips trying to isolate the faintest hint of judder. “No mas,” I cried!

So when Dell’s PR agency got in touch the very next week with the offer of a sample of the eleven hundred buck 24-inch UltraSharp U2410, of course I said yes. Got to take one for the team, be stoic and just get on with it.

Many computer users get by with the screen on their notebooks, and they count themselves lucky if they’ve got 16-inches to play with. Desktop users would be content with a 21-inch screen, so what manner of consumer would plonk a 24-inch behemoth on their desk?

Few consumers, actually; the meaty price tag tells you that the big Dell is aimed firmly at that nebulous creature called The Professional. Designers, hardcore spreadsheet or document users, video editing droids and the like would all be prime candidates for something like this. Apple is making inroads with its 27-inch iMac, but 24-inch is a big enough chunk of screen space for most.

Features

The Dell is built like a solid plastic tank; it really is a meaningfully impressive piece of kit. There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s been styled by industrial designers who wear pocket protectors and blue shirts with tucked in ties (they also freelance for Volvo). This grey and silver unit didn’t come out of any funky new age studio, it’s all straight lines and seriousness but none the worse for it.

The stand is another solid item, and is easily adjustable for height and screen angle, with the ability to swivel through ninety degrees into a portrait orientation. The bottom looks more like the back of a home theatre receiver because there are more connection options than I’ve ever seen on a monitor, including HDMI, DVI (x2), DisplayPort, VGA, Component Video, Composite Video, USB 2.0 (x4 ports) along with a media card reader and a power connector for Dell’s Soundbar.

The touch sensitive controls are user friendly and the logical well laid out menu system offers high levels of adjustability over a number of aspects, including picture in picture or picture-by-picture modes using multiple sources. The buttons are assignable to presets depending on your preferences.

Image Quality

In use, the U2410’s 1920 x 1200 16:10 screen gives heaps of room, and working on it is a pleasure. The image quality is very high indeed, as you’d expect from an IPS panel at this price point, and both text and graphic applications were as sharp as any monitor I’ve encountered thus far. The default brightness was too high for my tastes, but once I’d dialed it down, all was well and I barely touched the controls thereafter.

The U2410 is factory calibrated for accurate colours, and it shows. I thought that I’d become immune to surprise given how many hours I’ve spent staring at photos while I process images, but the Dell caught me out over and over again as I looked at familiar images and marveled at the colours. It really does do a brilliant job at displaying swathes of accurate and highly saturated colour, with crisp edges even under high magnification and zero shift. It even caught me out a few times as I walked back into the room to find my screensaver showing a slide show of my photo library: my reaction was usually shock, not because of the actual images (although there are a few that I love) but at the glorious colours and the crispness of the images on screen.

This is an IPS (In Plane Switching) panel, so its response time won’t be up with the fastest of conventional LCD monitors but at 6ms, it’s entirely reasonable. Dedicated gaming fiends will choose monitors with the fastest response time, but that isn’t what the U2410 is designed for (and its price tag is kryptonite for gamers anyway – they’d rather spend that money on a new graphics card). Full HD video playback looked great, with deep blacks plus bright colours with deep saturation; movement was absolutely jitter free even in the fastest clips and there was minimal backlight leakage.

On the negative side there are no speakers, but few pro level monitors have them. While viewing angles are good, there’s a slight pink colour shift, which is most noticeable in the vertical orientation; get a little bit offline and whites become pinkish. Also, this is the only monitor I’ve ever used that literally felt like it was cooking me if I sat too close. It gets warm on top and there’s obvious heat coming off the screen; not at space heater levels, but after a long day I felt as irradiated as a rotisserie chicken if I sat too close. You wouldn’t sit a couple of feet from a 27-inch LCD TV, and this thing isn’t much smaller, so you need to give it more room than you would with a smaller screen.

Conclusion

As a design tool, Dell’s UltraSharp U2410 is a stand out performer and is probably the best monitor I’ve yet used, but it’s a pricey device. It’s certainly ahead of the $699 23-inch Dell U2311H, but not by a massive margin, so the $400 price premium is something that has to be factored into any buying decision. The zero-bright pixel guarantee and three year warranty is a plus. I’d grab one of these monsters if I didn’t have a pressing need to buy more lenses and a speedlight (and if I were rolling in moolah, of course) but if I were in a design environment or settling up a studio that wasn’t using iMacs, this screen would be at the top of my shortlist. ASHLEY KRAMER

www.dell.co.nz