ecktt
08-01-2008, 03:57 PM
After repeated failures of my Samsungs 204B 20” monitors, I was force to buy a new monitor. Being painfully reminded cost savings associated with a warranty I got a Dell E248WFP monitor (the only thing I could afford). Here's a rundown down of the technical specs as described by DELL:
Screen type : Active matrix - TFT LCD
Screen dimensions : 24 inches (24-inch diagonal viewable image size)
Preset display area:
• Horizontal : 520 mm (20.4 inches)
• Vertical : 325.6 mm (12.8 inches)
Pixel pitch : 0.27 mm
Viewing angle : 160° (Vertical) typical, 160° (Horizontal) typical
Luminance output : 400 cd/m ²(typ)
Contrast ratio : 1000:1 (typ)
Faceplate coating : Antiglare with hard-coating 3H
Backlight : 6 CCFLs U-type backlight. 92% wide color gamut
Response Time : 5ms typical (Black to White)
Horizontal scan range : 30 kHz to 81 kHz (automatic)
Vertical scan range : 56 Hz to 76 Hz
Optimal preset resolution : 1920 x 1200 at 60 Hz
Highest preset resolution : 1920 x 1200 at 60 Hz
Video display capabilities (DVI playback) : 480i/ 480p/ 576i/ 576p/ 720p/ 1080i/ 1080p
These are pretty standard specification for a cheap TFT model LCD. Not mentioned though, is the support for HDCP via the DVI port, something that is necessary for the play back of High Definition media content from sources such as Blue Ray DVDs. I thought this might have been a nice marketing bullet point but it appears that Dell does not think so. This monitor is big. In the world of E-penises, a 24" qualifies you to act in porn. I’m accustom to working with standard a couple 20” monitors and yet this monitor feel huge. In all actuality it’s only a hair taller and couple inches wider.
At the time of purchase early June the monitor was listed for $445USD + $75USD shipping and handling. A quick phone call (1-800-805-8035, yes it toll free to us Trinis) and the price was reduced to $420USD, shipping included to my front door with a sweet 3 year warranty. That was a fiasco in itself. The actual purchase didn’t go threw until the end of June and thanks to our wonderfully Customs office and Excellent UPS service, I didn’t get the bloody monitor till the late July. The packaging arrived with out any major scars.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1403.jpg
The packaging seemed adequate as all the cables, documentation and monitor components appeared to be intact. The contents were a little out of place but I would associate that with our *awesome* custom service.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1405.jpg
Here’s a shot of the contents minus most of the packaging.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1407.jpg
The monitor was pretty easy to assemble (something I have come to expect from Dell), cable and attach as there isn’t a whole lot of bells and whistles associated with the package. The assembled product feels study and stable.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1413.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1415.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1417.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1419.jpg
For the following observations, only the DVI port was used on the monitor since (at least to me) all D-Sub port have noticeably worse Image Quality (IQ) compared to DVI with respect to LCD monitors. The D-Sub port was test and found to be working as well as someone would expect. My old monitors were cleaned with Cyclo glass cleaner and a cotton soc for an excellent streak free clean and a fair comparison to the Dell E248WFP.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1411.jpg
This was the Windows configuration used to view the monitors in Windows Vista Ultimate 64 with an NV7300 and a NV8800GT.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/Displayconfiguration.jpgOn the first power up of the monitor, I noticed a lot of back light bleed threw. This is a major let down as many older TFT monitors such as the HP L1702 (left) or the Samsun 204B (right) don’t experience this to a noticeable degree.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1432.jpg
Moving on we see how the monitor renders solid colours. This is an issue for all TFT type LCDs as they can’t render an 8 bit pallet for true colour representation. Instead they use dithering with their 6 bit pallet to trick the observer into thinking its true colour. As you can see the Dell E248WFP does a good job of Red and an okay job of Green. Blue is its worse colour. While it’s easy to blame the monitor here, it has been my experience that all monitor have a favourite colour, even the high end ones. The Samsung 204B (right) favours blue while the HP L1702 (left) favours green. There is some noticeable light bleed threw around the edges of the monitor that I find extremely distracting.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1444.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1440.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1442.jpg
The shit hits the fan with white (aka a mix of red, green and blue). The E248WFP uses rapid pixel switching to generate white. The camera shows this as it only saves the current phase of red, green or blue that the monitor maybe flipping threw to generate white. While its not noticeable to the human eye (at least not mine), I’m sure somebody is going to flip out and go into an epileptic fit with this monitor. The excessive edge light bleed threw does not help either.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1433.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1437.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1438.jpg
Now that I’ve looked at the monitor ability to render flat colours; its time to see how it handles picture, videos and games. Before doing so, the E248WFP, 204B and HP L1702 need to be calibrated. Using the monitors’ OSD as much as possible and the NVidia’s control panel colour applet I managed to get all 3 monitors pretty close to a gamma of 2.2.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/NvidiaColourcailbrationapplet.jpg
This is something everyone should do (LCD, Plasma or CRT). All monitor benefited from calibration since there is no perfect balance that will adapt to ever lighting condition the manufacture may sell the product into. The adjustments made aimed for a gamma level of 2.2, since that is the recommended level and it’s severed me well in the past. The OSD of the Dell had no controls for gamma which sucks but most mid range monitors only give a few modes to flip threw. The OSD colour controls also had two modes. These are Graphics (suggested for computer use) and Video (no explanation need here). I saw NO difference in either mode. All tests were done in Graphics mode since this was the only mode that allowed the user to adjust the brightness level of the red, green and blue. Here is a comparison of the Dell E248WFP and Samsung204B rendering a high resolution image. Again we see the flickering to render white and edge back light bleed threw on the Dell while the Samsung remains unaffected.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1446.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1445.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1447.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1448.jpg
Video playback was excellent. A Sony PS3 with an HDMI->DVI adapter was used for video play back. Rambo 4 (Blue Ray) was the movie of choice. No noticeable framing or ghosting, only the awesome gore of fake blood and guts being splashed all over the screen in fantastic detail of 1080P. Gaming was just as impressive and many of the new tiles support 16:10 aspect ratio of this wide screen monitor. Sadly the limitation of my 8800gt began to rare its ugly head when I cranked up the resolution to 1920x1200 forcing me to back down on the anti-aliasing (AA) and antiscopic filtering (AF) in games like F.E.A.R and Quake 4. Time to start saving for a NV280. The back light bleed threw (especially around the edges) or flickering didn’t seem to hurt the monitor here.
Thus far this monitor, it was hooked up to the NV8800GT while the other 2 monitors were hooked up to the plebus maximus NV7300. For fairness, the monitors were swapped around to see if blame could be aimed at the video card and not the DELL E248WFP. Sadly it was the monitor since the same issues popped up with the NV7300. While switching the monitors around, I notice that the back light bleed threw when into hyper drive, especially around the edges with red on the E248WFP, when unplugged. That can’t be a good thing.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1449-edit.jpg
If you all are like me, your PC is your TV/workstation/game centre/(insert favour PC past-time of your choice), then you would realise how important you main monitor is. I got this monitor because it was big and cheap. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. This monitor is no exception. I find myself watch movies and gaming on the Dell E248WFP but reading, watching photos or any other task that involves relatively still images on the Samsung 204B. That suites me just fine as that is how I work with multiple monitors. For other people who use only one monitor, the faults with this monitor might be a bit to distracting for day-to-day PC activities. Then again, I’m a very picky person. Personally, this monitors fails but it could be a bare pass for many other people especially considering the low price and 3 year warranty in Trinidad and Tobago.
Screen type : Active matrix - TFT LCD
Screen dimensions : 24 inches (24-inch diagonal viewable image size)
Preset display area:
• Horizontal : 520 mm (20.4 inches)
• Vertical : 325.6 mm (12.8 inches)
Pixel pitch : 0.27 mm
Viewing angle : 160° (Vertical) typical, 160° (Horizontal) typical
Luminance output : 400 cd/m ²(typ)
Contrast ratio : 1000:1 (typ)
Faceplate coating : Antiglare with hard-coating 3H
Backlight : 6 CCFLs U-type backlight. 92% wide color gamut
Response Time : 5ms typical (Black to White)
Horizontal scan range : 30 kHz to 81 kHz (automatic)
Vertical scan range : 56 Hz to 76 Hz
Optimal preset resolution : 1920 x 1200 at 60 Hz
Highest preset resolution : 1920 x 1200 at 60 Hz
Video display capabilities (DVI playback) : 480i/ 480p/ 576i/ 576p/ 720p/ 1080i/ 1080p
These are pretty standard specification for a cheap TFT model LCD. Not mentioned though, is the support for HDCP via the DVI port, something that is necessary for the play back of High Definition media content from sources such as Blue Ray DVDs. I thought this might have been a nice marketing bullet point but it appears that Dell does not think so. This monitor is big. In the world of E-penises, a 24" qualifies you to act in porn. I’m accustom to working with standard a couple 20” monitors and yet this monitor feel huge. In all actuality it’s only a hair taller and couple inches wider.
At the time of purchase early June the monitor was listed for $445USD + $75USD shipping and handling. A quick phone call (1-800-805-8035, yes it toll free to us Trinis) and the price was reduced to $420USD, shipping included to my front door with a sweet 3 year warranty. That was a fiasco in itself. The actual purchase didn’t go threw until the end of June and thanks to our wonderfully Customs office and Excellent UPS service, I didn’t get the bloody monitor till the late July. The packaging arrived with out any major scars.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1403.jpg
The packaging seemed adequate as all the cables, documentation and monitor components appeared to be intact. The contents were a little out of place but I would associate that with our *awesome* custom service.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1405.jpg
Here’s a shot of the contents minus most of the packaging.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1407.jpg
The monitor was pretty easy to assemble (something I have come to expect from Dell), cable and attach as there isn’t a whole lot of bells and whistles associated with the package. The assembled product feels study and stable.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1413.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1415.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1417.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1419.jpg
For the following observations, only the DVI port was used on the monitor since (at least to me) all D-Sub port have noticeably worse Image Quality (IQ) compared to DVI with respect to LCD monitors. The D-Sub port was test and found to be working as well as someone would expect. My old monitors were cleaned with Cyclo glass cleaner and a cotton soc for an excellent streak free clean and a fair comparison to the Dell E248WFP.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1411.jpg
This was the Windows configuration used to view the monitors in Windows Vista Ultimate 64 with an NV7300 and a NV8800GT.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/Displayconfiguration.jpgOn the first power up of the monitor, I noticed a lot of back light bleed threw. This is a major let down as many older TFT monitors such as the HP L1702 (left) or the Samsun 204B (right) don’t experience this to a noticeable degree.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1432.jpg
Moving on we see how the monitor renders solid colours. This is an issue for all TFT type LCDs as they can’t render an 8 bit pallet for true colour representation. Instead they use dithering with their 6 bit pallet to trick the observer into thinking its true colour. As you can see the Dell E248WFP does a good job of Red and an okay job of Green. Blue is its worse colour. While it’s easy to blame the monitor here, it has been my experience that all monitor have a favourite colour, even the high end ones. The Samsung 204B (right) favours blue while the HP L1702 (left) favours green. There is some noticeable light bleed threw around the edges of the monitor that I find extremely distracting.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1444.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1440.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1442.jpg
The shit hits the fan with white (aka a mix of red, green and blue). The E248WFP uses rapid pixel switching to generate white. The camera shows this as it only saves the current phase of red, green or blue that the monitor maybe flipping threw to generate white. While its not noticeable to the human eye (at least not mine), I’m sure somebody is going to flip out and go into an epileptic fit with this monitor. The excessive edge light bleed threw does not help either.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1433.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1437.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1438.jpg
Now that I’ve looked at the monitor ability to render flat colours; its time to see how it handles picture, videos and games. Before doing so, the E248WFP, 204B and HP L1702 need to be calibrated. Using the monitors’ OSD as much as possible and the NVidia’s control panel colour applet I managed to get all 3 monitors pretty close to a gamma of 2.2.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/NvidiaColourcailbrationapplet.jpg
This is something everyone should do (LCD, Plasma or CRT). All monitor benefited from calibration since there is no perfect balance that will adapt to ever lighting condition the manufacture may sell the product into. The adjustments made aimed for a gamma level of 2.2, since that is the recommended level and it’s severed me well in the past. The OSD of the Dell had no controls for gamma which sucks but most mid range monitors only give a few modes to flip threw. The OSD colour controls also had two modes. These are Graphics (suggested for computer use) and Video (no explanation need here). I saw NO difference in either mode. All tests were done in Graphics mode since this was the only mode that allowed the user to adjust the brightness level of the red, green and blue. Here is a comparison of the Dell E248WFP and Samsung204B rendering a high resolution image. Again we see the flickering to render white and edge back light bleed threw on the Dell while the Samsung remains unaffected.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1446.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1445.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1447.jpg
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1448.jpg
Video playback was excellent. A Sony PS3 with an HDMI->DVI adapter was used for video play back. Rambo 4 (Blue Ray) was the movie of choice. No noticeable framing or ghosting, only the awesome gore of fake blood and guts being splashed all over the screen in fantastic detail of 1080P. Gaming was just as impressive and many of the new tiles support 16:10 aspect ratio of this wide screen monitor. Sadly the limitation of my 8800gt began to rare its ugly head when I cranked up the resolution to 1920x1200 forcing me to back down on the anti-aliasing (AA) and antiscopic filtering (AF) in games like F.E.A.R and Quake 4. Time to start saving for a NV280. The back light bleed threw (especially around the edges) or flickering didn’t seem to hurt the monitor here.
Thus far this monitor, it was hooked up to the NV8800GT while the other 2 monitors were hooked up to the plebus maximus NV7300. For fairness, the monitors were swapped around to see if blame could be aimed at the video card and not the DELL E248WFP. Sadly it was the monitor since the same issues popped up with the NV7300. While switching the monitors around, I notice that the back light bleed threw when into hyper drive, especially around the edges with red on the E248WFP, when unplugged. That can’t be a good thing.
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll193/ecktt/DSCF1449-edit.jpg
If you all are like me, your PC is your TV/workstation/game centre/(insert favour PC past-time of your choice), then you would realise how important you main monitor is. I got this monitor because it was big and cheap. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. This monitor is no exception. I find myself watch movies and gaming on the Dell E248WFP but reading, watching photos or any other task that involves relatively still images on the Samsung 204B. That suites me just fine as that is how I work with multiple monitors. For other people who use only one monitor, the faults with this monitor might be a bit to distracting for day-to-day PC activities. Then again, I’m a very picky person. Personally, this monitors fails but it could be a bare pass for many other people especially considering the low price and 3 year warranty in Trinidad and Tobago.