Review: Dell E248WFP 24” Monitor
Dell, not Apple?
There were a couple of reasons that made me choose not to go with the Apple Displays. One, the price, with the cost of one Apple 23” Cinema Display I could have bought about two of these monitors - give or talk about £20. Obviously that was one big point and even if there weren’t these others I would have still got this one. A higher contrast ratio of 1000:1 with the cinema displays having a petty 700:1. Also, the Dell 24@ Monitor has a far better response time of 5ms. (great for gaming especially) while the ACD has 14ms. response time. If you ask me there is quite a difference, and I’m not sure if I would be able to live with myself knowing that I payed double the price for a far inferior display. The main reason for these terrible specifications is the fact that Apple has frankly been too lazy to upgrade these to a better spec; and on that side of things, after using both a 23” Cinema Display and this, I kinda’ prefer this.
Design
I’ll briefly touch on some interesting design points, the stand is very stable, and I don’t feel insecure about having it on the edge of my desk, though made of plastic, it has a very professional finish. One downside is the lack on adjustability; you can only tilt the monitor, not raise the height of it, also as far as I can see you can’t rotate the screen into portrait mode, not something that I’d like to do myself, but others may. There is also a limited amount of inputs, only DVI and VGA. Compared to it’s big brother, the UltraSharp 2407WFP-HC (which for some reason I am no longer able to find on the UK Dell Store), my monitor does not have the extra video capabilities. Some of these ports however may have been useful because after having the monitor for a relatively short amount of time I have already been asked by several people if we can hook it up to the Xbox 360 (which you can, you just need an adapter).
Performance
The display is very bright, sadly not as bright as my MacBook Pro (which does happen to have an LED backlit screen) but very close. The native resolution of the display is 1920×1200, which is to be expected for the size of the display. So far I have not discovered any dead pixels and I certainly don’t intend to either. The monitor is very fast to tuen on, pretty much instant. A couple of extra points that should be noted: The display does not have a biult in card reader, if you want that then you have to get the UltraSharp model. Also, you might want a big desk. This thing is massive, my desk is over two meters long and it still makes a big dent in desk, not Dell’s fault just that it is the nature with buying such a large display.
Conclusion:
I am incredibly impressed with the Dell E248WFP 24” Monitor, it has lived up and become more than what I ever expected of it. For £320 it was a bargain, though it’s RRP is £402 so I would wait for another offer if the price pops back up again. I highly recommend it and will be able to report back on it’s performance in the near future when I talk about it’s gaming performance and CS3 abilities. What monitor do you use and why? Did you go Dell or Apple? Tell us by leaving a comment - I’d be very interested in knowing why.
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Excellent review - except that you don’t say anything about colour reproduction or any of the adjustments possible.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:57 pmThanks for the comment. I’ll write up a paragraph on that for this evening and I’ll add it to the post - check back soon!
December 24th, 2007 at 1:01 pmI have to say I like the look of it but what really annoys me is that it is not as bright as the MacBook Pro’s. It looks good and he colour looks good. I might have to buy one!!
December 24th, 2007 at 2:22 pmRupert. Remember that most displays of that size won’t be that bright as they are not LED backlit.
December 24th, 2007 at 2:36 pmAwesome awesome. Congrats on that screen, I have an old 19″ one, which isn’t Widescreen, but the exact same design, (materials etc), as yours here, which I like, it’s a great monitor. I want to get a 24″ monitor, or at least the smallest that’ll do 1080p at some point in the future, so that I can hook a PS3 up to it, that’d be awesome. But, at the moment I’m just using the 19″ and it is very pleasant, I leave like iTunes and other things on it, and use the MBP as my main screen, (as I prefer the dense pixels etc).
Anyway, thanks for this review, very informative, all I want now is for Apple to make a 20″ Cinema with a 1920×1200 res. It surely must be possible if they can put that in the 17″ MBP? I hope so anyway!
Hope you’re well,
Charlie - http://www.theapblog.com/
December 24th, 2007 at 4:48 pmHi - was just reading this as I was looking for user feedback - this is the most informative review i’ve seen. I’ve actually just bought one myself - I have another dell monitor which I’m very happy with so I kinda took a stab. Will report back once it arrives!
December 29th, 2007 at 10:25 pmThere’s a good reason this monitor is cheaper than the Apple Cinema Display, it uses a cheap TN panel as opposed to the ACD’s S-IPS panel. Although it has a faster response time, compared to an ACD it will have a far inferior viewing angle and overall picture quality, to say nothing of the fact that it is only 6-bit whereas the ACD is 8-bit. For what you’re doing this display might be okay, but don’t make comments like “I’m not sure if I would be able to live with myself knowing that I payed double the price for a far inferior display”.
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:27 pmI’m sitting in front of one of these right now and I’m a bit disappointed to be honest. If I put one colour all over the screen it’s significantly brighter in the lower part. Orange for example is light yellow at the bottom and dark orange at the top. Is this something you have noticed?
January 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pmPeter:
Though at first I didn’t notice a slight difference in colour when I was working in Photoshop for the first time I did see something similar. Luckily for me, I don’t plan on keeping the display for too long - and anyway I tend to browse the web a lot on it.
-Jonathan
January 7th, 2008 at 4:29 pmWhy do you say that you will not be using it for long? Because you’re review says the exact opposite to a first-time reader.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:44 amis it non PN - Panel Technology? please let me know soon. if yes i would love to buy it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 amThis is a very good monitor if we talk about price/quality ratio.
The most noticeable downside of this display is the very small ‘viewing cone’.
The guy that said the bottom is lighter than the top is ‘almost right’.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 pmbut if you just move your viewing position everything changes… again.. viewing cone is really small.
I’ve got a very cheeky request for you regarding this monitor. I don’t seem to be able to find any information on the dimensions of this monitor once it’s at it’s lowest point on the stand. I’m really limited in terms of Height on my desk and the hole it has to fit into is 45cm tall exactly. I’ve seen so many different heights listed on different website - I can’t tell if this is going to fit. Any chance you could put it to it’s lowest height and measure it for me? Much appreciated if you can - and not to worry if you can’t.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pmHi Nick:
I’m afraid that this monitor in question does not have any height adjustability. Only the Ultrasharp models have that feature.
Jonathan
May 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pmHehehe.
Nick asked could you measure physical size of the monitor. The plastic border with the screen and stand xD
Why don’t you answer to the question about you aren’t going to keep it long?
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:59 pmI curious too…
The reason I was about to upgrade to this display is sore eyes and headaches from my old screen. However, I keep reading complaints in online review about the poor viewing angle and subsequent colour consistancy and visual problems. This has me worried. Unfortunately with Dell I cant go into a showroom and check for myself.
I might hold off and save for the Dell 2707WFP UltraSharp which has a much larger viewing angle but at close to double the price.
Btw Jonathan, your review loses credibility when you say how great the display is and then in your reaction to a negative comment you say ‘Luckily for me, I don’t plan on keeping the display for too long’ ??
June 6th, 2008 at 8:53 amOkay… Just to clear things up. Soon after receiving the monitor I found that it may have been a mistake to buy it for one simple reason. I wasn’t using it.
Not because I didn’t want to but because, as I go to a boarding school, I am away from home a lot. Having it sitting at my desk doing nothing was not worth it.
So I decided to recoup my costs and sell it. Admittedly I may have phrased that sentence wrong so it is misleading - sorry.
Hope this clears things up for you.
Jonathan
June 9th, 2008 at 7:13 amSo we deduct that you like it much in every aspect a TN can be liked?
You say nothing about the blacks.. How black is it actually and to what degree is the backlight bleeding noticeable, in dark room?
Does it show artefacts in movies/games due to its slow pixel reaction? 5 ms are not 5 actually. Many reviews measured it 30 ms in the worst case, or 15-20 in average.
I plan to buy one for myself.
Thanks.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:35 pmbeen looking all evening for a real review of this monitor. all i have come up with is tn panel vs anti-tn panel arguments and inconclusive reviews like this one. has anybody actually owned and used this monitor with a MBP or MB? for somebody that was such an immediate fan of this product, your story took a very abrupt turn. “sold it because i go to boarding school”??????
June 28th, 2008 at 3:37 am