Dell 2408 WFP Review

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albovin

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The Dell 2408 Review is now ready.

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Please visit http://monitortest.blogspot.com/

Almost complete review with illustrations and instrumental measurements results.

May be interesting for those considering the Dell 2408 as a prospective purchase.
 
Very good review, the VA flaws are as bad as ever unfortunetly.
Record numbers for input lag way up there with the samsung 245T, 1 frame more than the NEC 2490...
 
Thank you for the excellent detailed review.

Much more thorough than most of the "professional" reviews I see. I wish there was a review like this before I bought my first monitor: a 24" PVA. I read several reviews and none of them mentioned any viewing angle issues with PVA monitors. I actually found the monitor unusable as the detail popping in and out of the shadows at the slightest viewing angle change drove me to distraction.

You also hit upon another effect of the tone/gamma shifting that few others notice, you noted a holographic picture effect. For me I called it a false 3d effect. In this case 3d is not good, it is very distracting and unnatural. I am very sensitive to visual aberrations and I noticed this quite a bit when using my PVA screen (before getting rid of it, I actually use a TN at the moment and find the vertical shift much less annoying). My eyes would get tired trying to refocus on these weird 3d like edge effects. We get 3D cues when each of our eyes see images in a slightly different way. This happens with PVA screens since they shift so easily the image changes even between each eye.

One minor thing I would be interested in reading the result of: The contrast control. None of my LCD's ever had one. All it likely does is put more twist on the LCD crystals to dampen down the bright end of the scale. Something I personally would not want do until it was the last resort to tame a too bright screen (another LCD peeve of mine, most bigger screens are screens are too bright. ).

So on any monitor you test, I would be interested in seeing the 0% Brightness, 100% contrast (Which I assume is the OFF position) black and white levels.

I hope to see more reviews from you in the future. Going forward, I am primarily interested in IPS panels because of my tone/gamma shift sensitivity. I would be interested in your thoughts/comparison of normal S-IPS vs NEC S-IPS with the True Wide polarizer which makes S-IPS even better on current NECs. Or how do Non NEC IPS compare with VA.

See post comparing Planar/NEC:
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1031231298&postcount=116
 
I joined the forum just because of the good monitot feedback you can get here. I read the entire topic about the Dell 2408 and also the above posted review which is excelent. I wish most of the other review sites would include such an extensive comparison and all the stuff about the input lag, digital connectors, black crush, video scaling...

the dell 2408 looked promissing to me, but after I saw how well the NEC 2490 performs I guess the dell is not an option anymore. the only problem I'm facing is that I cant find any shop in germany that would have that 24" monitor. Is the NEC an old model (discontinued?) or is it a brand new and just not available yet?

EDIT: just figured out that there is no 24" for the German market, 26" only and yeah, it's not a new model.
 
This is one of the best monitor review I have ever read!
I am really impressed by the black level improvement.
IMO, the color shifting issue is not annoying for most users since most seat directly in front of their monitor.
So, it seems that the 24" monitors have a new king.
 
I find it odd that the review mentions nothing about this monitor's biggest flaw: oversharp picture that causes white shadows to appear around font edges. I'm not talking about green halos and calibration does nothing to this problem.

Or was the review done with Vista machine and ClearType was on? Mention of green halos seems to indicate this since ClearType is made of green/red halos...

I find the 2408WFP unsuitable for office use: open Excel and you will notice too sharp letters and blue/green picture center with pink sides. :mad: The 2407WFP-HC is much better in office use since it does not have these problems.
 
I also read your informative posts on the 3008WFP speaking of improper over/underscan issues.

Excellent review, and far broader than almost any monitor review any site has put forth.

Spectacular. Kudos.

10e
 
RadXge said:
IMO, the color shifting issue is not annoying for most users since most seat directly in front of their monitor.
So, it seems that the 24" monitors have a new king.
Click to expand...

In reality, "Most users" are perfectly happy with cheap TN panels and the new king is whatever 24" TN is cheapest this week.

Now for those of us actually fussy about image quality and possessing two eyes, that tone/gamma shift matters a great deal. It has nothing to do with where you sit. Even perfectly centered, the sides of the screen will be tone/gamma shifting more than the center. The tone/gamma shifting will be different just based on the difference in distance to each eye, causing that weird false 3d effect. I would much rather have contrast of 800 all over the screen than 1000 in the center and 400 on the sides.

IMO if you really care enough about quality to pay more for it, you go all the way and get the NEC.
 
Excellent review, though two points:

1.) The screen does make a noise, though whether you hear it is quite subjective.

2.) My wife and I found the input lag unbearable. Again, subjective, but the mouse input lag is of epic proportions.
 
WilliamG said:
Excellent review, though two points:

1.) The screen does make a noise, though whether you hear it is quite subjective.

2.) My wife and I found the input lag unbearable. Again, subjective, but the mouse input lag is of epic proportions.
Click to expand...


Just curious, what monitor did you come from using when you moved to the Dell???
 
Excellent review BTW!

After reading the 20+ page thread on here regarding this monitor, I've almost come to the decision to sell the 2408WFP I just purchased before I've even received it! Now I'm going to give it a shot.

I do, however, believe that many people become to overcritical regarding statistics and give products, like the 2408WFP, bad reviews and put downs due to these stats. IMO, 47ms is such a minuscule value, I just can't see how it is humanly possible for a person to say they can notice such a small number. But again, that's just my opinion.

I myself am the type of person that judges a monitor by using it in my daily life and if I see no issues, I'm a happy camper. :D
 
WilliamG said:
1.) The screen does make a noise, though whether you hear it is quite subjective.
Click to expand...

I have also noticed it. The noise disappears when you raise brightness over 65, but that is too bright for normal use.
 
M Diddy said:
Excellent review BTW!

After reading the 20+ page thread on here regarding this monitor, I've almost come to the decision to sell the 2408WFP I just purchased before I've even received it! Now I'm going to give it a shot.

I do, however, believe that many people become to overcritical regarding statistics and give products, like the 2408WFP, bad reviews and put downs due to these stats. IMO, 47ms is such a minuscule value, I just can't see how it is humanly possible for a person to say they can notice such a small number. But again, that's just my opinion.

I myself am the type of person that judges a monitor by using it in my daily life and if I see no issues, I'm a happy camper. :D
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Its a noticable value when your coming from CRT's, some people dont notice it.
Its the colour shifting that annoyed the hell out of me. Also I had to move my head left and right to pick out details in dark situations. Ive boycotted anything PVA based and dont recommend these panels to anybody.

To each his own.
 
Did you use a DVI splitter to test input lag, or just both ports on a video card? When I tried using both ports, I got different results based on which ports I used. I even got different results using XP vs. Vista.
 
et328 said:
I find it odd that the review mentions nothing about this monitor's biggest flaw: oversharp picture that causes white shadows to appear around font edges. I'm not talking about green halos and calibration does nothing to this problem.

I find the 2408WFP unsuitable for office use: open Excel and you will notice too sharp letters and blue/green picture center with pink sides. :mad: The 2407WFP-HC is much better in office use since it does not have these problems.
Click to expand...

Serious problem, but a very simple solution- lower the sharpness setting from 50 to 25
 
Wow that is an amazing review! Your "short" review had 10x more useful information than a lot of the professional reviews! Great job! And thanks for the review!

But now you started a bad trend, we are going to ask you to review more monitors :p What are your thoughts on the Gateway's 30" how does it compare against dell's new 30"?

thanks again
 
Well, that is a really helpfull review, thank you. After reading it, I decided to sell my Pantone huey and buy a better calibrator because, the only problem I have with my 2408WFP is the colors. They are completely wrong and huey can't do anything. I don't care about the input lag and I can live with the Sharpness on 25 and ClearType enabled. I think that the viewing angles are way better than all the TNs I had before and the monitor is completely silent. But the colors...
 
Even if your calibrator does work, the colors will never quite be right in most applications because this is a wide gamut panel in an sRGB world. Only color aware applications will really be correct. Other applications will keep sending standard sRGB at a panel with wider gamut resulting in in-accurate and overcooked colors.
 
Snowdog said:
Even if your calibrator does work, the colors will never quite be right in most applications because this is a wide gamut panel in an sRGB world. Only color aware applications will really be correct. Other applications will keep sending standard sRGB at a panel with wider gamut resulting in in-accurate and overcooked colors.
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Indeed.
Windows Vista is a color aware "application", as is Photoshop and Bibble Pro and that is all I need. Games will of course be uncalibrated, that's fine with me.
 
thePrince said:
Indeed.
Windows Vista is a color aware "application", as is Photoshop and Bibble Pro and that is all I need. Games will of course be uncalibrated, that's fine with me.
Click to expand...

that is until you go to play them and see the original settings before calibration. nasty, man, default settings suck.
drove me nuts, i cant go like that.
use monitor calibration wizard to fix the problem. works like a charm.
 
Dunan said:
that is until you go to play them and see the original settings before calibration. nasty, man, default settings suck.
drove me nuts, i cant go like that.
use monitor calibration wizard to fix the problem. works like a charm.
Click to expand...
Thank you! I will give it a try.
 
thePrince said:
Windows Vista is a color aware "application"
Click to expand...

Does that mean that you can get desktop, icons and Internet Explorer to show correct colors with Vista? Not just gamma correction, but actual color mapping so that colors are correctly mapped to monitor's wide gamut color space. How is this done? Where do you put the profile and what settings do you have to enable to make this happen? I have read conflicting reports about this: some say that calibration does not work any better with Vista than it does with XP, i.e. only color aware programs use it, not the operating system.
 
et328 said:
Does that mean that you can get desktop, icons and Internet Explorer to show correct colors with Vista? Not just gamma correction, but actual color mapping so that colors are correctly mapped to monitor's wide gamut color space. How is this done? Where do you put the profile and what settings do you have to enable to make this happen? I have read conflicting reports about this: some say that calibration does not work any better with Vista than it does with XP, i.e. only color aware programs use it, not the operating system.
Click to expand...

My understanding is it is the same as XP, your profile will be used to correct gamma and balance, so in both cases your calibration will work. But it will not be correct for gamut. This can be more subtle and initial calibrations.

Only something like photoshop will actually do the gamut conversions necessary to actually render images properly in the gamut of the monitor.
 
M Diddy said:
Just curious, what monitor did you come from using when you moved to the Dell???
Click to expand...

I used quite a few. At this point, the last displays I had used were the LG 246P 24" and the Apple 23". I have yet to own a panel as stunning as the Apple. The input lag on the Dell was worse than any panel I have owned in recent memory.
 
Dunan said:
yeah try it, you wont try regret it. works really well. just make sure you use the calibrated setting as the saved setting in the program.
like night and day.
Click to expand...

Did you create a separate profile for games? How did you do that? I have the Eye One calibrator, but I have only created a profile to load when Vista boots up, I didn't know that you could create separate profile for individual games...
 
A "pro" review from end user's aspect...Really helpful, as if i had the monitor standing in front of me...Thanx
 
PayBas said:
http://monitortest.blogspot.com/ keeps talking about calibrating to AdobeRGB colors but there isn't a preset, only for sRGB. Is the reviewer using the default/desktop preset or something?
Click to expand...

A "wide gamut mode" is a default mode for this monitor. Actually it is not an Adobe RGB mode - in this default mode the monitor provides its native color space that covers Adobe RGB color space almost completely and goes ever farther in some areas.
 
Hehe, well might aswell reply here. First of all I'd like to thank you albovin, your review is just about the most complete user-review I have ever seen. So, many kudos to you.

I myself am going to get the 2408WFP because of it's incredible price/quality ratio and am going to do all sorts of things with it. I just recently got into the webdesign business so well calibrated colors are somewhat new to me although I am going to be using them a lot from now on. But I like movies and working with AfterEffects and Photoshop a lot too.

I cannot afford a Eizo or NEC yet so the 2408WFP is a nice step up from my 17" TN panel (4y old lol).

And since I hardly have time for playing videogames I could care less about that "ever so dreadfull input-lag" that some people are so obsessed about.


So am I getting this right (from a color noob point of view) that this is what I should do once I recieve my 2408WFP.

1. Set Vista to use AdobeRGB in the color manager.
2. Set photoshop and all the other applications to AdobeRGB.
3. Set the brightness, and contrast to what "feels" right for me.
4. Set the preset mode to "Custom (R,G,B)" and try to get the best tones manually.
5. Get a colorimeter (gonna borrow a Spyder2 from a friend of mine).
6. Calibrate towards AdobeRGB and get all colors to DeltaE < 2.
7. Calibrate towards 2.2 for gamma and 6500k for colour temp.

If someone could give me pointers I would appreciate it :).

p.s. albovin, so am I to understand that you yourself used the default (desktop) preset to get your results?
 
PayBas said:
p.s. albovin, so am I to understand that you yourself used the default (desktop) preset to get your results?
Click to expand...
I used Custom (R, G, B) as calibration process required RGB controls adjustments.
 
Anybody use QuickGamma? I have it running and turned down red and green channel and have blue channel up. It looks alot better than the default sRGB. Blue is bluer and lost some of that green tint over it. I'm really like the monitor now.
 
Anyone compare the aspect ratio (scaling) choices for the composite/S video/component inputs between this and the Sammy 245T?

I understand using the 245T for DVD playback isn't that great. Is this any better/different?
 
Some thoughts..

- The rainbow effect on the Dell is strong and it's not "splitting hair" to remark that. Contrary to what the article says, I saw it immediately and not after "deliberately looking for it", I think I'm actually the person who posted this info here first (at least I never read about it before).
The bright green wide gamut color of the ghosting makes it especially obvious and annoying.
The LG L245WP has the same effect but the color there is light orange/blue which is much less objectionable.

- Color shift and problems with dark colors as seen on current displays is NOT an inherent property of VA and people should stop acting as if it was. I wanted to sell my old Samsung 213T but now I am thinking about keeping it because in spite of being PVA it does not have the problem at all. If somebody wants a 1600x1200 21" screen and doesn't need overdrive (40 ms black to white!), this screen can be bought used for very cheap prices.

- There is no neutral sharpness setting on the 2408. 50 is edge enhancing and 25 is blurring. Yuck!

- The sRGB mode is useless (completely undersaturated) so the screen doesn't work properly for applications not supporting color management (=all except a few graphics editing and viewing programs).
It's a miracle to me why this screen does not support a simple digital color space conversion, the same kind of conversion color managed programs can do.

So all in all, I sent the 2408 back because it can do a little bit of everything but nothing right. Office: rainbows, sharpness problem, extremely oversaturated colors - Games: lag (and xbitlabs' article about it is pseudo-scientific babble, not an experts' opinion) - Photo editing: lack of >8 bits wide internal processing

I have to say I'm astounded about what people put up with nowadays. If it wasn't for the missing overdrive circuit and 8 bit processing, the old 213T would still beat anything under &#8364;2000 except maybe for the unavailable NEC 2490.
 
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