Sample Photo Showing 2405fpw (left) and 243T (right) simultaneously:
Motion blur of 243T and 2405fpw photographed & compared:
Gamagic test pattern:
I don't have much time or much webspace, but I did have the money to buy the Samsung 243T six months ago for $1750, and the Dell 2405fpw three days ago for $970, both new in box on Ebay. I hooked them both up as cloned displays to my Radeon AIW 9600 XT and started evaluating... I even took a lot of pictures, but I might have to redo that - shooting at short shutter times ~ 1/125 sec, low ISO (for little noise), all at screen light levels is pretty challenging. Add in manual white balance, and most importantly, curvature of depth of field combined with these huge areas, and soon you can't tell whether the soft-focus look comes from motion blur, lack of megapixels in your camera, or incorrect focus (curvature of field). That's why I have to test some more. However, here is what I can tell you:
Motion blur (a.k.a. ghosting):
Ghosting is clearly reduced over the 243T, but the "overdrive" technology used to achieve that brings its own set of strange artifacts, for example where the 243T might leave a motion blur trail, the 2405fpw tends to overcompensate, leaving a "negative" motion blur trail of opposite color. Still, overall motion blur is reduced and fast-moving objects tend to consistently look sharper and more contrasty on the 2405fpw, but nevertheless the "negative motion blur" artifacts are visible if you look for them hard enough, e.g. with a scrolling text (in Windows 2000, try the Marquee screensaver, dark grey background, fuchsia colored lettering, speed set 10 clicks to the right from "slowest").
LAG:
Strangely enough, the 2405fpw has about 50ms (+/- 20ms, difficult to measure) signal delay over the 243T. This showed up when several photos, which show both monitors side-by-side at the same instance, showed slightly different screens. For example, in UT2k4 a green plasma bolt from the link gun would consistently be further along its flight path in the 243T than in the 2405fpw. To make sure it's not the graphics card I switched the VGA cables and it still was the 2405fpw that lagged behind. Oh well... DSP processing has entered the realm of computer screens, I guess. In trying to estimate the delay I photographed fast-counting loading screens etc., and the difference in % loaded combined with the total time to load gave me that 20-50 ms estimate. In terms of gaming performance, this might mean that on the 2405fpw you're up to 3 frames behind.
Does that matter? I don't know... on one hand I don't think that even 50ms really matter, but on the other hand, if you look at the scrolling text offset difference in my "sample photo explained"... it just ocurred to me that not only the text, but also a jumping enemy will be displayed in a different location by these two monitors. So if you're a quick sharpshooter in Unreal Tournament 2004, the 2405fpw could mess up your aim. Only one of these two monitors can show the true position, and it's likely the faster one, meaning the Samsung 243T. With the 2405fpw, while you think you're right on, you actually keep aiming a bit *behind* your opponent by up to a full body's width, if he is far enough away and dodging fast enough sideways. That's because when you have him in your sight, the player will actually have moved on a bit further already. I'd say that sucks.
Backlight:
Flicker free LCDs? Don't believe all the hype. One one hand, the 2405fpw is clearly brighter and at at 10% matches the 243T at 70%. On the other hand, however, the backlight on the 2405fpw seems to be cheaper made - when aiming a digicam at the 2405fpw, the digicam screen flickers, showing that the 2405fpw screen itself must flicker enough for the digicam's gain compensation to pick up on it. Compared to that, the 243T screen always appeared solid on the digicam's LCD.
I went a bit further and tested this by wriggling a few objects quickly in front of both screens in a darkened room, to see if these objects would leave a bright uniform light streak or a "choppy" one, as the one you would see if you waved your hand under a bad neon light. As it turns out, the 2405fpw chops things up, e.g. flickers slowly and intensely enough to create this effect. No such choppiness could be produced with the illumination provided by (to) the 243T. This confirms my suspicion that the 243T is much better built and has a much faster driven backlight. This is a bit disappointing, because I really start liking the 2405fpw, but I wonder if the slow flickering backlight of the 2405fpw might produce more eyestrain than the 243T, in the long run. That's not something I'm keen on. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to capture this effect on photos (which shutter time...?), but it's there.
Buzzing:
After reading some threads, I learned about the buzzing of the 2405fpw and decided to look into it. I have it, too, it's faint, but noticeable especially by holding an ear up to the frame. I then recorded the buzz with a microphone and analyzed the frequency spectrum in cooledit: It is pretty much a 218Hz square wave buzz. My guess is that the backlight of the 2405fpw is driven at 218Hz, which should pass as "flicker free", but which is still far from what a quality backlight could do in terms of frequency.
Colors & Contrast:
Again, slightly improved on the 2405fpw, especially in highlight detail and black level - but only AFTER I went through a painstaking gamma curve adjustment (Offset1, Offset2, & Gain) in the hidden factory settings menu. For that purpose the "Gamagic" patterns helped a lot (second link in Google). Before I did that, colors looked too intense, and worse, I couldn't get the white balance right across different shades on a gray scale ladder. For example, if I had white-balanced the midtones with the standard "user" RGB color controls, the highlights would be reddish!! In this regard, the Samsung 243T was much better calibrated by the factory. In summary, Dell must have done some calibration (because I also saw much worse settings), but their calibration job must have been marginal.
Those are the most important findings I had. Overall, the Samsung 243T strikes me as a higher quality but older generation product. The 243T has the better design, the sturdier case, a real on-off switch in the back, it's much heavier, it's much better color-calibrated, it has a VESA compatible stand, it doesn't leak light out the back, it's backlight is much more flicker-free (probably a higher frequency), and it displays data about 30ms faster than the 2504fpw. Oh, and before I forget - the Samsung has 3 years warranty. With Dell, it's nearly impossible to find any reference to their warranty policy of a particular product such as the 2405fpw.
On the other hand, the 2405fpw has undeniable advantages such as price, improved contrast (but not by as much as you might think from the specs) & less motion blur, both of which improve the perceived image clarity over the already awesome 243T. It also has a built-in card reader & USB hub, and due to it's lighter weight and better cable guides I would (and did) actually make use of the portrait-pivot function - the 243T has this, too, but it's more difficult to operate. If you calibrate your Dell (ideally in hardware, not with a software ICC profile) and don't mind the light shining out the back case, it makes an even slightly better display, I'd say. Oh, and the 50ms delay - at least now the screen is not ahead of the DSP home theater sound system anymore.
This shows the delay problem once more:
Motion blur of 243T and 2405fpw photographed & compared:
Gamagic test pattern:
I don't have much time or much webspace, but I did have the money to buy the Samsung 243T six months ago for $1750, and the Dell 2405fpw three days ago for $970, both new in box on Ebay. I hooked them both up as cloned displays to my Radeon AIW 9600 XT and started evaluating... I even took a lot of pictures, but I might have to redo that - shooting at short shutter times ~ 1/125 sec, low ISO (for little noise), all at screen light levels is pretty challenging. Add in manual white balance, and most importantly, curvature of depth of field combined with these huge areas, and soon you can't tell whether the soft-focus look comes from motion blur, lack of megapixels in your camera, or incorrect focus (curvature of field). That's why I have to test some more. However, here is what I can tell you:
Motion blur (a.k.a. ghosting):
Ghosting is clearly reduced over the 243T, but the "overdrive" technology used to achieve that brings its own set of strange artifacts, for example where the 243T might leave a motion blur trail, the 2405fpw tends to overcompensate, leaving a "negative" motion blur trail of opposite color. Still, overall motion blur is reduced and fast-moving objects tend to consistently look sharper and more contrasty on the 2405fpw, but nevertheless the "negative motion blur" artifacts are visible if you look for them hard enough, e.g. with a scrolling text (in Windows 2000, try the Marquee screensaver, dark grey background, fuchsia colored lettering, speed set 10 clicks to the right from "slowest").
LAG:
Strangely enough, the 2405fpw has about 50ms (+/- 20ms, difficult to measure) signal delay over the 243T. This showed up when several photos, which show both monitors side-by-side at the same instance, showed slightly different screens. For example, in UT2k4 a green plasma bolt from the link gun would consistently be further along its flight path in the 243T than in the 2405fpw. To make sure it's not the graphics card I switched the VGA cables and it still was the 2405fpw that lagged behind. Oh well... DSP processing has entered the realm of computer screens, I guess. In trying to estimate the delay I photographed fast-counting loading screens etc., and the difference in % loaded combined with the total time to load gave me that 20-50 ms estimate. In terms of gaming performance, this might mean that on the 2405fpw you're up to 3 frames behind.
Does that matter? I don't know... on one hand I don't think that even 50ms really matter, but on the other hand, if you look at the scrolling text offset difference in my "sample photo explained"... it just ocurred to me that not only the text, but also a jumping enemy will be displayed in a different location by these two monitors. So if you're a quick sharpshooter in Unreal Tournament 2004, the 2405fpw could mess up your aim. Only one of these two monitors can show the true position, and it's likely the faster one, meaning the Samsung 243T. With the 2405fpw, while you think you're right on, you actually keep aiming a bit *behind* your opponent by up to a full body's width, if he is far enough away and dodging fast enough sideways. That's because when you have him in your sight, the player will actually have moved on a bit further already. I'd say that sucks.
Backlight:
Flicker free LCDs? Don't believe all the hype. One one hand, the 2405fpw is clearly brighter and at at 10% matches the 243T at 70%. On the other hand, however, the backlight on the 2405fpw seems to be cheaper made - when aiming a digicam at the 2405fpw, the digicam screen flickers, showing that the 2405fpw screen itself must flicker enough for the digicam's gain compensation to pick up on it. Compared to that, the 243T screen always appeared solid on the digicam's LCD.
I went a bit further and tested this by wriggling a few objects quickly in front of both screens in a darkened room, to see if these objects would leave a bright uniform light streak or a "choppy" one, as the one you would see if you waved your hand under a bad neon light. As it turns out, the 2405fpw chops things up, e.g. flickers slowly and intensely enough to create this effect. No such choppiness could be produced with the illumination provided by (to) the 243T. This confirms my suspicion that the 243T is much better built and has a much faster driven backlight. This is a bit disappointing, because I really start liking the 2405fpw, but I wonder if the slow flickering backlight of the 2405fpw might produce more eyestrain than the 243T, in the long run. That's not something I'm keen on. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to capture this effect on photos (which shutter time...?), but it's there.
Buzzing:
After reading some threads, I learned about the buzzing of the 2405fpw and decided to look into it. I have it, too, it's faint, but noticeable especially by holding an ear up to the frame. I then recorded the buzz with a microphone and analyzed the frequency spectrum in cooledit: It is pretty much a 218Hz square wave buzz. My guess is that the backlight of the 2405fpw is driven at 218Hz, which should pass as "flicker free", but which is still far from what a quality backlight could do in terms of frequency.
Colors & Contrast:
Again, slightly improved on the 2405fpw, especially in highlight detail and black level - but only AFTER I went through a painstaking gamma curve adjustment (Offset1, Offset2, & Gain) in the hidden factory settings menu. For that purpose the "Gamagic" patterns helped a lot (second link in Google). Before I did that, colors looked too intense, and worse, I couldn't get the white balance right across different shades on a gray scale ladder. For example, if I had white-balanced the midtones with the standard "user" RGB color controls, the highlights would be reddish!! In this regard, the Samsung 243T was much better calibrated by the factory. In summary, Dell must have done some calibration (because I also saw much worse settings), but their calibration job must have been marginal.
Those are the most important findings I had. Overall, the Samsung 243T strikes me as a higher quality but older generation product. The 243T has the better design, the sturdier case, a real on-off switch in the back, it's much heavier, it's much better color-calibrated, it has a VESA compatible stand, it doesn't leak light out the back, it's backlight is much more flicker-free (probably a higher frequency), and it displays data about 30ms faster than the 2504fpw. Oh, and before I forget - the Samsung has 3 years warranty. With Dell, it's nearly impossible to find any reference to their warranty policy of a particular product such as the 2405fpw.
On the other hand, the 2405fpw has undeniable advantages such as price, improved contrast (but not by as much as you might think from the specs) & less motion blur, both of which improve the perceived image clarity over the already awesome 243T. It also has a built-in card reader & USB hub, and due to it's lighter weight and better cable guides I would (and did) actually make use of the portrait-pivot function - the 243T has this, too, but it's more difficult to operate. If you calibrate your Dell (ideally in hardware, not with a software ICC profile) and don't mind the light shining out the back case, it makes an even slightly better display, I'd say. Oh, and the 50ms delay - at least now the screen is not ahead of the DSP home theater sound system anymore.
This shows the delay problem once more: