Dell 2209WA

[Peter Korsten]

Peter Korsten schreef:

> The 2209WA gets universal praise. The 2410 is its bigger and better 
> brother. :)

So... for those who are my Facebook friends, by now you should have 
figured that I got it last Friday.

I'm glad I went for the black one. The silver one could be had for less, 
but the black is just that: black. There's a little blue light in the 
power button in the lower right corner; above that are four buttons, 
that have some (barely legible, which is good in this case) legends, but 
change function based on the context. The function is then displayed on 
the screen, next to the button. Very clever and no distracting buttons 
on the bevel.

In that regard, it's strange that two of the four USB ports for the hub 
are on the side of the screen. So you have this really nice screen, and 
some ugly cable sticking out of the side. That doesn't make sense.

You can easily turn it in all directions and even pivot it, so you can 
work in portrait mode. This is purely mechanical, though, so you need to 
change the screen orientation yourself. I've seen a Radius Pivot screen 
do this automatically on a Macintosh - wait for it - about 25 year ago, 
but on the other hand, this screen is a bit on the budget side of the 
Ultrasharp range. When you pivot it, the cables turn with it.

If the screen is completely black, you see quite some leakage of 
backlight in the corners. Normally, it's not much of an issue, but if 
you need a super-calibrated screen, perhaps this is an issue.

So, e-IPS instead of TN. My screen at work, my laptop screen and even 
our TV, they all have TN screens. They're cheap and they're fast, but 
they also have the lest quality of the three available technologies (TN, 
PVA and IPS).

What strikes me about this screen - and I have to admit that the TV and 
the screen at work, a Dell 22" TN screen, are via analogue connections - 
is that everything is incredibly sharp and crisp. You have to be careful 
how you do dithering, because you have a good chance of seeing the 
individual pixels as little squares.

If you watch a DVD, you see the limitations of the DVD standard. I don't 
have Blu-ray here, but you would need it to overcome that limitation. 
(The resolution is 1680x1050, by the way, so there may be scaling 
issues. I wouldn't know.) I was looking at the arena scene with the 
chariots in 'Gladiator', and it was all a bit too fuzzy.

It might be worth it to properly calibrate this screen, even though I'm 
mostly playing games and boring you guys with it. But when you look at 
it, the details (like the texture on a top that my son is wearing) and 
colours all look so /right/. It's like looking at the real thing.

Given that this thing can be had for $300, or £200 (if you shop around 
and are lucky), or €250, it's really a great deal for a very nice screen.

If you're willing and capable of spending roughly twice as much, the 
Dell 2410 is 24".

- Peter