I've had this monitor for 2 days now, and since I chose to get a Dell by browsing comments on this forum I thought I'd post a few of my own.
Choosing the right Screen,
I, like everyone else on this forum, scoured the net for reivews of all the 20-22inch monitors I could find. I'd narrowed down my choices to the LG226wtq, the Dell E228wfp and the Ultrasharp 2007wfp. I managed to get a glimpse of the LG in action, and didn't like it at all. It looked to plasticky, and the picture quality was quite bad. It looked washed out, and the blacks looked pixelated. It may have been a combination of an analouge connection and a bad colour set-up, but I decided not to compensate for those and crossed it off my list.
It was then that I decided to get the 2007wfp. And then, as luck would have it, Dell decided to offer 2 new 22" monitors. Seeing that the 22" Ultrasharp had a pivotable, height adjustable stand, and supposedly better colours than the original 22 inch model, I decided that bigger is better and went for that instead.
The unveiling and initial impressions,
I recieved it at 7 in the evening, 8 days after I ordered it. It took me all of 15 minutes to pack away my old monitor and set this one up. At first the brightness blinded me, and the colours looked way off. The screen brightness was really uneven, and the colours would change everytime I tilted my head.
I was regretting having opted for the bigger instead of the better, but it was getting late and I decided to watch a movie instead of spending my time thinking about how silly I was not to have gone for the monitor with the better panel. I made a few quick colour adjustments, and put on a movie.
I was completely blown away! My old divX files looked absolutely amazing! The blacks were black, and details in the dark were clearly visible. The rest of the colours were vivid, and though they might have been overly saturated, it just added to my pleasure.
I went to bed that night, a happy man.The next morning, I fiddled around with the colours, and after finding that there wasn't much I could do from the monitors controls, I made a few adjustments from the nvidia control panel. What a world of difference that made! Granted colours aren't completely natural, but they're incredibly eye pleasing. And, I found that after a few hours of running, the monitors uneven brightness had improved considerably. And on turning up the brightness to 50%, it was almost completely gone.
The stand,
The stand it comes with is a God-send. My couch is lower than my monitor, so if I try to watch movies without lowering the monitor, the screen gets too dark. The pivot works well, even though the display adjustment isn't automatic. Adjusting the height and tilt is easy, and stepless. Swiveling the monitor on it's stand is also without any issues. The base is heavyish, and looks elegant and solid.
Color shifts,
The initial problem I had of the monitor changing colour everytime I moved my head had largely vanished. Theres still a fair amout of variation when I move around the room, but no longer when I am just sitting at my desk. Moving the monitor back a few inches, and adjusting the height has largely solved that problem.
Connectivity,
The USB ports on the side and the bottom are invisible, and the ports on the side are easily accessible.
In game performance ,
In games, the monitor performed really well. I couldn't discern any ghosting, even though I was playing deathmatches in UT2004. I've still to upgrade my graphics card, so that was one of the few games I had that I could play at native resolution with all the settings turned up. The game definately looks old, but it did alright for testing the monitor. There were no artifacts at all, but since theres no RTC on this panel, thats to be expected. I should try Doom3 to see how well dark scenes are rendered, and I'll post an update when I do that.
Text clarity,
Now, a part which most reviews don't cover. Text. It can be a problem. Some fonts just look terrible. I've turned on cleartype, and have played around with the sharpness settings of both, my monitor and my graphics card, and no matter what I do, some fonts just look horrible. Most of the fonts responded well when I turned cleartype on, and look nicer than they did on my CRT, but a few fonts weren't affected at all.
Another gripe I have is that the small web-page icons I have on my Opera taskbar look a little jagged and their colours seem unnatural.
I read quite a few ebooks, and the text output was worrying me. But I don't face the problem when using PDF files. Reading an ebook here, with 2 pages side by side will be a real step up for me, but I will have to turn down the brightness.
Menu and options,
The menu on the monitor isn't very user-friendly, and there are atleast 4 button presses that have to be made before you can start to do anything useful. Luckily, I can save colour profiles and activate them with 2 clicks of my mouse using the nvidia control panel.
Conclusion
All in all, I would have to say that this must be one of the nicest 22" panels out there. Mind you, I haven't had the chance to play around with dozens of LCD screens, but for it's price, I don't think theres anything in India which can match it. This is obviously the subjective opinion of a happy customer, and open to debate, but for the moment, I stand by my claim.
To sum up,
Pros:
Iffy:
Cons:
Choosing the right Screen,
I, like everyone else on this forum, scoured the net for reivews of all the 20-22inch monitors I could find. I'd narrowed down my choices to the LG226wtq, the Dell E228wfp and the Ultrasharp 2007wfp. I managed to get a glimpse of the LG in action, and didn't like it at all. It looked to plasticky, and the picture quality was quite bad. It looked washed out, and the blacks looked pixelated. It may have been a combination of an analouge connection and a bad colour set-up, but I decided not to compensate for those and crossed it off my list.
It was then that I decided to get the 2007wfp. And then, as luck would have it, Dell decided to offer 2 new 22" monitors. Seeing that the 22" Ultrasharp had a pivotable, height adjustable stand, and supposedly better colours than the original 22 inch model, I decided that bigger is better and went for that instead.
The unveiling and initial impressions,
I recieved it at 7 in the evening, 8 days after I ordered it. It took me all of 15 minutes to pack away my old monitor and set this one up. At first the brightness blinded me, and the colours looked way off. The screen brightness was really uneven, and the colours would change everytime I tilted my head.
I was regretting having opted for the bigger instead of the better, but it was getting late and I decided to watch a movie instead of spending my time thinking about how silly I was not to have gone for the monitor with the better panel. I made a few quick colour adjustments, and put on a movie.
I was completely blown away! My old divX files looked absolutely amazing! The blacks were black, and details in the dark were clearly visible. The rest of the colours were vivid, and though they might have been overly saturated, it just added to my pleasure.
I went to bed that night, a happy man.The next morning, I fiddled around with the colours, and after finding that there wasn't much I could do from the monitors controls, I made a few adjustments from the nvidia control panel. What a world of difference that made! Granted colours aren't completely natural, but they're incredibly eye pleasing. And, I found that after a few hours of running, the monitors uneven brightness had improved considerably. And on turning up the brightness to 50%, it was almost completely gone.
The stand,
The stand it comes with is a God-send. My couch is lower than my monitor, so if I try to watch movies without lowering the monitor, the screen gets too dark. The pivot works well, even though the display adjustment isn't automatic. Adjusting the height and tilt is easy, and stepless. Swiveling the monitor on it's stand is also without any issues. The base is heavyish, and looks elegant and solid.
Color shifts,
The initial problem I had of the monitor changing colour everytime I moved my head had largely vanished. Theres still a fair amout of variation when I move around the room, but no longer when I am just sitting at my desk. Moving the monitor back a few inches, and adjusting the height has largely solved that problem.
Connectivity,
The USB ports on the side and the bottom are invisible, and the ports on the side are easily accessible.
In game performance ,
In games, the monitor performed really well. I couldn't discern any ghosting, even though I was playing deathmatches in UT2004. I've still to upgrade my graphics card, so that was one of the few games I had that I could play at native resolution with all the settings turned up. The game definately looks old, but it did alright for testing the monitor. There were no artifacts at all, but since theres no RTC on this panel, thats to be expected. I should try Doom3 to see how well dark scenes are rendered, and I'll post an update when I do that.
Text clarity,
Now, a part which most reviews don't cover. Text. It can be a problem. Some fonts just look terrible. I've turned on cleartype, and have played around with the sharpness settings of both, my monitor and my graphics card, and no matter what I do, some fonts just look horrible. Most of the fonts responded well when I turned cleartype on, and look nicer than they did on my CRT, but a few fonts weren't affected at all.
Another gripe I have is that the small web-page icons I have on my Opera taskbar look a little jagged and their colours seem unnatural.
I read quite a few ebooks, and the text output was worrying me. But I don't face the problem when using PDF files. Reading an ebook here, with 2 pages side by side will be a real step up for me, but I will have to turn down the brightness.
Menu and options,
The menu on the monitor isn't very user-friendly, and there are atleast 4 button presses that have to be made before you can start to do anything useful. Luckily, I can save colour profiles and activate them with 2 clicks of my mouse using the nvidia control panel.
Conclusion
All in all, I would have to say that this must be one of the nicest 22" panels out there. Mind you, I haven't had the chance to play around with dozens of LCD screens, but for it's price, I don't think theres anything in India which can match it. This is obviously the subjective opinion of a happy customer, and open to debate, but for the moment, I stand by my claim.
To sum up,
Pros:
- Excellent performance in movies and games
- Elegant looks
- Looks and feels solid and well finished
Iffy:
- Great colour rendering, vivid if not exactly natural.
- A hint of uneven screen brightness.
- The cable management could have been a little better. (I can see the cables under the monitor, I'd like them to be completely invisible.)
Cons:
- Initial settings.
- Non-user friendly menu.
- Text does not look as good as it should. (I suspect that this is a problem of TN panels in general, and not just this model.)
- Viewing angles. (Not as bad as I expected, but still far far from ideal)
