Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor, Black
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J. Ireland
Greater than one weekIve been trying to find a new monitor for some time now. I tried 27 monitors but in every case there was a problem with them - color desaturation, glass chips, LED bleeding, dead pixels, stuck pixels, defective ports, etc. Maybe I have terrible luck but is it so much to ask that a monitor actually fully work out of the box? Apparently so - I gave up on 27 monitors and turned to 24 monitors. Even in that range I had a real issue finding one that I liked (including other Dells) - until I came across this monitor. This is how monitors should be: sharp, clear, colorful, responsive, and with no defects. I liked this monitor so much I ended up getting three of them (and none of them had any problems). The picture is excellent and the colors are perfect. I havent noticed any ghosting when gaming and the viewing angle is great. The ONLY thing bad I have to say about the monitor is its lack of connections. Oh sure, it has DVI, VGA, and DisplayPort but I would have liked to have seen a second DVI port and/or an HDMI port (I hook in a Windows box and a Mac Mini). A very minor complaint, though. PROS: *Great Picture/Color/Response. *Everything worked! No dead pixels, no stuck pixels, no damage, no marks, no LED bleeding, no desaturation, great lighting and color balance - this was true on all three monitors. *Good menu system. *Excellent adjustable stand. *1920x1200 resolution is nice, 16:10 makes a huge difference. CONS: *Connections - would have been nice to have a second DVI port or an HDMI port; minor complaint though. This is easily one of the best monitors Ive ever seen, now if only there was a 27 version. I highly recommend it.
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Morf Thumperton
> 3 dayBeautiful image set in a good, unobtrusive matte bezel. I replaced a deceased TN panel with this, its wonderful no longer having viewing angle or a photos location on-screen affecting brightness and contrast when I process things. The stand seems sturdy and has nice tilt, rotation and height adjustments. Out-of-the-box default settings had the panel WAY too bright and it seemed to have a bit of a cold cast; if like me you dont have calibration equipment TFT Central makes available a color profile you can try. That plus the brightness brought down to 35 worked well enough for me and images are beautiful, without their ICC Im not sure I couldve tuned it well by eye (its amazing how quickly our eyes adjust to compensate for color casts). Im glad they kept the 16:10 Aspect ratio instead of 16:9, 1920x1200 has lots of real estate, and the only reason Im not giving this 5 stars is that Dell is a pain to deal with if you havent purchased directly from them. I had to call them three times (and ignore a thread in their forum where their liason misinformed me) before getting an employee who would deign to entertain my questions without an order number or service tag, finally a tech rep acknowledged for me that yes, the manufacturers 3-year warranty (from time of manufacture at rear) remains valid despite my inability to obtain an order number.
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Danny
> 3 dayI work in I.T. and this probably one of my favorite monitors I have ever used. The Dell UltraSharp screen, while not 4K, makes it easy to read text off the display without easily detecting pixels. The colors on this monitor are fantastic. Plus, the 16:10 ratio makes it easy to see more of documents at once. The build quality of this monitor far surpasses typical monitors you would purchase. And, of course, the easily adjustable stand is fantastic. I find writing programs so much easier in vertical position, which can easily be done with this monitor. Additionally, I find myself changing the height and angle throughout the day as my activities change, relieving my back and eyes from strain. The only downside to these monitors is that they do not have HDMI inputs. However, the DVI input can be used as an HDMI port with an HDMI to DVI cable, so this is not a major downside. The monitors also have a 4-port USB hub, VGA input, and DisplayPort input. I recommend these monitors to everyone I work with, and bought 2 for my mother. Amazing product.
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Breakaway Farm
> 3 dayVery fast delivery! Easy, easy, easy set up in terms of getting the monitor out of the box, plugged in and on. Thats when it got dicey. The color was impossible to adjust. BLINDINGLY BRIGHT BLUE tint on text or white background pages. Video and darker pages were really muddy. After an hour or more of going through the entire range of (limited) user adjustment combinations, I swapped out the video cable that came with the monitor and used one of mine. Things immediately got better. Even so, it took another hour to find the exact settings that didnt blind me with the white background pages or totally obscure darker pages and videos. Ive found settings that are OK for casual use but will make anyone crazy who is looking for any shred of color fidelity. Refresh rate is a bit slow. Fine for most viewing but way too slow for gaming or lengthy viewing of high motion activity. This is a You get what you pay for situation. Not the cheapest monitor in the world, but it does have a sound bar option. Its lightweight, fully adjustable in terms of height and tilt, supports legacy VGA and Displayport which makes it suitable for business or home office use. No HDMI which could be an issue for consumer use. I was in the middle of a big project for work when my home office monitor died a sudden and horrid death. The fast delivery, the tolerable performance and the low cost mean that I wont return it. After all, the monitor did get me back to work. On the other hand, Im not likely to buy another one or recommend it. 9-11-14 Update. When I finally got a Displayport cable (multiple cables came in the box but not a Displayport - go figure), the color issues were resolved. So, I.ve raised my rating to 4 stars and, yes, I would recommend this monitor. The color gamut caveats cited by other reviewers reply, but the color is good enough for text, Web surfing and watching videos.
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Luis Marquez
> 3 dayColors a little off and brightness too high out of the box, but monitors color balance and brightness is near perfect after calibration. Make use of suggested brightness and color settings online to get you much of the calibration benefit. The most striking difference with other TN-panel monitors Ive used is the considerably higher contrast level after calibration. HDR rendering effects are *striking* on this screen. Ive gone back to replay the original FEAR and Black Mesa on this, and the excellent contrast image enhances the games atmospheres greatly. The anti-glare coatings color shimmering effect some describe is only somewhat noticeable when close to the screen, and only when looking at a full or mostly-white background. At normal use distance while browsing, watching or editing video, or playing games, most people will be unable to spot the effect. I looked interesting on paper, but I did not fully realize how useful the portrait display mode would be to me until I used it. When rotated to portrait, the following become possible: 1. Full vertically extended view of many news and information websites. 2. Zoomed view of a single legal-size page in Acrobat or Word. Those concerned by the lack of HDMI input, I would suggest you should not be. The video signals of HDMI and DVI-D are the same; HDMI adds a digital sound transport that this monitor cant take advantage of. Get an HDMI to DVI adapter and youll be fine. Finally, do not underestimate the benefit of a 1920x1200 resolution when editing HD video. The extra vertical resolution makes it easy to work on the video at full 1080P resolution while preserving 120 vertival pixels of room for palettes above or below.
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A. Mefford
> 3 dayI have always enjoyed my Dell flat-screens and felt they were a grade above the alternatives in build quality. As an IT professional I get hands on with many others and have not seen or used one that I preferred to my Dell. However, my Dell monitors have always been purchased by my employer, at significant expense. So when I needed a monitor due to taking a new job I went to work trying to find one that I would be happy with. When I came across this one I was very happy to see that there was an option to have another Dell that would meet my needs, that I could afford. I was very tempted to step up and buy the more expensive model to get the claimed color accuracy but am satisfied that I did not. After using this monitor for a month, I am very satisfied with it. The screen is definitely larger than the one I was using before, I thought it was a 24 as well but perhaps not. I am very happy that it is 1920x1200. It pairs perfectly with my Dell 2007FP which is 1600x1200. The 1680x1050 I was using before always annoyed me that it was larger but with lower resolution, I never understood that trend in the industry. This monitor is notably brighter and whiter than the Dell2007FP it sits next too. Out of the box I had to reduce the brightness, it was just too much. In summary I will say unless you are a professional in need of perfect color matching, I cannot see a reason that you would be disappointed with this monitor.
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magixman
> 3 dayIt is unfortunate for those of us who use a computer for business purposes (I program) that the industry has decided that 1080 lines is enough. It is not. Finding a 1920x1280 monitor is getting hard these days. I finally had to retire my 6 year old Acer 1920x1280 monitor as the back-light finally kicked the bucket. I was skeptical about buying a Dell as they do make some low-end monitors that are really poor. I was pleasantly surprised by this monitor. It is crisp and clear and the colors are fine (for my non-photographer eyes). I do find that the monitor is rather bright and with a digital interface the whole experience a bit harsh. However when you start with extra crispness it is easy to dial back the sharpness setting, adjust the blues down 3-4% using the custom color setting, re-adjust your clear-type on Windows and tweak the contrast/brightness to get a pretty pleasing look. For me all monitors seem to look like crap out of of the box and need to be messed with. I am very picky about clarity of text since that is what I look at day in and day out and this monitor delivers. The ability to raise and lower and tilt is just so much better than my previous monitor and makes a big difference. Look this monitor is big and you want to have it pointed at the optimum angle towards your eyes. In my case I use it as the main monitor and my laptop screen is my secondary monitor so being able to adjust it lower on my desk and then angling it up made using the two screens together a bit smoother. I have not found the anti-glare coating to be too bad though it definitely adds a touch of graininess to the look. Probably a reasonable trade-off. The shiny laptop screen sitting next to this monitor that clearly reflects the trees out the window behind me reminds me that this coating is really effective. There is just no reflection at all in this monitor which is good.
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Robert Berridge
> 3 dayUpdate -- after using a new adapter to connect to my MacBook (VGA to DVI, I believe), the sleep problem seems to be solved! (I did not change the type of adapter, just swapped one adapter for a different one at work.) So the problem seems to have been in the adapter. I am updating from one star to 5 OLD REVIEW FOLLOWS... THE PROBLEM IS NOW SOLVED! I bought this monitor to work with my Macbook Pro, 13-inch, Late 2011 model, running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4. The monitor works great for a few minutes then goes into energy saver mode, goes black and will not wake up unless I use mirroring mode, which I dont want. I want two screens showing different things on each. Dell recommends upgrading the software on my laptop video card which is so far impossible because Intel only seems to offer windows versions of the software for the video card. So, to summarize, the monitor is really awesome when it works, which is hardly ever. Oddly, it worked well for several weeks, so Im not sure its possible to return to Amazon. I have tried many different ways to solve the problem, including turning off the feature on my computer that puts the display to sleep, playing with all the features on the monitor itself, plugging and unplugging everything in various orders, rebooting the laptop over and over, etc, etc... nothing solves the problem. I hope this information helps Macbook Pro users avoid the problems Im having with this monitor.... very, very annoying when you are busy at work!! Meanwhile my cheap old, small Viewsonic monitor worked beautifully with the same laptop, but the image was terrible.
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Artem A
> 3 dayHello everyone. So I just got this monitor. I just want to make it clear, that I am not a designer, photographer or someone who, for professional, or whatever other reason is very picky about colors and distinguishing between 96 and 100% blacks. I am a scientist and I mostly use this monitor in portrait orientation (one of the reasons I actually bought it is that it easy rotates 90 degrees -- and it indeed does that easily) for reading articles and writing. I use this monitor with my MacBook Pro connected via DisplayPort-MiniDisplayPort cable. This setup works perfectly for me, and I dont seem to be having problem other people described with this setup (as display not going to sleep, or going to sleep after couple of minutes of usage). Using Macs, I really like the view angle of IPS technology, and this display performs just as well as my MBP display. Color: Little hint for Mac users here, if you go to display setup (on the monitor itself), it does have a Mac profile (it is PC by default). This setup delivers exactly (at least to my eye) the same colors as my mbp display. People are also bothered by anti-glare coating on this display. I can understand that it may bother someone, but I am actually a fan of antiglare displays (even my laptop has a customized AG display) and I find this one very good. I also think that 2 usb ports are handy, but a card reader will be useful too, as other people have reported. Bottom line: amazing monitor if you want to read and type on it (cant say about other applications). Perfectly works with Mac laptops, being much cheaper than Apple Displays (more than 2 fold) and has antiglare coating, unlike apple cinema display. Very easy to set any position you want. That is it for now.
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Nebula
> 3 dayMy vintage 2005-ish Samsung 213t (21.3) monitor quit abruptly on me a month ago, so I had to scramble to get a replacement. I had been very pleased with the Samsung, even though it was a TN type display. The IPS-panel Dell U2412M doesnt disappoint. My, how the technology has changed! Im a photography hobbyist, and I fuss a fair amount over color fidelity, sharpness, detail and the like. However, I cant afford more than a basic investment in digital photography. I use a pretty ordinary Canon photo printer, and Ive been fairly satisfied with the look of my images on the Samsung and in print. With the U2412M, images are represented even more accurately on the display while maintaining quality output from my printer. The U2412M is designed to be highly compliant with the sRGB color space, which is appropriate for my purposes. It doesnt even attempt to handle the much wider Adobe RGB color space, but that range of colors isnt supported online anyway. In fact, unless I were to output my photos primarily to a high-end printer with an Adobe RGB gamut, that capability would be wasted (and so would my money). Heres what else I like about the Dell U2412M: * It has a full 1200 pixels of vertical, like my Samsung. I find vertical screen space to be exceptionally valuable, and was shocked to discover that few reasonably priced monitors these days have more than 1080 pixels. I dont need a wide movie screen on my desk; thats what my TV is for. * Its EPEAT Gold Energy Star compliant. This is hard to find in any large monitor. * Its screen is anti-glare. I dont understand the current obsession with glossy surfaces; the reflections on such monitors are incredibly distracting and make photo editing difficult. And no, the anti-glare surface doesnt bother me at all. * Its amazingly lightweight. Maybe this is normal these days, but the old Samsung weighs three times as much. * It has all the positioning adjustments you could want (tilt, swivel, height, and landscape/portrait pivot). Especially useful is the height adjustment: I can push it down to 1 from the desktop, so I dont have to tilt my head back to see through my progressive lens glasses. And my one caveat: The U2412M claims to have a 178° viewing angle both vertically and horizontally, but in practice, it doesnt seem to be even as wide as my old monitor. Outside a cone of about 90°, the brightness falls off significantly. This hasnt really been a issue as I sit pretty well centered when I use it. Your mileage may vary. Update: Upon further consideration, I think I overstated the viewing angle issue. The display exhibits some minor brightness variation when I move well off-center, but it remains quite impressive. Practically speaking, I dont think youre likely to find this a problem.