22 Jul 2009, 22:56
#170
Good review. I'd like to raise one thing you don't speak to. You express a preference for a relatively darker viewing room. The calibrated setting you achieve with a brightness of 120 cd/m2 is apparently - from the reviews I've read - the minimum for this monitor. The thing is 120-140 cd/m2 is considered the standard illumination of a bright office. If one has or prefers a darker room, or a genuinely dark one, as I do, then there's a continuing problem. Knocking the contrast down to around 55 only partly solves it - approximately 100 cd/m2 - while introducing other artifacts. An example are the tables on your review page. The white screen is so bright on mine (brightness=0/contrast=54, shaprness=10, rgb=99/98/98) that I have to focus intently to read the black text in the blue background; i.e, the glare around the blue is substantial. I imagine that much younger eyes, or eyes that get along better with bright light than mine (~60 years), probably see it differently. Most monitors, including other Dell models, account for variation in human and physical conditions by setting up the brightness control to go above and below the bright room - e.g., compare with HP LP2275w - but for some reason they opted out on this one.