Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" Widescreen LCD
Display Quality Testing
We continued testing the Dell 2408WFP, with Lavalys’ Everest Ultimate Edition’s display testing suite side by side against its bigger brother, the Dell 30” 3007WFP. The suite runs through a number of images which typically show flaws in lower grade monitors. As we’re testing two of the top of the line LCD screens on the market today, our expectations are high.
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Throughout the test suite, the one constant we noticed about the 2408WFP is how vibrant the colors are at their default settings, and how contrast is much higher than Dell’s previous generation models. This isn’t all that surprising, considering the new 2408WFP has a 3000:1 contrast ratio, compared to the prior generation displays which have 700-1000:1 contrast ratios. This showed itself to be especially true on orange and green gradients, which were much sharper and vivid on Dell’s new 24” display. Black and white colors were definitely truer to their original color on the 2408WFP, allowing for some of the most true to life colors we’ve seen from an LCD display to date.
Thanks to a pure digital DisplayPort connection, everything was perfectly sharp and readable at the screen's full 1920x1200 resolution. The monitor can scale down to resolutions smaller than this as well, if need be, including non-widescreen resolutions. However, if you choose to run at lower resolutions, you’ll deal with some level of image degradation. We re-ran our monitor tests at 1024 x 768 (non-widescreen, smaller resolution) and 1280 x 800 (widescreen at proper scaling 16:10 ratio, smaller resolution). Both resolutions showed similar levels of degradation, as sharp lines and small-sized text were blurrier and harder to distinguish. Granted, in compared to some of the LCD monitor scaling issues we’ve seen in the past, the 2408WFP handles lower resolutions quite gracefully.
In a gaming environment, many consider this image degradation to be a form of “free” anti-aliasing, as edges tend to look a bit “softer” when running in a non-standard resolution. While you can convince yourself of this, we would definitely recommend running the screen at the its optimal resolution if possible, as it simply looks gorgeous. Keep in mind though, if you’re going to run at 1920 x 1200 resolution, you’ll want to use either the DVI or DisplayPort connectors, as running this resolution through an HD-15 analog cable is hitting the limits of what analog can do. You’ll likely see a blurrier picture and a small amount of ghosting on-screen using an analog connection. With a digital connector (DVI/DisplayPort), images were impeccable.
If you’re a photographer, digital artist, or just someone who really, really cares about image quality, there is unlikely to be many choices on the market which can provide you with a better experience than the Dell 2408WFP – simple as that.
