Tech Goes Boom

Review: Dell 2405fpw Monitor

A 24 inch LCD for $1000? Sounds like a great deal. And it is. Despite some shortcomings, this bargain LCD is a solid performer at a very good price.

4 out of 5

The Dell 2405fpw is a lot of monitor. It measures at 24“ diagonal and includes DVI, VGA, Component, Composite and S-Video inputs. It has 4 USB 2 ports and a card reader built in. It supports Picture in Picture and split screen for its inputs. A great package.

The Display:
This monitor shares the same resolution as the 23” Apple cinema display, and it's a lot of real estate. The bezel is thin, but looks a little cheap compared to the Apple Display, but on par with normal displays not made from Aluminum.

The stand allows for a wide range of movements and adjustments, including tilting the display into portrait mode. Unfortunately it doesn't pass any information on to the display. Tilting the monitor into portrait mode and splitting the screen between 2 sources would be very cool. Unfortunately I could find no way to accomplish this.

I currently have an XBOX, 12“ Powerbook and G5 all hooked up to the display, something I couldn't do without expensive adapters and switched with my previous Apple monitor.

Color and Brightness:
Color is very good for an LCD and on par with the Apple displays. When comparing profiles of the 2, there is little to choose from. Each beats the other in different areas of the gamut, but only narrowly. I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference when both are calibrated.

Out of the box, the monitor was very bright, measuring 265 cd/m at 50% brightness. I ended turning it all the way down to 0 in order to end up with 160 cd/m. Some people might want to run them at full brightness, but I'd be afraid of getting a sun tan. These panels are freaking bright.

Support:
Dell has a very good customer support ranking and I can't for the life of me figure out why. My first display had a high pitched whine emanating from the back right corner. I read up about it on the web and it looked like they just did replacements on them. I guessed it was a down converter board that supplied voltage to the backlight as it sounded a whole lot like capacitor whine.

So I called up Dell. They immediately ask for a service tag, which is present on their towers, but not on their monitors. Without this tag, you're pushed way down on the queue apparently as I had to wait for 45 minutes to talk to someone. I eventually ended up talking to an fellow from a call center in India. It was readily apparent that Dell is not used to supporting monitors without an accompanying Dell computer. What followed for the next 30 minutes was an excruciating ordeal.

It should have been a simple process. Without any other input but power, while the backlight was on, the high pitched whine was there. When power was off, it was gone. I still had to sit through him walking me through troubleshooting he himself did not understand. What refresh rate are you using? Right click on your desktop.. (No, despite me telling you I'm not running windows 5 times already you keep asking me to do this. I can't). Try degaussing it... ugh. He clearly was only trained to follow a script, and didn't have a good script to work with. On top of that, he didn't seem very comfortable with English at all.

I finally got transfered to someone else, who seemed to be tier 2, and also not very well equipped to deal with the problem. He was surprised that Dell sold a 24” LCD. After explaining the issue once again, because the previous fellow I talked to only noted in the case that I didn't have a Dell PC, and nothing else, he began to walk me through the same troubleshooting steps. I stopped him and gave him the 1 sentence run down. Makes the noise when the backlight is on. Period. Well, refresh... NO. If the backlight is on, it makes the noise. He finally got it.

Then it came time to transfer me to someone else who would coordinate the shipping of the new one. So I'm then transfered to a department that has been closed for an hour. Ugh.

I called the next day, got the India call center again, and had to forcefully explain that I had a case number and just needed to talk to the TQC department. He didn't know who that was. I was pretty angry at this point. So long story short after some insistence on my part that I get transfered to someone who knew what was going on, I finally got to TQC and had the monitor shipped out.

Over all, I probably spent 3 hours on this issue. Unbelievable. The new one has sporadically had the whine, but nothing like the constant scream of the other one. Some people have claimed it goes away after a couple of weeks, so I hope this one settles down. If not, I'm not sure I will have the strength of will to deal with support again.

Overall
This is an amazing monitor, for a very good price. At the time I bought it, it was $999, but others using Dell's coupon system have managed to get them for around $750. Look around on the net and you'll probably find something.

Its wide variety of inputs and its flexibility in displaying them really sets this monitor apart. If you're in the market for a large LCD, you would be remiss to not consider this one.