About £500 (ex. VAT) for the Dell UltraSharp U2410 gets you a 24-inch, H-IPS monitor with great performance, a host of connection options and ergonomic features, and a robust OSD. Unfortunately, its RGB presets are marred by dithering when viewing dark grey images and the screen has a slight pink tint. Also, its viewing angles, while good, are not quite up to the standard we expect from IPS monitors.
There were very high expectations for this monitor, so if you're looking for perfect performance, keep looking. However, if you want a monitor that, despite a few quibbles, still has great performance and a huge host of useful features, for a decent price, look no further. If you don't mind skimping on connections, ergonomic options or a wider viewing angle, the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370 is £200 less and excels at games, movies and office tasks.
Design & features
The 24in. Dell UltraSharp U2410 has a matte black chassis with a grey highlight running through the middle of the panel. The panel is 4.4cm deep; however, the back of the display — which houses the backlight, connection options and ventilation system — extends another 3.8cm, bringing the full monitor depth to about 8.25cm. The panel measures 55.9cm wide — about average for a monitor of this screen size and the same width as the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP. The surface of the screen is slightly frosted and smooth matte finish. The bezel measures 1.9cm on all sides.
Dell UltraSharp U2410: a high-performance 24in. monitor for £499 (ex. VAT).
The rectangular footstand measures about 30.1cm wide by 19.8cm deep. As such, wobbling was nearly nonexistent when we knocked the monitor from the sides, even with the monitor's height set to its maximum setting. With the screen at its lowest point, the distance from the bottom of the bezel to the desktop is 3.2cm; at its highest, it is 12.9cm.
The panel swivels about 70 degrees left and right and tilts back about 25 degrees. The panel can be disconnected from the stand and mounted (VESA-style) on the wall. Also, the panel pivots 90 degrees to the left for portrait mode.
Dell includes a plethora of video connection options for the U2410, all located on the back on the panel, including two DVI ports, VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort and a set of component and composite connectors. The only missing option is the S-Video connection, originally included on the 2408WFP. Also included are two downstream USB ports, one upstream USB port, an audio out port and a speaker port. Accessing these connections is fairly easy, especially when the panel is pivoted 90 degrees to the left. On the left side of the panel are two additional USB downstream ports and a card reader that accepts xD, MMC, SD and Sony Memory Stick media.
The on-screen display follows the label-free design seen in many of Dell's recent monitors. Five buttons line the lower right-hand corner of the bezel. Pressing any of the buttons brings up the OSD, which pops up parallel to the button array, and each option corresponds to one of the four buttons. Once a new menu comes up, the function of the buttons changes dynamically, as the top two buttons become the up-and-down arrow buttons used to navigate through the newly seen menu. Since any button labels for the OSD are actually on the screen (and which would be on the bezel of other displays), calibrating the display in a dark room was painless.
Thanks to the low sensitivity of the OSD buttons on the U2410, it was sometimes necessary to press them harder than on other Dell monitors. Also, the opposite seemed true for the power button. Located directly below the OSD, we mistakenly shut off the monitor while attempting to calibrate it more than a few times.
OSD options include the standard brightness, contrast and various other colour options. The presets are separated into two categories: Graphics and Video. There are six Graphics presets to choose from: Standard, Multimedia, Game, Warm, Cool, Adobe RGB, sRGB and Custom. The Video presets are: Movie, Game and Nature. The presets don't change anything other than the red, green, and blue colour balance; therefore, how well each setting works is subjective, although there are some glaring consequences for choosing either of the RGB presets. These are detailed in the performance section. There are options to adjust the hue, sharpness, and colour saturation as well as additional options for setting the OSD to stay on-screen up to a minute (useful for anyone who will spend a good amount of time calibrating).
The Dell UltraSharp U2410's 16:10 aspect ratio has a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel native resolution. The 16:9 monitor trend currently sweeping the market has given many smaller monitors higher resolutions than they were capable of at 16:10. A 22in. monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio now has a potential high-definition, native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 (1080p) pixels as opposed to 1,680 by 1,050 pixels. Despite this, the Dell U2410 retains the 16:10, 1,920 by 1,200-pixel resolution that many users still prefer, but it also includes a 16:9 (1,920 by 1,080 pixel) mode for watching movies.
Performance
We tested the Dell UltraSharp U2410 with its DVI connection in the Standard (default) preset. The display posted a composite score of 94 on our DisplayMate-based performance tests. The U2410 scored well in nearly all of our colour and uniformity tests, but we found that it tends to compress colours at the light end of various colour scales. Also, we noticed that the monitor displayed a slight pink tint in our colour-tracking test.
The U2410 achieved a brightness score of 434 candelas per square metre (cd/m2) — higher than Dell's claimed 400cd/m2 maximum. Adjusting the brightness to 100 yields a very bright screen and we recommend setting the brightness to no higher than 60 for most tasks as prolonged eye exposure to this screen above 50 percent brightness — especially if doing a lot of Excel or Word (or any white screen program) work — may result in eye strain.
We looked at some high-resolution photos and found the colours were natural and vibrant, proving that the two aren't mutually exclusive.
When viewing dark grey colours, in the sRGB and Adobe RGB presets, we noticed apparent static dithering. We didn't see this on the 2408WFP in its sRGB mode and only saw this dithering on the two aforementioned presets on the U2410.
The optimal viewing angle for a monitor is usually directly in front of it, about a quarter of the screen's distance down from the top. At this angle, you're viewing the colours and gamma correction as they were intended. Most monitors are made to be viewed only at that angle. Depending on its panel type, monitor picture quality will vary at non-optimal angles. On the U2410, we noticed a faint white glow when viewing dark images at off angles and a dark shadow when viewing light images in the same way, about 120 degrees to the left or right and even less from above. The shift isn't as dramatic as with a TN panel, but it was slightly more dramatic than with the 2408WFP; however, the colour didn't shift as much as the perceived brightness did.
We tested the Dell U2410's input lag by connecting it and the 2408WFP in extend mode to the same graphics card, opening a window and placing the window so that half of it was on one monitor and half on the other. We then dragged the window up and down, keeping the two halves even. We didn't notice lag from either monitor and the window moved at the same rate.
In the power consumption tests, the Dell U2410 drew 63.69 watts in its Default/On mode — less than the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP's 69.3W and more than the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370's 30.09W. Based on our formula, the U2410 would cost $19.32 per year to operate, compared with the 2408WFP's $21.76 per year and the Samsung's $9.96 per year.
Service & support
Dell backs the U2410 with a solid warranty, including a three-year warranty covering the backlight. It also offers support via phone, web chat, and email. Navigating Dell's web site to find drivers, product manuals and quick guides is simple and easy.
Benchmarks
Specifications
| General | |
|---|---|
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 56 x 49.3 x 20.1 cm |
| Available colours | black & grey |
| Monitor type | flat panel |
| Display technology | TFT (active matrix) |
| Weight | 8.98 kg |
| Display size | 24 in |
| Image | |
| Native resolution | 1920 x 1200 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 16 : 10 |
| Contrast ratio | 1 : 1000 |
| Factory preset resolution modes | Standard, Multimedia, Game, Warm, Cool, Adobe RGB, sRGB, Custom |
| Pixel size (dot pitch) | 0.27 mm |
| Vertical viewing angle (max) | 178 ° |
| Horizontal viewing angle (max) | 178 ° |
| Pixel response time | 6 ms |
| Brightness | 400 cd/m2 |
| Power | |
| Power consumption in operation | 75 W |
| Compliant standards | TCO 03' |
| Service & support | |
| Standard warranty | 3 years |
| Video input | |
| Digital video input | DVI-D |
| Analogue video signal | component video, composite video, RGB |
| Analogue video input | mini-D-Sub (15-pin), RCA |
| Expand | |
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