Dell U3014 LCD Review
by Chris Heinonen on April 15, 2013 2:00 PM ESTThe Dell U3014 is rated for 350 cd/m2 on the spec sheet, but I found the most I could get it to produce was 315 cd/m2. It would likely produce more if you were to push the contrast all the way to the maximum, but doing so clips the top whites, so all your highlights suddenly become a single shade instead of distinct. It might make the numbers look worse, but not allowing clipping makes for an honest number, and 315 cd/m2 is what the U3014 can do. With the backlight at the minimum, it drops down to only 45 cd/m2 of light, which is good. That gives you lots of room to work with, and most users will be fine with these levels.
Black levels with the backlight at maximum are 0.357 cd/m2, and that drops down to 0.052 cd/m2 at minimum backlight. Dell offers a dynamic backlight on their displays where a pure black screen totally disables the backlights, giving you “infinite” contrast, but that option is disabled in the most color-accurate modes. It also seems be an all-or-nothing approach, and not one where you can selectively enable and disable part of the edge lighting. I’m not a fan of dynamic backlighting unless you have a full backlit LED array, where you can enable and disable it for parts of the screen at once, and find they are usually just tricks to make their contrast numbers seem better than they are. Dell is honest and gives you real and dynamic numbers in their specs, though.
These numbers wind up giving us a contrast ratio in the area of around 900:1. This is maintained from 0-100 percent on the backlight intensity, so it’s an honest 900:1 contrast ratio from the Dell U3014. There are some recent displays that have hit closer to 1,100:1 but these numbers are still quite good overall, and maintaining it across the whole range of brightness is ideal.
This is a decent start for the U3014, but the real question for me is if they can keep the colors accurate in all color spaces with that new G-B LED backlight system.
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zer0future - Monday, April 15, 2013 - link
Would you guys be able to review the new monitors from Monoprice.com? Here is the link for anyone interested.http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.as...
The 27 inch model apparently uses the same panel as the apple cinema display. These prices are also quite competitive so they have me interested.
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
I'm talking to them, though I personally think the 30" would make for a more interesting review as we've covered a lot of the 27" IPS panels now. Also, if you look back at the two LG 29EA93 reviews that I did, you can see that the panel only makes up a small part of the performance of a display. The corresponding electronics are a huge factor in performance, so I don't recommend just looking at the panel to determine the performance.Trefugl - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
It is great to hear that you are in talks with Monoprice! I would be grateful for a review of either model, but would be more interested in the one with an OSD. I'm concerned with having a wide gamut screen that has no sRGB mode or color correction on board, tho the potentially reduced input lag of not having processing is alluring as well.cheinonen - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I don't believe any of the Monoprice displays are wide gamut, only sRGB gamut. It looks like the 30" one has a 10-bit panel, but that's certainly 8-bit with AFRC, which might give you better gradients, but won't give you a wider gamut.B3an - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Chris, i'd really appreciate it if you could help me as i'm thinking of buying this monitor. Do you have any idea at all if the i1Display 2 will calibrate this monitor well? It comes with Eye-One Match 3 software.And what software would you recommend most for calibration? dispcalGUI?
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Personally, I wouldn't use an i1Display2 anymore for color accuracy. With the design of the i1Display2, and the fact that they haven't been made for a year or two now, the filters degrade over time so that anything it is reading now may or may not be accurate at all. It can read light levels correctly, so white and black light output, but not the colors of light. I have a pair of them here and testing them now compared to the i1Pro, I see dE2000 errors > 10 in the grayscale using it. The standard calibrated modes are going to likely be more accurate.I like dispcalGUI. I haven't used the most recent version, but I've been using it for a long time now and they do a great job adding more and more features to it.
von Krupp - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
You know what's missing from this monitor? Support for 5.1 output like its out-going predecessor. I make great use of that feature on my U2711, and not having it here is a major deal-breaker. I run my Xbox 360 to the monitor via HDMI and pipe the audio out through the analogue 5.1 jacks to Logitech X-530s. I would not be able to do that with these new monitors.I might be a hold-out, but one of the primary selling points for me on the U3011 and U2711 was the fact that, for a PC monitor, they offered a diverse array connectivity. You can do HDMI, composite, component, DVI, VGA, and DP all on the same monitor. You can also, as mentioned, earlier, output to analogue 5.1 surround. This monitor is not worth the $1500 asking price in light of this "streamlining" of features. If I'm paying top-dollar for a monitor whose predecessor I already own, I want it to have all of the capabilities of that predecessor and then some. $1500 for what is only a good panel and LED back-lighting is a raw deal no matter how you slice it.
jamyryals - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Chris, my coworker has a Nixeus 27inch monitor attached to a 2012 MBP. His Nixeus has the same problem of not activating after sleep sometimes as well. A simple power cycle gets it going again for him too. Just another data point to indicate where that particular problem may be.l_d_allan - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
The 2010 and 2011 models are coming down in price nicely. I just ordered a U2410 that should be a significant upgrade from my current Samsung TN panel that only has about 70% of sRGB.The only significant difference I'm aware of to the U2413 is the hardware calibration capability, but I have a Spyder rather than X-Rite, so my understanding is that is a non-issue. YMMV.
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
The U2410 is a CCFL backlight and the U2413 utilizes the G-B LED backlight that the U3014 uses. It also has the MiniDP and DisplayPort inputs and a DisplayPort output for using MST, and USB 3.0 over 2.0. It loses the analog inputs that the U2410 has, so if you have a need for those it is certainly the one to use. Since you're using a Spyder, the calibration software is a non-issue.