Dell Ultrasharp U2412M 24 inch IPS Widescreen LED Monitor

I will start by saying that this is my second Dell Ultrasharp. The first one I ordered was the U2312HM, about £70 cheaper than this one. However I was really disappointed with that monitor, the anti-glare coating was horrible, noticeable back-light bleeding and the edges of the panel seemed like someone had applied a permanent drop-shadow to monitor (photoshop users will know what I mean here).

I reluctantly ordered this more expensive model, however unlike the my first experience with Dell, I am very pleased to say that this monitor is perfect.

Build quality is superb, the stand is rock solid, adjustability is amazing. The monitor has a heavy duty "look" to it, but at the same time very easy on the eyes, the rounded corners are a nice touch.

I was really worried about the anti-glare on this since I couldn't stand it on the U2312HM. I don't know if I was delivered a "dud" the first time around but the anti-glare on the U2412M is much better. Everything is crystal clear, obviously it still has the slightly "dusty" look but I'm not joking when I say that looking at the last monitor made my head spin. I found one of the major complaints in reviews was mostly the anti-glare coating Dell uses, this monitor I believe was only released a few months ago so maybe they listened to the feedback. Anyway I'm too small a sample size to confirm that Dell is using better Anti-Glare now so take from that what you will. Moving on...

Picture quality is brilliant as expected from the ultrasharp line of monitors. Colours were great out of the box, however I did notice that the image was ever so slightly "cool" but I dialled down the blue a few notches and now its perfect. Obviously I will still have to use a professional calibrator to make sure I get spot on colour (my work one will go missing for a few days tomorrow...).

The other thing that really strikes me about this monitor is the 16:10 ratio. Unfortunately manufactures are in a crazy fad of producing 16:9 desktop monitors. While it's great for TV and gaming, it makes no sense to sacrifice vertical space on a desktop monitor. The 16:10 ratio on this monitor makes working with images a dream, I sit about a foot from the monitor and all I have in my vision is my work.

As you probably can tell I am very pleased with this monitor, I would highly recommend putting up the extra cash and get this over the cheaper U2312HM. To be honest at the current price point it's a bargain for what you are getting.

This monitor got a gold * with Digital Photo so I bought it. What I wasn't expecting was the difference between my existing monitor (Dell E228WFP) and the new one. It brings everything to life.

I have now colour matched (Both Monitors) it and the difference between the two are:
U2412M is so much sharper, the detail in the photo jumps out at you when comparing the two
Colours are so rich it makes it almost as good as having the product sitting in front of you

Ease of set-up - plug in and go no hassle whatsoever.

My one criticism is that the USB ports do not work when in standby, which is minor niggle.

I bought this as an upgrade to a 4 year old ultrasharp 2007wfp which has a native resolution of 1600x1050 and I had been using for games and films and I was happy with. But since rebuilding my pc I was looking for a monitor that would at least stretch the legs of my graphics card (gtx580).
Out of the box the u2412m default settings need a bit of a play with, as I found the brightness and contrast levels to high and the RGB levels a little off on some colours.

For those that are interested once I calibrated the monitor my setting were
Brightness 45
Contrast 75
Sharpness 50
Gamma PC
Aspect 16:10
R 97
G 92
B 94

With these setting everything looked a little more vivid an did not leave an after glow on my retina. I use my pc mostly for films and gaming and found that the dark scenes in films were very black with non of the grey black you see in some monitors and the colours in my gaming seemed so much more alive than my old monitor.

A lot of people say that the input lag is not low enough for gaming, but to be honest this is nonsense, if your eye can tell the difference between 2ms and 8ms then your super human. I have absolutely no problem playing any games on this monitor and my pc is quick enough to run max setting at 1900x1200 on all the games I play. MW3, wow,BF3, and all the latest's games look amazing in 24" and I highly recommend this monitor for gaming. If you're a graphics designer then you may want to go for the next model up which I believe has a higher gamut but for the everyday pc gamer its hard to beat this panel at this price.

Adjusting the setting is easy with the side keys and the build quality I found to be perfectly fine, its not like I'm going to move this panel around every day it pretty much will sit in the same spot for long periods of time so it does not need to be bomb proof. The stand is great with loads of adjustment in all the expected planes, you will easily find a good viewing position. I have had to move back from the screen a little as going from a 20" to a 24" is filling me vision some what.

When I'm not gaming or watching films the 16:10 ration means there's a lot of space to browse the internet and have other programs like iTunes or cpuz running without anything being covered up, great for benchmarking and other multitasking.

Very pleased with this monitor and at this price can't really argue.