X-bit labs

24" LCD Monitors Roundup (page 8)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 10/23/2007 | 08:48 AM ]

The stand can be removed (it is fastened without screws and is easily detached when you press the round button under its fastening) and replaced with a VESA-compatible mount if necessary.

The monitor offers a rich selection of inputs. Besides the analog D-Sub and digital DVI, there are component, composite and S-Video video inputs, and a built-in 4-port USB hub. If necessary, you can attach speakers, purchased separately, to the monitor using the two lugs and the Speaker Power connector.

Two USB ports are placed at the back for permanent peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, etc. Two more can be found on the side panel for USB flash drives and other such devices. Also on this panel there is a card-reader supporting half a dozen memory card formats. It only works when the monitor is connected to the PC with a USB cord. The 2407WFP cannot read files from memory cards on its own.

The control buttons are located in the bottom left of the case. They are easy to see and use. Quick access is provided to switching the inputs and to enabling PiP and PbP modes (Picture-in-Picture and Picture-beside-Picture). The “+” and “-“ buttons do not do anything outside the onscreen menu, although they might have been assigned the function of changing the brightness setting.

The switching between the inputs is implemented in a very handy way: when you press the appropriate button, the name of the input is displayed first and this input is selected only if there is no second press. There are five digits next to the buttons. The digit corresponding to the currently selected input is highlighted with a green LED.

The indicator integrated into the monitor’s Power button is green at work and yellow in sleep mode. Its brightness isn’t very intensive, so it won’t distract you from your work.

This is a standard menu of Dell’s monitors. It is pretty, but not quite user-friendly. You have to do a lot of pressing on the buttons in it. The lack of an Exit button that would immediately get you out of the current menu item is particularly annoying. It would have allowed to do without the Back and Exit items you see in every menu section.

The selection of setup options is very rich, but a contrast setting is missing which is typical of Dell monitors. Among Dell models I have reviewed so far the 22” E228WFP was the only one to allow adjusting contrast for a digital connection. Three modes are offered for images in non-native resolution: “1:1” to reproduce the picture on a per-pixel basis, “Aspect” to scale the image up keeping the aspect ratio intact, and “Full” to stretch the image to full screen. For example, if you output a 1280x1024 image to the monitor, it will be reproduced in the center of the screen without any scaling in “1:1” mode. In the Full mode it will be stretched out to fill the entire screen (with distorted proportions) and in the Aspect mode it will be stretched to the height of the screen and will have black margins on the sides.

There are three modes with factory settings as you can see in the photo of the menu above. But you can only enable them from deep in the menu and they distort the reproduction of colors greatly. I don’t think these modes are going to be of any use to you.