A monitor that's easy on the eyes (Dell Ultrasharp 2007FP)

Member Name: markos9

Product:	Dell Ultrasharp 2007FP
Date:	14/02/09 (195 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sharpness, looks, resolution

Disadvantages: On screen adjustments confused me

When I was looking to buy a new computer last year, 19" monitors offering a native resolution of 1280x1024 were the norm, but I wanted something with a higher resolution.

When I visited the Dell website, the first thing that I looked at was the monitors. I found that the 2007FP was available as an add-on to their computers for quite a reasonable price. Online reviews gave a really good impression of this monitor so I bought a Dell computer and upgraded it with the 2007FP.

Well, I've been staring at this screen now for over 12 months (not continuously, obviously!) and can report that it was a really good buy.

The monitor looks extremely sleek in its Dell corporate black livery. The border around the screen is very narrow, and in depth the monitor is thin giving it a very functional look (i.e. it's all screen and not much else). Being a thin TFT monitor it takes up little room on my desk.

The connectivity of this monitor is excellent. With USB, DVI-D, S-Video, Composite video, and 15 pin D sub connections, you should be able to connect it to whatever you need to.

The specifications are good too. The native resolution is 1600x1200 which is great for games and for using my photo-manipulation software, as you can fit so much more on the screen at one time. Contrast is good at 800:1 and the response time of 16ms is pretty fast.

The above dry specifications give some clues that this is a high performing monitor, but it's in use that it impresses. The size (20.1"), when placed close to the user, fills the user's vision. It's often necessary to move your eyes around the screen to see what you need; this gives a real impression of size and space.

The sharpness of the monitor display is excellent, even when viewing tiny text; it stays sharp across the whole of the screen. There's no colour bleeding like you can get on a CRT, and the brightness is superb. There's no problem using it in a really bright room. The colour rendition is also of a very high standard. When playing DVD's, or showing static pictures, the colours look natural and well saturated.

The one thing I'm not too keen on is the on-screen controls for adjusting brightness, contrast and colour settings. I could never seem to get the hang of how these work. The menus often seemed to either go off when I needed them onscreen, or refuse to clear when I'd finished (I'm not saying that they didn't work, just that they weren't intuitive and I couldn't get them to work as I wanted them to). This isn't a problem as once I (finally) set them, I left them alone, and I never need to adjust them routinely.

Overall, I am really pleased with this monitor. I may change it in a couple of years, but only if it fails, or if I decide that I want an even bigger screen. If I do decide to upgrade, I'll be looking at Dell first as they've really impressed me with this one. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a large, reasonably priced monitor with capable of displaying at 1600x1200 pixels.

Summary: Well worth the money

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