Short Review Dell U2715H: great screen only dat IPS GLOW

[iLLucionist]

This is a relatively short review, I do not have time to make pictures now but I need to get the word out: U2715H is an almost decent monitor. It has a native resolution of 2560x1440 (QHD; 16:9; 0.231mm pixel pitch), an 8-Bit LG IPS panel (no PLS, no AHVA, just AH) and no LUT (lookup table) AFAIK. The Dell advertises that it practically has "no bezel", but it does albeit a rather small one (1.5-2cm approximately). It features an USB hub, though not sure whether it is 2.0/3.0/3.1. I don't care for those hubs, as they are typically of low quality.

Now onto the really important stuff.

Uniformity

A screen, in my opinion, is useless without good unformity. I was extremely hesitant to buy this monitor, as tftcentral - the gods of dem monitor reviewing game - reports uniformity on their test model was SUPER MEGA BAD. After OCD'ing on reviews on various sites and customer experiences on hardforum, overclock, amazon, prad.de (.e.g, the usual), I decided to pull the trigger.

Uniformity is ok. On my particular unit, white is moderately even. There are two very small bands on the left side and right side of the monitor (5cm wide) that are noticeably darker. For the rest, I cannot see any weird deviations. I also see no COLOR deviations either.

So yeah, this screen has my OCD Uniformity seal approval.

IPS Glow

O MY GOD ITS BAD. But then people say its inherent to the techinque and I should switch to samsung PLS or AU Optronics AHVA. But Samsung and AU quality control is so poor it makes my cringe and cry at the same time. So how bad is IPS glow really? Well.. My previous U2713HM - which btw is also blamed often for poor ips glow - is great. I only see it slightly. If I don't know it's there, I can ALMOST neglect it. With this monitor, the U2715, it's freaking staring me in the face. Insiders will never ask "hey, is this IPS, PLS, or AHVA?" Because they will friggin see it right away. They will say "my eyes bleed. the glow, the horror, why did you buy this thing!" So playing Doom 2016 is like... like you said your gamma way too high and there is nothing you can do about it. If black levels are a great deal to you and you watch a lot of dark scenes.. say the f**k away from this monitor.

Whine, buzzing, noise

Luckily, although some people report it, there is none. I tried every brightness setting in steps from 5 (5..10..15.. etc.) and could not hear it.

Factory calibration

WTF IS THIS YELLOW TINT. So it's factory calibrated and you get a "personalized rapport" that outlines your particular calibration. I don't believe it. This must be wrong. As with previous Dell screens, it never comes out okay. It has the yellow tint. IT IS HORRIBLE. The whole image is yellowish. Gray tints and white... it is piss poor.

Can it be fixed? For my particular panel I could get color accuracy close to my calibrated U2713HM.. I set my display to custom color and set R G B to 93/90/99. YMMV of course. I don't see yellow tint anymore neither in white or on gray levels. I checked both screens side by side for like 2 hours or so and fine tuning it BECAUSE I HAVE SEVERE OCD FOR THESE KIND OF THINGS.

Cross hatching, banding, PWM, sharpness, brightness

Brightness is sick. It is REALLY bright. This is a good thing, as even leds deteriorate over time, although much less than CCFL. Where I have my U2713HM around 40-50%, my U2715H is around 20-30%.

Everything looks REALLY sharp and crisp. I take it that they improved on the light AG coating and this clearly shows. Text is much sharper and contrast is much better.

There is ZERO cross hatching and NO banding. As a matter of fact, gray gradients from 0,0,0 up to 255,255,255 are extremely smooth. I could not detect flaws there.

And.. there is NO PWM so no flickering. YAAY. No eye hurt from this monitor.

Conclusion

The good: no PWM, great sharpness and brightness, good uniformity.

The bad: calibration out of the box is horrible, but it can be fixed by calibrating it yourself manually (setting R G B levels) or using calibration hardware

The really bad: IPS GLOW OH MY GOD.

[Air tree]

I hope the U2417H that I'm going to order doesn't have the same IPS glow issues. 

[tp4tissue]

IPS glow is an overstate problem..


Put a cool-white ccfl lamp BEHIND your monitor, 

That contrast will make the glow nearly invisible ..



Visuals are about --FRAMING-- 


If you got a bright frame,  everything within it looks dark/darker


OLED gives you the perfect blacks..

But the motion clarity of OLED is horrendous.. so.. not suitable for moving images.. 

[iLLucionist]

I hope the U2417H that I'm going to order doesn't have the same IPS glow issues. 

I don't want to discourage you, but the aggregate from what I read online (tftcentral, overclock, hardforum etc.) points towards MORE ips glow compared to its predecessor (which I also have) the U2713HM. And, I can confirm ips glow is worse on the U2715H compared to my U2713HM. BUUUUUUUUTTT some also say that variation is larger and some are really good, so you might get lucky!!

The colors are really nice, but out of the box the colors are really WAAAAAAY TOO YELLOW. Not yellow tint like uneven or a stroke of "yellowness" on an otherwise ok screen. But just the whole calibration was CLEARLY off. White looked more like a sticky/posit note than cool white. For what's it worth it, I use custom R G B as follows: 92 85 97. This is as close I could get to my calibrated U2713HM.

[iLLucionist]

IPS glow is an overstate problem..


Put a cool-white ccfl lamp BEHIND your monitor, 

That contrast will make the glow nearly invisible ..

So basically what you suggest is doing a mod? Take out the led backlight and replace it with a CCFL one? Like for real?

Yeah CCFLs were better in that respect, but CCFLs fade over time, become dull and uneven. I had that with my Samsung T260. It geve my eye problems.

Anyway, the whole annoying thing is that expensive monitors don't suffer ips glow (to this extreme) nor uniformity issues. Why? Because monitors such as NEC's PA272W have an extra filter/matrix that fixes this. But nooooo that is too expensive for monitors cheaper than 1200+$. Cheap bastards.

Visuals are about --FRAMING-- 


If you got a bright frame,  everything within it looks dark/darker


OLED gives you the perfect blacks..

But the motion clarity of OLED is horrendous.. so.. not suitable for moving images..

But but... OLED was supposed to be good for motion with sub-millisecond latency. IS IT ALL A LIE THEN?

[tp4tissue]

IPS glow is an overstate problem..


Put a cool-white ccfl lamp BEHIND your monitor, 

That contrast will make the glow nearly invisible ..

So basically what you suggest is doing a mod? Take out the led backlight and replace it with a CCFL one? Like for real?

Yeah CCFLs were better in that respect, but CCFLs fade over time, become dull and uneven. I had that with my Samsung T260. It geve my eye problems.

Anyway, the whole annoying thing is that expensive monitors don't suffer ips glow (to this extreme) nor uniformity issues. Why? Because monitors such as NEC's PA272W have an extra filter/matrix that fixes this. But nooooo that is too expensive for monitors cheaper than 1200+$. Cheap bastards.

What.. ?  No... hahahahahha'


 just take the lamp ,, a lamp desk lamp..  you have now.. 

Point it at the wall behind your computer monitor.. Put it BEHIND the monitor..

hahahahahahaha



This will give your monitor a Soft white border..


So your iris will now --close-- more..


Therefor enhancing the perception of DARK that's displayed ON the monitor itself..

[tp4tissue]

But but... OLED was supposed to be good for motion with sub-millisecond latency. IS IT ALL A LIE THEN?

OLED has sub-millisecond response time,


But it does not produce peak lighting   or even the CORRECT color  within the sub millisecond.


So it must sample and HOLD..


This causes it to create severe motion blur..



Response time and Motion Clarity are related but not directly comparable.


The reason ULMB LCDs are superior,  is because the backlight turns off while the pixel is in transition.


Even if the pixel isn't AS fast to respond,  it will APPEAR clear and correct,  because during the pixel position where it is transitioning and is of the wrong color,  the lamp is dark.


This is essentially inserting a BLACK frame before each refresh..   This create motion clarity Nearly that of CRT monitors..

[iLLucionist]

IPS glow is an overstate problem..


Put a cool-white ccfl lamp BEHIND your monitor, 

That contrast will make the glow nearly invisible ..

So basically what you suggest is doing a mod? Take out the led backlight and replace it with a CCFL one? Like for real?

Yeah CCFLs were better in that respect, but CCFLs fade over time, become dull and uneven. I had that with my Samsung T260. It geve my eye problems.

Anyway, the whole annoying thing is that expensive monitors don't suffer ips glow (to this extreme) nor uniformity issues. Why? Because monitors such as NEC's PA272W have an extra filter/matrix that fixes this. But nooooo that is too expensive for monitors cheaper than 1200+$. Cheap bastards.

What.. ?  No... hahahahahha'


 just take the lamp ,, a lamp desk lamp..  you have now.. 

Point it at the wall behind your computer monitor.. Put it BEHIND the monitor..

hahahahahahaha



This will give your monitor a Soft white border..


So your iris will now --close-- more..


Therefor enhancing the perception of DARK that's displayed ON the monitor itself..

tp mods everything but the kitchen sink, so I wasn't surprised if you meant swapping out the backlight

[iLLucionist]

But but... OLED was supposed to be good for motion with sub-millisecond latency. IS IT ALL A LIE THEN?

OLED has sub-millisecond response time,


But it does not produce peak lighting   or even the CORRECT color  within the sub millisecond.


So it must sample and HOLD..


This causes it to create severe motion blur..



Response time and Motion Clarity are related but not directly comparable.


The reason ULMB LCDs are superior,  is because the backlight turns off while the pixel is in transition.


Even if the pixel isn't AS fast to respond,  it will APPEAR clear and correct,  because during the pixel position where it is transitioning and is of the wrong color,  the lamp is dark.


This is essentially inserting a BLACK frame before each refresh..   This create motion clarity Nearly that of CRT monitors..

Interesting wasn't aware of this drawback of OLED. So it's basically like the misleading response time manufactures give for IPS monitors, which is almost ALWAYS the gray-to-gray time, not the color-to-color time. So G2G may be <= 5ms, but color2color is almost always higher, sometimes too high.

Btw I'm thinking about buying the Asus ROG Swift PG279Q... nice AO AHVA panel with better quality control, G-Sync, good color reproduction, and 144 Hz. *drewl*. AHVA has nice blacks. Maybe some gray shift but almost no glow. NO GLOW. Sounds like p*rn to me.

[Air tree]

But but... OLED was supposed to be good for motion with sub-millisecond latency. IS IT ALL A LIE THEN?

OLED has sub-millisecond response time,


But it does not produce peak lighting   or even the CORRECT color  within the sub millisecond.


So it must sample and HOLD..


This causes it to create severe motion blur..



Response time and Motion Clarity are related but not directly comparable.


The reason ULMB LCDs are superior,  is because the backlight turns off while the pixel is in transition.


Even if the pixel isn't AS fast to respond,  it will APPEAR clear and correct,  because during the pixel position where it is transitioning and is of the wrong color,  the lamp is dark.


This is essentially inserting a BLACK frame before each refresh..   This create motion clarity Nearly that of CRT monitors..

Interesting wasn't aware of this drawback of OLED. So it's basically like the misleading response time manufactures give for IPS monitors, which is almost ALWAYS the gray-to-gray time, not the color-to-color time. So G2G may be <= 5ms, but color2color is almost always higher, sometimes too high.

Btw I'm thinking about buying the Asus ROG Swift PG279Q... nice AO AHVA panel with better quality control, G-Sync, good color reproduction, and 144 Hz. *drewl*. AHVA has nice blacks. Maybe some gray shift but almost no glow. NO GLOW. Sounds like p*rn to me.

I have heard the opposite  about the ROG swift, I've heard of pretty bad QC, and quite a few models suffering from different amounts of glow.


It seems like the manufacturer that makes the 144hz-165hz 1440p ips displays has some QC problems.

[iLLucionist]

But but... OLED was supposed to be good for motion with sub-millisecond latency. IS IT ALL A LIE THEN?

OLED has sub-millisecond response time,


But it does not produce peak lighting   or even the CORRECT color  within the sub millisecond.


So it must sample and HOLD..


This causes it to create severe motion blur..



Response time and Motion Clarity are related but not directly comparable.


The reason ULMB LCDs are superior,  is because the backlight turns off while the pixel is in transition.


Even if the pixel isn't AS fast to respond,  it will APPEAR clear and correct,  because during the pixel position where it is transitioning and is of the wrong color,  the lamp is dark.


This is essentially inserting a BLACK frame before each refresh..   This create motion clarity Nearly that of CRT monitors..

Interesting wasn't aware of this drawback of OLED. So it's basically like the misleading response time manufactures give for IPS monitors, which is almost ALWAYS the gray-to-gray time, not the color-to-color time. So G2G may be <= 5ms, but color2color is almost always higher, sometimes too high.

Btw I'm thinking about buying the Asus ROG Swift PG279Q... nice AO AHVA panel with better quality control, G-Sync, good color reproduction, and 144 Hz. *drewl*. AHVA has nice blacks. Maybe some gray shift but almost no glow. NO GLOW. Sounds like p*rn to me.

I have heard the opposite  about the ROG swift, I've heard of pretty bad QC, and quite a few models suffering from different amounts of glow.


It seems like the manufacturer that makes the 144hz-165hz 1440p ips displays has some QC problems.

You are absolutely right. AU Optronics has VERY BAD quality control. But AHVA panels are typically less prone to IPS glow (perhaps I'm wrong then) than LG's IPS offerings.

But quality issues with AU Optronics is really bad. Take the BL3200PT. Initially it suffered from "bugs" in the screen (white spots), extreme banding, gradient banding, extreme grayshift, even dead pixels.

So you think this got fixed after 2 months or something right? Well, turns out that even 3rd revisions have the same ****ty QC.

But I have hope that ASUS is somewhat pickier and tries to demand those panels that have less issues, so that even to AO QC is bad, Asus only uses the good panels. Apparently not.

[hanoipho]

Thanks for you review!