Design
Who really needs a 27-inch LCD monitor on their desk? Really, and honestly, do you? Outside of certain design and industrial/medical applications, the answer is usually a pretty much resounding "no", especially once you get into home/consumer usage patterns. Let's be honest here -- a 27-inch monitor is a pure luxury item, and if you're going to go for a luxury item, you may as well make it a luxury item that looks the part. Dell's 2707WFP 27-inch Widescreen LCD monitor certainly makes the most of emphasising the screen real estate with a very minimal silver bezel and the tiniest possible buttons running along the bottom right hand side of the screen.
The entire focus is to get you looking at the enormous glowing wall that a 27-inch monitor presents before your eyes, rather than any of the additional features of the monitor itself. The LCD panel sits on top of a glossy black stand, connected by a thin tower-style twistable post. It's clearly a product of Dell labs design; while Apple stuff tends to be relentlessly white and with lots of smooth corners, Dell's designers like lots of sheer metal and sharp-looking edges. Whether that floats or sinks your boat is, of course, a matter of personal preference.
Features
The 2707WFP 27-inch Widescreen LCD offers a top resolution of 1900x1200 pixels with a contrast ratio of 1000:1 and a 6ms response time; that's not quite cutting edge but should be more than acceptable for most display applications. The display offers five different connection methods -- D-Sub, DVI-D, Component, S-Video and Composite, with HDMI being the only notable exclusion. Still, Dell's selling this as a computer monitor in the first instance, not a bit of consumer electronics, so it's somewhat understandable.
The 2707WFP supports multiple display modes within the hardware, including picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture to simultaneously view multiple inputs; naturally with this much screen real estate you can also give plenty of space for virtual desktops depending on your operating system of choice. Down the left hand side of the 2707WFP you'll find a pair of USB ports and two media card slots, covering CF, SD/MMC and Memory Stick formats. There's an additional two USB ports on the underside of the display next to the video inputs for a total of four USB ports.
Performance
We tested the 2707WFP 27-inch Widescreen LCD across all of its inputs and with multiple different types of display content, including a Windows XP laptop, Apple Macbook and an Xbox 360 console. We also calibrated and tested with DisplayMate Multimedia Edition to check the display clarity of the panel. The 2707WFP performed flawlessly across all of our test media in terms of visual clarity and fast screen movement, although predictably you'll want to stand a bit back for gaming and DVD purposes to get the best possible picture.
That brings up our one concern about the 2707WFP, and it's something that's true of all large monitors designed to be put on ordinary desks. When you're sitting right in front of it, the size of the image mandates that it takes up your entire field of vision. Unless you've got the type of desk beloved of your Dallas-type tycoon and can move it back a bit, you're probably going to be sitting a touch too close to the 2707WFP's display -- and that's very tiring on the eyes. Ergonomic issues aside, however, the 2707WFP comes highly recommended.
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