Dell G2410

Photo gallery: Dell G2410

Dell sells the 24-inch G2410 for AU$539 online — a satisfying price — and in fact, it is your best option for a 24-inch TN display with stellar performance and low power consumption. The G2410 won't win any beauty contests with its plain design, and it lacks both ergonomic features and an HDMI connection, but it makes up for these shortcomings with great performance in movies and by offering energy options that let you track and control your energy footprint (Dell sells the similar 24-inch Dell S2409W for AU$40 less, and although the cheaper monitor looks sleeker and includes HDMI, it can't match the G2410's performance and low power consumption).

Design and features

The 24-inch Dell G2410 is plainly designed with angular features and a black matte finish. The bezel measures a short 19mm long on all sides and the middle of the bottom bezel has a slightly raised silver Dell logo on it. The panel is nearly 25mm deep (in comparison, most 24-inch models we've tested have a panel depth of more than 25mm); however, the back of the display — which houses the backlight, connection options, and ventilation system — extends another 38mm, bringing the full monitor depth to about 63mm. The panel width measures 569mm long — average for a monitor of this screen size.

The rectangular foot stand measures 273mm in width, with a depth of 155mm. The foot stand is a short 12.7mm tall. We saw only minimal wobbling when we knocked the display from the sides, but with such a long and flat foot-stand, you'd really have to knock it hard before it toppled. The bottom of the bezel sits about 70mm from the desktop, but unfortunately, this screen height is neither adjustable nor is there a screen rotation or pivot option — useful if you prefer portrait mode. The capability to tilt the screen back 25 degrees is the only ergonomic feature included.

To keep the price and energy footprint down, Dell only includes DVI and VGA as connection options. You're out of luck if you want to connect an external Blu-ray player, since there is no HDMI — which is a mainstay on most monitors this size.

The most improved feature of the Dell G2410 is its on-screen display. The OSD follows Dell's recent stellar, label-less design last seen in the S2409W. This OSD, however, is even simpler and easier to use with more features. Four buttons line the lower right-hand corner of the bezel.

Pressing any of the buttons brings up the OSD, which pops up parallel to the button array, each option corresponds to one of the four buttons. Once a new menu comes up, the function of the buttons change dynamically, as the top two buttons become the up and down arrow buttons used to navigate through the newly seen menu. Since any button labels for the OSD are actually on the screen, calibrating the display in a dark room proved painless.

Pressing the button next to "Energy Modes" on the OSD brings up a menu for choosing three different modes that determine your monitor's energy footprint. Choosing Standard lets the user manually set the display's brightness. Energy Smart activates the ambient light sensor and caps the screen brightness at 66 per cent. The ambient light sensor will adjust the brightness based on the level of light in the room — the lower the ambient light level, the lower the brightness automatically adjusts. Energy Smart Plus is identical to Energy Smart, but adds dynamic dimming, which automatically dims the backlight when the screen shows an image that is overly bright or all white.

As you change options that affect your energy footprint — brightness, the three energy modes — you'll see an Energy Gauge in the OSD. The gauge is a meter that dynamically changes based on how much power your monitor is consuming. Take your brightness to full and the gauge goes into the red. Bring the brightness back down and your gauge responds by turning green. Ultimately, the Energy Gauge is not that useful, as it depends primarily on your monitor's current brightness level; however, this is a welcome first step and we'd like to see Dell and other vendors continue to develop its usefulness.

Aside from the energy mode options, OSD options include the mainstays: brightness, contrast, and various colour options. The presets are separated into two categories: Graphics and Video. There are six Graphics presets to choose from: Standard, Multimedia, Game, Warm, Cool and, of course, Custom. The movie presets are: Movie, Game, Sports and Nature. The presets do not change anything other than the red, green and blue colour balance and therefore how well each setting works will be subjective. Also, there are options to adjust the hue and colour saturation in addition to options like setting the OSD to stay on screen up to a minute — useful for anyone who will spend a good amount of time calibrating.

The Dell G2410's 16:9 aspect ratio supports a "Full HD" 1920x1080-pixel native resolution. This continues the trend of more and more monitor vendors moving toward 16:9 from 16:10 because of high-definition content — in particular 1080p movies — can fit onto a 1920x1080-pixel screen without distorting the image.

Performance

We tested the Dell G2410 with its DVI connection. The display posted a composite score of 97 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests, which is the highest we've yet seen. We compared it with the 24-inch Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP, which scored a 90, and to the Dell S2409W's 87. The G2410's accurate reproduction of colour and its screen uniformity impressed us the most. In the Dark Screen test, the display yielded the least backlight bleed-through we've seen in a monitor, suggesting that movie watching on the G2410 will not be plagued by backlight glare during dark scenes as some monitors are. The G2410 easily passed all of our colour tests getting perfect scores in all six tests.

Great scores in DisplayMate don't always translate into similar results in our real-world test, but the G2410 has some of the deepest blacks we've seen on a monitor; a critical attribute for good movie playback. We used the Movie preset to check out War of the Worlds (WotW) on DVD and House of Flying Daggers (HoFD) on Blu-ray. WotW looked great for a DVD, with a deep black level and accurate colours. HoFD also had deep blacks, accurate colours, and solid picture fidelity without any ghosting or streaking. The Samsung SyncMaster T240HD was our previous favourite display to watch movies on, but that distinction now falls to the G2410.

Most of this incredible performance can be attributed to the LED backlight in the monitor. Most monitors use cold cathode fluorescent lamp-based backlights — several fluorescent tubes stretched horizontally across the screen. The Dell G2410 relies on individual LEDs all over the back of the screen that turn off or on independently, giving the display more precise control over the amount of light coming through. The purported advantages of an LED backlight are better energy efficiency, more accurate colour reproduction, a conceivably thinner panel design, and a higher potential brightness level.

A high black level on a display will distort the greyscale and adversely affect colour reproduction. Thanks to its precise control of the light in the backlight however, the G2410 is capable of a low black level, which translates into fantastic colour reproduction. While its maximum brightness is lower than the 2408WFP (234 versus 452 respectively), this was never a problem and at times we had to turn down the G2410's brightness to decrease the strain on our eyes. Its tested contrast ratio was less than the 1000:1 claimed by Dell and came in at a fairly close 948:1.

We looked at the game Crysis on the G2410 in its Game preset and saw a clean picture with no signs of ghosting during fast movement.

The optimal viewing angle for a monitor is usually directly in front, about a quarter of the screen's distance down from the top. At this angle, you're viewing the colours and gamma correction as they were intended. Most monitors are not made to be viewed at any other angle. Depending on its panel type, picture quality at non-optimal angles varies. Most monitors use TN panels, which get overly bright or overly dark in parts of the screen when viewed from non-optimal angles. The G2410 uses a TN panel, and when it is viewed from the sides or bottom, we perceived the screen to darken about six inches off from the centre. Of course, when viewed from the optimal angle, we had no problems. Performance-wise this is the only area that the 2408WFP faired better. The 2408WFP is made with a S-PVA panel which are known for having wide viewing angles.