Dell S2409W

If you're looking for a low-priced 24-inch monitor, the Dell S2409W will serve you well. For as little as AU$499, the Dell gives you VGA, DVI and HDMI connections, great performance for games and movies, and an intuitive and elegantly designed on-screen display (OSD) that includes a plethora of useful options. Compared with the AU$989, 24-inch Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP, the S2409W lacks connection options and ergonomic features. Still, if price is your focus, the Dell S2409W provides good quality for the money. The BenQ E2400HD is available for about the same price, but it has slightly worse performance and fewer OSD options.

Design and features

The bezel of the 24-inch Dell S2409W is a striking, glossy black that reflects everything. The bezel measures a short 19mm long on all sides, and the middle bottom of the bezel has a slightly flush, silver Dell logo on it. The panel is nearly 25mm deep, which is thin for a 24-incher (most 24-inch monitors we've tested have panels well over an inch deep). A thin, 10mm strip wraps around the outer edge of the panel, bringing the panel width to 577.85mm; that's about average for a monitor of this screen size.

The circular foot stand is nearly 230mm in diameter and unfortunately doesn't provide the type of stability we expect; it doesn't take much lateral force to wobble the whole display.

As mentioned, the Dell S2409W can be found for as low as AU$499, but not without some sacrifices. To get the price that low, Dell skimped on a few ergonomic features, including screen height adjustment, rotation and pivoting. The screen does tilt back 20 degrees and forward 5 degrees, but that — and a hole in the display's neck to route your cables — is all the ergonomic benefits you get.

The Dell S2409W's connection options include the video connection trifecta of VGA, DVI and HDMI. Although the VGA and HDMI are easy to reach, the DVI port sits just a little too close to the display's neck to rule out hand cramping when trying to connect the cable. Sadly, Dell only includes a single VGA cable with the monitor, so if you want to risk hand cramping, you'll have to invest further.

The OSD button labels are located on the bottom right side of the bezel and consist of four buttons (located on the right side of the panel): a menu button, an up button, a down button and an enter button. Calibrating the display using the OSD in a lit room where you can see the labels is simple and easy. In a poorly lit environment though, the buttons are only separated by a sliver of space, so it's difficult to tell where one button begins and another ends.

If you'd rather not deal with the sometimes headache-inducing process of calibration, the OSD includes nine preset modes including Standard, Movie, Sports, Nature, Game, Multimedia, Cool and Warm. Each mode alters the sharpness and colour temperature in an attempt to make it more suited for the task at hand. We found that the Standard preset was the best all around for movies. The Movie preset's picture is over-tuned to the point that dithering is very much apparent and details that should look smooth look bumpy instead. The Game preset, however, was tuned better than Standard for games.

The OSD interface is the same one Dell started using for the Dell Crystal. It's an elegant and intuitive interface that includes typical controls for brightness, contrast and colour options. The controls also directly affect the OSD, like a menu timer and controls to modify the OSD's level of transparency.

The most touted feature of the 24-inch Dell S2409W is its 16:9 aspect ratio, which supports a resolution of 1920x1080. Dell and other vendors refer to monitors capable of this resolution as "Full HD" monitors. This is an interesting name given that a 16:10 24-incher would have an even higher native resolution of 1920x1200, but we digress.

More and more monitor vendors are starting to move toward 16:9 from 16:10. The main reason for this is that hi-def content, in particular 1080p movies, can fit onto a 1920x1080 screen without necessitating that the image being stretched or scrunched — plus due to television mass production, the 16:9 panels are cheaper to produce.

Performance

We tested the Dell S2409W with its DVI connection. The display posted a composite score of 87 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests compared with the 24-inch BenQ E2400HD's score of 85. The two displays exhibited similar performance in most of the DisplayMate test screens, but the Dell scored slightly better in our colour tracking tests as it exhibited no noticeable compression or expansion at the dark or light ends of the colour scale. A colour-tracking error occurs when the intensity of red, green and blue (RGB) do not adjust identically with signal-level changes. During two colour tests, Low Saturation Colours and 64-256 Intensity Colour Ramp, the BenQ showed clear signs of expansion at the light end of the scale, while the Dell displayed the colours in the scale smoothly.

The Dell S2409W posted a brightness score of 242 candelas per square metre (cd/m²) according to our test, which is lower than the 300cd/m² maximum claimed by Dell. The BenQ E2400HD barely bested it with a 246cd/m² brightness rating. Contrast ratio was more favouring to the Dell as we measured it at a 1001:1 contrast ratio, virtually the same as Dell's claimed 1000:1 rating. This beat out BenQ's 892:1 contrast ratio by more than 100.

We got a huge surprise when we looked at World of Warcraft on the Dell S2409W; it looked crisp, colourful, and darn near perfect running at 1920x1080. Unfortunately, viewing the game from a lower-than-optimal viewing angle made the screen darken to the point that graphic details of the game could not be seen — typical of most TN panels.

When watching our favourite test scenes in the Kill Bill Vol. 1 DVD on the Dell S2409W, what we noticed most was that its performance was virtually identical to the BenQ E2400HD's. Colours were vibrant, but didn't have the same kind of pop like we saw with the Apple LED Cinema Display. The blacks were deep without losing any dark details in dark scenes. We didn't notice any streaking or ghosting, and the screen remained sharp for a DVD.

The 1080p Blu-ray version of House of Flying Daggers looked great for the same reasons stated above; however, we did not notice any quality advantage to the screen's 16:9 aspect ratio.

The best settings we determined for watching games and movies on the Dell S2409W, was Standard preset mode, with a contrast of 65, and the brightness set however high your eyes can take. We settled on an 87 for brightness.

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. Both the Dell S2409W and the BenQ E2400HD displays use TN panels, and when they are viewed from the side angles, the screens appeared to only darken slightly. When viewed from the bottom, the screen darkened immediately but not as dramatically as some smaller monitors like the Gateway HD1900 and the Samsung SyncMaster 953BW. Of course, when viewed from the optimal angle, we had no problems.