Dell SX2210

Photo gallery: Dell SX2210

Design and features

The 21.5-inch Dell SX2210's stark white back is the first detail we noticed and while it stands out among a sea of black monitors, we prefer the glossy black look. The SX2210's black, matte bezel measures a length of 22.9mm on the right and left and 38mm on the bottom where a raised silver Dell logo resides. The middle of the top bezel houses an integrated 2-megapixel webcam. The panel is a somewhat thick 38mm deep (by comparison, most 22-inch models we've tested have a panel depth of slightly above 25mm); however, the back of the display — which houses the connection options and ventilation system — extends another 50mm or so, bringing the full monitor depth to about 89mm. The panel width measures 527mm long, which is about average for a monitor of this screen size.

The oval-shaped foot stand is uniquely designed and resembles a foot with its weight on the ball. It measures nearly 216mm in width, with a depth of 139mm. The foot stand is a short 5mm tall. When knocked from the sides, the 4.5kg display wobbles and slides considerably, but not to the point where we feel it's in danger of toppling, thanks to its flat foot stand. The bottom of the bezel sits about 61mm from the desktop, but unfortunately, the screen height is neither adjustable nor is there a rotation or pivot option — useful if you prefer portrait mode. The capability to tilt the screen back 25 degrees is the only included ergonomic feature.

Dell includes DVI, HDMI and VGA connection options. However, the ports are located directly behind the display's neck, which makes it frustrating when attempting to access them. Thanks to the HDMI port, Blu-ray player and console owners will be able to hook the monitor directly into their devices. The display includes three USB downstream connections and one USB upstream. There is also an audio-out and audio-in port for directly connecting the display to an external audio device, but no speakers are included.

The OSD follows Dell's recent stellar, label-less design last seen on the G2210. 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, and each option corresponds to one of the four buttons. Once a new menu comes up, the function of the buttons changes 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 — that would be on the bezel on another display — for the OSD are actually on the screen, calibrating the display in a dark room proved painless.

OSD options include the standard 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 Video 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. 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 SX2210'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 SX2210 with its DVI connection. The display posted a composite score of 94 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests, beating the L215p's 93 by the smallest of margins, but didn't quite measure up to the Dell G2210's 97.

In DisplayMate, the SX2210 and L215p tested virtually identically. Both achieved near-perfect scores in our colour tests, but each had trouble with the Color Tracking test, which shows how accurately a monitor can replicate the greyscale. Both the SX2210 and L215p's representation of the greyscale had a slight greenish hue that kept them from being perfect. In our Dark Screen test, backlight bleedthrough was noticeable on the top and bottom edges of both screens, suggesting that the displays would not be able to display deep blacks when playing a movie (see below).

The SX2210 achieved a brightness score of 270 candelas per square metre (cd/m²) — lower than Dell's claimed 300cd/m² max. Its tested contrast ratio was above the 1000:1 claimed by Dell and came in at 1094:1.

We used the SX2210's Movie preset to check out War of the Worlds ("WotW") on DVD and House of Flying Daggers ("HoFD") on Blu-ray. Although the SX2210's blacks — a critical attribute for good movie playback — were not as deep as the G2210's (backlight bleeding was apparent on the top and bottom edges of the display), they were darker than Lenovo's L215p. In "HoFD", we saw fairly accurate colour, but those deep blacks we enjoyed on the Dell G2210 were still nowhere to be seen. Picture sharpness was as good as the G2210 since subtitles looked sharp and not blurry as on the L215p.

We looked at the game Crysis on the SX2210 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 varies at non-optimal angles. Most monitors use TN panels, which get overly bright or overly dark in parts of the screen when viewed from non-optimal angles. The SX2210 uses a TN panel, and when it is viewed from the sides or bottom, we perceived the screen to darken and the gamma to shift about 152mm off from centre. Of course, when viewed from the optimal angle, we had no problems.