I bought the 24" u2412m earlier this year and it's superb. It doesn't look flashy, but cosmetics are not important. The build quality and color calibration on these things is absolutely incredible.
The Dell UltraSharp range just strikes a nice balance between quality and affordability.
Other manufacturers have spent the best part of the last decade chasing the budget end of the market by cutting corners (e.g. TN panels, poor quality control) and adding gimmicks (e.g. glossy or non-black bezels, flashy lights, ugly asymmetric stands)
Dell have stood pretty firm, with the UltraSharp range at least, with high quality IPS panels, decent quality control and simple, timeless designs. Combine that with the economies of scale they are able to achieve bundling monitors with computer systems, and the established support network they have in place, and it's been a winning combination.
Thank LG for the latter - their IPS panels are used in pretty much every IPS monitor on the market, and I've never seen one with a single dead pixel, amazing QC...
The panels aren't enough. You need good cases and, this is often overlooked, good electronics driving the panels.
I've learnt this the fun way by buying cheap Korean 30" screens. The cases are poorly designed, the electronics are flaky. I'd pay 2.5x for the Dell monitors, but I know they would keep working for a lot longer.
I can't comment on the 30" Korean screens, but I got a 27" QHD Yamakasi Catleap and it's been wonderful. No quality problems at all. And I had an expensive 1920x1200 HP before.
I bought 2 Yamakasi 30" screens. The design of the case meant that the DVI plug, when inserted into the socket, would exert sufficient force on the socket to permanently damage it after a few months (which is what happened to me).
On the 2nd Yamakasi, my father and I manually cut a channel for the cable into the plastic to prevent the 2nd screen becoming unusable in the same way as the first.
In the meantime Yamakasi stopped making that model (I guess 6 months is a long time) and I was forced to buy a different brand. Guess what? Same poorly designed case! Plus the electronics are different and, having very cheap components, it has since burnt out some small components, rendering that screen inoperable. I emailed the seller asking if a replacement PCB could be purchased. No answer.
For those keeping score: I have bought 3 Korean 30" screens. Of which 1 is still working after 6 months. And that one only still works because of modifications made to it.
At the time, the other Jacques active on HN (Mattheij) gently remonstrated me for gambling on the huge discount I was getting vs Dells or HPs. I now wish I could take all my smugness back from that point in time and bottle it for sale to Harvard MBA students.
My next purchases will probably be smaller Dells, to be arranged in a portrait configuration.
I'm aware. I was making a distinction between the 27" and 30" models, because I only have experience with the 27" model.
> The design of the case meant that the DVI plug, when inserted into the socket, would exert sufficient force on the socket to permanently damage it after a few months
For comparison I currently have 3 Koran 27" screens (traveling, don't recall the brand.) 1 was broken on arrival and the seller replaced. 1 started having problem 8 months in, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. In total I've had one of them for 14 months and 2 for about 12 months.
When you factor in really needing to use monitor arms it probably doesn't make sense. But they look great.
> When you factor in really needing to use monitor arms it probably doesn't make sense. But they look great.
I don't see any reason to use a monitor arm. Sure, the stand doesn't let you adjust the height, but you can just use some books or cardboard boxes to adjust that.
You could consider the Monoprice 27" IPS panels. $350 a pop and a much better retailer standing behind them. I don't own any personally, but I know folks who've had them around a year now and no complaints. (Looking to pick a couple up soon.)
Very interesting about the electronics - I'm guessing they used the cheapest stuff they could to minimize the cost for the expensive 10 bit S-IPS panels (which are top of the line compared to the cheaper E-IPS and AH-IPS).
They use the same panels Apple uses, so it's just a matter of plastics engineering and choice of I/O (giant displayport, hdmi, vga, dvi, ... instead of just thunderbolt).
Note that the Monoprice (and MicroCenter Auria and Nixeus and Catleap) models are short on features and build / OSD quality and calibration.
The really annoying missing feature on these is audio-passthrough for HDMI and DisplayPort. I'd so much rather have a 3.55mm audio out instead of some crappy 2W built-in speakers.
I've always thought the dell ultrasharp monitors were very good quality, but the latest batch this summer has changed that.
10 out of 14 monitors in 3 batches so far appear to have what looks like dirty water spots between the lcd and the backlight. Some but some are bigger than sunflower seeds and quite obvious, with up to six of these scattered across the displays.
Beware the dell premium panel Guarantee, its very particularly about what it actually covers, which is just pixels stuck on, not all panel defects, let alone the time spent on replacement monitors that can be worse than that original ones.
I bought the 24" u2412m earlier this year and it's superb. It doesn't look flashy, but cosmetics are not important. The build quality and color calibration on these things is absolutely incredible.