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The most cost-effective upgrade for your PC is its monitor, and the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP ($799) is a worthy candidate for your consideration. The 24-inch 1920x1200 LCD display has some serious specs, such as a 1000:1 contrast ratio and a 6ms gray-to-gray response time. It's versatile, too, and does a great job as both a PC monitor and an HDTV. Plus, most graphics cards can handle its high resolution. We put it through our battery of rigorous resolution tests, and also plugged in an HDTV personal video recorder, finding the monitor to be an impressive performer.
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One of the more remarkable aspects of this monitor is its variety of inputs see graphic below). Looking underneath the bottom of the display, there's an AC power cord connector that thankfully doesn't require a wall wart, a DC power connector so you can attach optional speakers, a DVI connector, VGA, composite, S-Video, component video, an USB upstream port that connects all the other USB ports on the monitor to your PC, and then two USB downstream ports. There are two other USB ports on the side of the monitor, as well as a 9-in-2 flash card reader, a significant convenience. A slight disadvantage to using the USB ports on the monitor is that if you turn the monitor off, the USB ports no longer function.
A huge benefit of all those ports underneath is extraordinary versatility. Now you can use your monitor as a computer screen during the day and then once you're done with all that work, you can use it as an entertainment screen at night. It's HDCP compliant, so any HDTV signal, even if it's equipped with copy protection, passes through this Dell monitor without a hitch. We got a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD personal video recorder (PVR) set-top box and hooked it up to the component inputs on the Dell monitor, and ended up with a large and extremely sharp TV set. The monitor has DCDi (Directional Correlational Deinterlacing) processing by Faroudja, making PVR and DVD playback a smooth experience. Plus, the faster response time of this monitor was easily able to keep up with even the fastest action sequences. Overall, this is one of the best-looking HDTV monitors we've seen here at the Midwest Test Facility.
Next was time for us to run our DisplayMate Multimedia Edition obstacle course, consisting of a variety of graphics, and the Dell 2407 passed our test with flying colors. The blacks were extremely black, even the tiniest text was razor-sharp, the focus matrix was crispy enough to give us a headache, and the color saturation was as vivid as we've ever seen. The contrast ratio is quoted at 1000:1, and that's probably accurate, because we can discern the graphical chips in the monitor all the way down to the darkest black chip, number 1, and we could see a contrast difference all the way up to the brightest white chip, number 254. These results are the best we've seen on any monitor here, and certainly puts every projector we've tested to shame. The monitor is also extremely bright, and in the all-white test screen, the brightness of the screen was close to being perfectly even from edge to edge and top to bottom. There was no discernible light leakage on the dark screen test, and no stuck pixels. Overall, the 2407 aced our obstacle course.
A few months ago, some users were complaining about color banding on some of the first examples of this 24-inch display, and we can tell you that those problems have been solved. However, from time to time we were able to discern a few jiggling horizontal lines on the screen, but that problem was quickly and easily fixed by turning off the display and turning it back on again. We're not sure exactly what caused this, but it's an intermittent problem that it only occurred two or three times during our test interval.
Summing up, the Dell 2407WFP 24 inch monitor represents an extraordinary value for $800. If you have an office that doubles as a TV room or den, it's just about an ideal size for computer activities, and then it can double as an excellent screen to watch DVDs or television. Before you've actually used it, you might think 24 inches of monitor is overkill. But I'm here to tell you, once you try it, it will be extremely difficult to go back. This is an excellent monitor, and it's highly recommended. 9.8 out of 10 stars.
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