Nothing has changed between Dell's last 30" and this one, except for the panel. It still has the lone DVI port – we would have thought the opportunity to add at least component or HDMI by now would have overwhelmed Dell, but apparently not. Even HP's new 30" the LP3065, which uses the same panel as the Dell, has managed three DVI inputs – like the Dell there's still no menu button or AV inputs, but it's something.
The panel in question is an LG LM3001WQ1, which thanks to the wonders of WCCFL (Wide Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) can now display 92% of the NTSC colour gamut, 20% more than most other monitors on the market, or so Dell claims.
You can notice the difference, things just seem a little more vibrant, and colours a bit smoother in gradation – however part of this could be due to the increased contrast ratio, at 1000:1 rather than the previous model's 700:1. It is however noticeably not as bright.
DisplayMate tests were performed pretty well, being able to show a 4 on the darker end of the scale, and a 251 on the other. Both horizontal and vertical gradients were excellent, with none of the banding and discolouration problems popping up that plagued the 2407 – we did notice however that purples and blues tended to band more obviously than other colours. Gaming and watching movies was a delight, as the impossible to beat immersiveness and quick response time took control of our senses.
Switching off the lights and setting the background to black, we found that disappointingly there was noticeable light bleed from all four corners – although once there was imagery onscreen it was impossible to pick this out.
The back of the monitor up the top also got worryingly hot – no functionality problems cropped up, but the heat was enough to cause concern.
Overall the new Dell is certainly better than the old one, but we would have hoped for a little more innovation and some of the concerns from the last one to be addressed – particularly the lack of OSD and video inputs.
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