Dell Ultrasharp U2718Q 27-Inch 4K IPS Monitor

This review is from the perspective of a software engineer and programmer in hope that it may help others coming from a similar position. For perspective, I was previously using two 1080p TN panel displays at 27 inches each (one landscape and one in portrait).This monitor is a dramatic improvement for me in multiple aspects:1.) First and most obvious is the upgrade in resolution from 1080p to 4k. The text/image clarity is amazing compared to 1080p! It's a night and day difference...especially when I still have 1 of my old 27 inch 1080p panels in portrait right next to this 4k monitor. All of the code in my IDEs look beautiful and crisp with perfect clarify. I'm on Windows 10 and applied 175% scaling. While 1080p is perfectly acceptable at 27 inches, the 4k display is a very noticeable difference and has made my coding experience more enjoyable.2.) Next was the transition from a TN panel to an IPS panel. This is also a major difference in the colors displayed. Since I use most of my IDEs in a dark theme I can really see the difference comparing to my old TN panel where the darker colors seemed washed out and on the IPS panel they seem more "true" to what you'd think it would be. However, it's not just the darker colors, all the colors are much better. There's a clear improvement on the IPS panel.3.) Lastly, the physical design of this monitor is nice. This has very sleek bezels and while this is subjective I think the monitor has a beautiful style that is clean and professional. The stand is also very sturdy. The monitor allows for tilt and swivel to find your desired angle and position. Eventually I might vesa mount it and it is compatible.My concerns prior to buying:Some people complained about backlight bleed on this monitor. Although I'm still using the default color configuration and settings from the factory (had no reason to change it) I don't notice any backlight bleed during regular use at all. The only time when it's slightly noticeable is when the monitor is going to sleep after I turn off my PC, basically when the entire screen is black, I can see a little light from the corners. That's literally the only time I've noticed it. As I mentioned above, I run almost all my IDEs in dark theme. I don't notice any backlight bleed against my dark background environments at all.Some people also mentioned problems with green colors on this display when using display port. This was apparently an issue earlier in the monitors life which has been resolved by a firmware update. The firmware on my monitor is M2B103, which I haven't yet verified is the very newest, but I have absolutely no problems with any weird colors using display port for my connection.Other thoughts:While this monitor has an anti-reflective coating I do notice a little light glare when there's a lot of bright light coming from a window. I believe compared to many other monitors I've used in the past this one seems to glare a bit more, but this is not a problem for me. I definitely wouldn't remove a star for it. But this may be something to keep in mind if you plan to use this around of ton of windows during the day.Lastly, a small side note about gaming. Although I bought this for work purposes I have gamed on it a bit. It looks great but of course you'll need a beefy graphics card to run games at 4k. I have needed to bump a few games down to 1440p to run smoothly on this display and they still looked good. This monitor is only 60hz but for a little casual gaming it's pretty good. I'd definitely recommend turning on the "fast" response time which I do believe made a difference for me.Conclusion:For programming I think this is a great monitor. Coming from a 1080p TN panel display, the image clarity and colors displayed on this 4k IPS panel are truly a night and day difference. After using this monitor side by side with one of my old 1080p displays for about a week now I'm convinced I'll eventually need to purchase a second one as my 1080p display is so lacking next to this one. Overall, this has made my programming experience much more enjoyable which makes it a winner in my book.

After spending about a month with this monitor I can say that I absolutely love it. This monitor is 100% used for console gaming so if you're here for work, school or anything else, I can't help you. I'm sure it makes PowerPoint look great though.Anyway, I bought this monitor after returning a Samsung 4k display for a few reasons.1) It's the only (affordable) monitor with HDR support. It's not full HDR10 which you can read about but it's also not $1,600 like Dell's super ultrasharp HDR10 monitor. Since I have a PS4 pro and Xbox One X on the way, I wanted to achieve some level of HDR gaming BUT it's very hard to find monitors right now with HDR. At the time of purchase, it was really the only other option.2) It's got a 5ms response time in gaming mode. This is crucial for competitive games. While many 4k TVs come HDR ready, if you dig deep and look at response times, you'll find that a lot are in the 30-40ms range. I opted for a monitor over a TV for this reason. That and many full HDR10 TVs are in the $1,000+ range and HDR only seems to come on displays 45" and up.3) HDCP 2.2: what the heck is that? yeah that's what I originally said. HDCP in the easiest sense is the license to display 4k content. The original Samsung 4k monitor I bought was only HDCP1.4 (not HDCP 2.2) and that means that in the future, it may not have the license to display all 4k content. This causes a black screen and effectively breaks your expensive tv or monitor. Mostly an issue with streaming content like Netflix and Amazon but it's possible it makes its way into video games.4) IPS panel. IPS panels display much nicer than older TN style panels BUT at the cost of speed. Many TN panels feature 1ms response times but IPS delivers better color and allows for a wider viewing angle before distorting the image. Since 5ms was enough for me, and I was purchasing a monitor for 4k and HDR, I opted for the IPS panel.Overall, I'm extremely happy with this monitor. I would have loved for it to come fully HDR10 ready with super high brightness and contrast ratios but I understand that functionality is not achievable at this price point. To me, I feel that this monitor is the best balance between speed, quality and price and haven't found something to replace it with.For those wondering, it's a 60hz display but unless you're running dual GTX 1080s and pumping out 4k@120, you won't need anything faster for a long time.

Update:I can see ghosted images of what was being displayed only minutes after it being displayed. This is pretty noticeable as long as I am using a darker background interface. Also the blown out highlights at a brightness of 100% are pretty bad. I've now read from other reviews having it below 50% could improve this issue but no way I'm going to set it to 50%.Old review:The best part of this screen is the stand. It can be adjusted in many different ways and feels sturdy. Compared to a $200 4k monitor this is what honestly sets it apart.4k scaled down to 1440p in Mac OSX looks way better for my uses - applications, organization, text, compared to the 1440p native version of this monitor which I tried first. It looks WAY closer to my 2016 macbook pro 15" retina screen in terms of the pixel density and sharpness. The 1440p version is also the same cost so I really didn't see any reason why I would have kept that version instead. I suppose if you were gaming you might prefer it if it performs faster... but the other monitor is only 60 hz too so again I don't see why anyone would buy it.Of course even though the pixel density is pretty good the contrast and brightness are about 80% (completely subjective measurement there) of my macbook pro retina screen. There are also some shadows on the edges (mainly bottom, left, and right). It's really not worth taking off more than a star though for $400.