Dell UltraSharp U2715H 27-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor

NOTE: This is the original review. An update is included below.I've had the U2715H for a few days, and it's great except for two issues. The luminance (screen brightness) is very uneven. This problem was noted in an in-depth review of the monitor on TFTCentral where it was rated poor in this regard, and I was hoping I'd have better luck. The luminance on the left side of the screen is much lower than the right side of the screen. I've measured it with an accurate light meter, and the luminance on the left is 35 percent lower than the right. This is very noticeable on an image with a solid light colored background. I've seen other comments about this, including on the Dell forums. I'm going to try another sample to see if I have better luck, but one poster on the Dell forums experienced uneven luminance on six samples of the U2715H. Not a good sign.Dell's policy regarding backlight uniformity is as follows (from the Dell monitor forum FAQs): "Dell monitors do not have 100% backlight uniformity specification. As long as the center 4" circle (7" circle for 27" and larger monitors) meets our manufacturer specifications, it is acceptable." I don't know if this is common in the industry, but this allows for quite non-uniform luminance on the sides of the screen.The second issue with my monitor may not be the fault of the monitor, but I have seen a few other comments about this. I'm including this in case anyone else has experienced it. The monitor comes with a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable. When I connected the mini DP end to the monitor and the DP end to my graphics card (an ASUS GTX 970 Strix), the monitor at first wouldn't recognize the presence of a signal. This happened with several attempts at reconnecting the cable and rebooting. When I connected the monitor with an HDMI cable, everything worked fine. I reconnected the DP cable and the monitor eventually recognized it. (You need to manually select the correct input in the monitor's on-screen settings, and it stores settings separately for each input.) It worked fine for awhile, but occasionally the monitor wouldn't sense a video signal on system boot requiring several attempts to connect. This only occurred at boot, and if the video signal was recognized it remained connected for the duration of the session.I've ordered a new DisplayPort cable to see if the included cable is bad. In the meantime, I'm using HDMI which still allows the display of the monitor's full 2560 x 1440 native resolution.In all other respects, the monitor is quite good. The pixel density is perfect for a 27-inch monitor. Type is very crisp and not too small. The monitor is nice looking with a solid stand. The touch sensitive buttons are a bit of a pain to operate at first until you get the hang of it. The IPS glow is very present, as it is with most IPS monitors. I don't find this to be an issue for most images, but you can clearly see it if you're watching anything in letterbox format, for example.The poor luminance uniformity, however, has made me deduct two stars from my review. This is a big issue if you work with image editing. It might not be important to you if you use the monitor for gaming. (I do both.) If a replacement monitor is better, I'll follow up with a revised review.UPDATE March 5, 2015I received a replacement monitor yesterday and I've added back two stars to the review. The luminance uniformity is much better on this one. It still has lower luminance on the left side of the display, but it's less than a 10 percent difference. It's only detectable using a light meter and isn't noticeable in use. Good enough for me.The only downside is that the maximum luminance on this panel (at 100 percent brightness) is about 250 cd/m^2. This is less than the specification for this monitor which Dell lists as 350 cd/m^2 (typical) and 280 cd/m^2 (minimum). I'm not too concerned about this since I've set the monitor to 35 percent brightness and I'm getting about 125 cd/m^2 which is plenty bright for my normal usage.I haven't had the intermittent connectivity for the DisplayPort mentioned in my review of the first monitor, but it's only been two days. I bought a second DisplayPort cable to try out if it happens with the replacement monitor.Thanks to Amazon for overnighting the replacement monitor. I've been a customer of Amazon since they just sold books because of their great customer service.UPDATE March 20, 2015The replacement monitor eventually succumbed to the black screen on boot problem (no signal detected) when connected using DisplayPort. However, it may not be the fault of the monitor. There are lots of posts on the Nvidia forum about the same problem when using other monitors. It may be a handshake issue with the DisplayPort interface, and the GTX 970 and 980 graphics cards seem to be particularly affected. I've read that Nvidia claims to have released an upated BIOS for these cards to address the problem but is leaving it up to each card manufacturer to distribute it. So far, ASUS hasn't provided an updated BIOS but people have reported that EVGA has. For now, I'm back to using HDMI.

Simply the best monitor in its class on the market. This had low input lag, beautiful and accurate color reproduction, sharp text, and great thin bezel. If an IPS, 24inch, 2K monitor without costly g-sync is what you want this is THE one to buy. Its great for office use, artist use, and gaming. Good for gaming a long as you are content with 60hz. I am, and given I do digital art and game, this is fine compromise for me.Its IPS so the viewing angles are amazing. There is absolutely zero color shift when viewing this monitor at any sane angle.It has a best in class refresh rate and less than 10ms input lag meaning you will have decently responsive gaming. You might not win a CSGo tournament using one of these, but if your idea of fun is slapping on an action RPG or even playing an FPS in anything less than hardcore competition mode you will do fine. Again this monitor does compromise as its an all-around performer rather than a single-focused product. Still I game on this and I'm quite happy. I even play racing sims on this and I'm happy.Its got DC violate controlled backlight LED's Thus 100% flicker free and NO headaches from s***ty PWM lighting. The backlight its not 100% uniform but from what I've seen scouring reviews nobody's is. These have found to have no more than a 5% variance in luminescence across the panel in the two I own. There is IPS glow, its inherant to the IPS technology. Until we get affordable AMOLED displays this is just the price of getting good color.Its not a perfect monitor, but in terms of an all around great 2k display this one wins. This monitor also quite acceptably down-scales/interpolates to deliver a 1080p source. Their is only a minor blur effect, and most of the fuzziness is inherent to having a 1080p source on such a large display. So this will be able to drive Blue-ray or console content with a quite an acceptable experience.I could go into great detail about this montor's color reproduction but its easier just to say I'm a digital artist with far better than average-joe's color sensitivity. Not only do I not have color blindness but I've carefully trained my perception to pick out very subtle changes in color. Trust me when I say this is an *accurate* colored monitor. Mind you accurate is less saturated than most people think. Most display (like your samgsung phone that every gushes over, are over-saturated. But these can easily be tuned with a colorimeter or spectrometer to produce print-accurate color. With these I can produce paintings and order a finished print that is exactly what I expected. I use a colormunki colorimeter and use displayCAL to tune my color profiles.The slightly matte screen prevents glare and doesn't produce any graininess that I can see.Display port in and out lets you daisy chain in case your graphics card (like mine) only has 1 DP and you want dual monitors. Its a modern monitor that only supports modern ports, which thank god. VGA needs to just die already. That being said it doesn't have VGA or DVI connectors so plan accordingly.And hooray for VESA mounts. It uses 100mm mounts. I'm able to mound them monitor arms and free up desk space for more junk and clutter!As a final thought. IMO, eventually the VESA standard Adaptive sync will end up winning the format war between AMD and NVidias absurdly priced, proprietary G-sync. But I think we are several product generations away from a GPU-montior synchronization technology becoming standard on all mid-range and up monitors. Thus its a safe choice to buy one these today if you cannot afford an Acer predator. For anybody who doesn't game at all, this is a no-brainer. This is the 2k monitor you have been looking for.