Dell U2312HM - Review

[EChondo]

A couple days ago I posted in the Display section of the forums for a new monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, 23"-24" in size, and a screen that will suite a gamer of many genres. Upon posting I was recommend by two different people(NamelessTed and GoodBytes) that the Dell U2312HM was up my alley and was around the price range I wanted. With the quick recommendations and me somehow not seeing this monitor at all decided to research it quick since it was on Newegg for $220 on a sale till Wednesday the 20th. I researched the monitor and upon doing so I found out some pretty neat stuff like it has a 8ms response time and a great input lag of 0.6ms. I'm not much of a twitch gamer, but this did interest me and the fact that the monitor had my two most desired inputs(Display port and DVI) and it was a IPS panel, I figured why the Hell not! I ordered it Tuesday night and it arrived at my doorstep this Thursday morning.

It arrived in just a regular Dell box, but the packaging was superb. Contents contain the monitor, stand, D-Sub cable, DVI-D SL cable, USB with type A and B ends for the 4 USB ports on the monitor, AC/DC cable for power and driver disc with quick setup guide.

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The stand is made of mostly plastic, but this plastic is very strong and sturdy, you could use this as a weapon if need be. It has a very nice texture to it as well and feels really nice. The actual latch for attaching the monitor is placed in the stand with a spring, you can push the spring loaded latch down, but it will push right back up at a nice slow rate so when the monitor is attached, it has just enough weight to have it perfectly balanced between the monitor and the spring. Adjustments are easy to be made and has all features of pivot, swivel, and height adjustments. The bottom of the stand has rubber feet so it isn't going anywhere.

Inputs include; power, 12v power, full sized Display port, DVI-D DL, D-Sub, and a type B USB port for delivering power and full functionality to four USB ports on the monitor, two of the USB ports are located right next to the USB type B connector and the other two are located on the left side of the monitor.

Installation was very easy as it's a latch-in method and snaps into place. Adjustments with monitor attached are easy and fluid with no tension pushing back and adjustments stay in place, even when nudged. Overall great feel of the monitor and couldn't be happier with the construction and quality of the product. One of the most beautiful things about this monitor, in my opinion, is the matte screen. I hate gloss on any sort of material and having a matte display was a big plus for me as I have various lights and I wear glasses on occasion so seeing the reflection of my own monitor in my own glasses is a big no-no in my book, so again this monitor is simply fantastic.

I had a two monitor setup, a 19" Samsung that is 1280x1024 and a 22" Viewsonic 1680x1050. I bought this 23" Dell to replace my Viewsonic monitor as I wanted an upgrade and have a monitor with 1080p so I can do some serious benchmarking and wanted to go with a 16:9 aspect ratio, because I do video recordings and everything is easier when doing 16:9, especially when rendering and then uploading to YouTube as YouTube likes to crop my videos or I have to crop my own videos when downscaling to 720p.

Before;

After;

Please excuse the mess, I was getting to excited and couldn't wait till I finished dinner to do a proper unboxing and pictures of the monitor with before and after shots, also there will be no more pictures after this point.

Now that the physical aspect of the review is over, time to talk about the display. I have been playing various games from FPS to RPG, haven't tried Guild Wars 2 yet, but I will be testing the quality and clarity of it tomorrow or over the weekend. On Steam there is currently a free weekend to play Black Ops 2 till Sunday 1PM PST so I got the chance to test the monitor on a twitch FPS game, as I was playing I didn't feel or see any ghosting or lag of any sort, it was very smooth and clear gameplay, so even with 8ms response time, this is fine for anything gaming wise in my opinion. I have played Fallout: New Vegas and some Skyrim on it(both vanilla for now) and again, very smooth and clear quality. The colors on this monitor are just outstanding. I have tried all different sorts of monitor calibration settings online for this model, but some leave a red tint or a very cool blue tint, so I just calibrated it myself and adjusted the brightness and contrast myself. My own calibration is;

Brightness: 50

Contrast: 75

R: 91

G: 91

B: 95

Sharpness: 100

I am currently using my HDMI to DVI cable on my MSI HAWK 7870, however I ordered a MiniDisplay Port to Display Port cable as well which should be here by tomorrow, if not Saturday and I should be able to see if there is a difference between the two cables.

I don't really like doing ratings of 1-10 or 1-5 or anything really. I am just overall really happy with the monitor and if I had the cash I would definitely get two more for Eyefinity(and the desk space...)! I'll give it a 9.5/10 for those of you who want a score, the reason it isn't a 10 is because it didn't come with a Display port cable. I have two MiniDisplay Port to Display Port adapters, but I don't have a Display Port cable, if the monitor came with one then I wouldn't have had to order a $10 cable. If you're in the market for a high quality 1080p display that is IPS and is great for all game genres, then definitely get this. I bought mine for $220 off of Newegg and it came with free shipping, but sadly it is now $260 and you have to pay $9 for shipping.

[DDR3RAMpager]

i have to agree that these monitors are awesome, i have the 27 inch version and one of the wide screen 21:9 screens, superb picture quality! great for watching blu rays!

[Drethstoff]

I don't know why I like it so much but one of the reasons that I went for a dell monitor was that many of them come with the 4 usb hubs; integrated really nicely into the design of the monitor. I really like that dell gives you the components with the monitor that the common user is going to use. They don't just send a random VGA cable, when the monitor is clearly going to be hooked up to something that clearly is transmitting a digital signal. I like nice touches.

[GoodBytes]

AWESOME! I am happy that you are happy with the monitor.

Yea, Dell only gives DisplayPort cables on the more expensive models, for some odd reason (as DisplayPort is cheap compared to HDMI due to the lack of expensive royalty fees)

But actually, if you order a Dell monitor from Dell, like over the phone, you can request that send you the cable that you want... most of the time, they give it to you for free, if it's a concern for you in using the monitor. Well.. to be exact, at least Dell Canada does that, based on my experience.

[Drethstoff]

Lol I bought mine from best buy and it came with all the cables that I would have needed. So I didn't need to contact them but I'm going to keep that in mind for next time since I will definitely be buying more dell monitors in the future lol.