In a nutshell
Here, we compare the Dell 2407WFP and Samsung SM 244T, two 24" Full HD monitors equipped with fast 6ms panels. We followed the usual standard testing procedure and added two new parts; what kind of manual color correction can we do and which colors are still invisible even after calibration. Testing the Dell and Samsung 24" monitors
A monitor has rarely benefited from such a buzz on the Internet and we read many things about it in the past few months. On the one hand, there is the manufacturer’s request that no one write anything about them before its official announcement, which happened a few days ago. And on the other hand it’s been months since we knew its name, saw pictures of it and even found its characteristics. Many people have been waiting for this monitor. It’s the Dell 2407WFP.
Why have so many people fantasized about this monitor? Because it looks amazingly good. The previous 2405FPW (the letters are different and it’s no mistake) was up until not so long ago the best 24" monitor on the market. It had incredible ergonomics (vertically adjustable, pivot mode, video inputs, memory card player, USB hub…), an attractive design and a price inferior to most on the market. The successor, the 2407WFP is of course even better.
For the same amount of money, you now have a faster panel and very aggressive design.
Everyone is very excited about this screen, but there is also a very serious competitor released a few weeks ago by Samsung, the SyncMaster 244T. How serious is the competition? The components and panels are the same! It also has all video inputs, a USB hub, vertically adjustable foot, pivot mode…The only part missing is the integrated memory card player.
The tests
As we said above, two new tests have been included. Standard color quality is analyzed even more as we measure 18 patches of colors for dominance in red, green and blue to have in the end the best and more accurate possible manual adjustment. This isn´t as good as a calibration, but it is better than initial colors or a correction just based on eyesight and without any tools. On the other part of color tests, we added another in the collaboration area with
Colour Confidence. The profile created is now opposed to the reference CMJN profiles for professional printers, the ISO Coated Fogra27. The result is visual and easily interpreted as the coloured part will be displayed by the monitor. Gray areas will be inaccessible to the monitor and the printer might get variations of colors in this area on paper. This should be interesting
For other tests, as usual we have color fidelity, calibration, game reaction time, video quality (SD, HD 720p, HD 1080p), ergonomics, viewing angles, and the quality of interpolation.
For color fidelity we use the LaCie Blue Eye Pro colorimeter, based on the Gretag tool and coupled with the new LaCie software suite. More evolved than the previous version, this helps us to compare a monitor’s display quality (color spectrum and DeltaE) in standard settings and after calibration. Results are sometimes surprising as it’s often best to take the time to manually adjust colors (or at least contrast, brightness and color temperature).
For game tests, after developing a response time measuring procedure last year with a probe and an oscilloscope, we eventually came to the conclusion that the measurements weren’t representative of what we actually saw on the screen. We then developed a new test procedure in the summer of 2005, based on pictures of images on the monitor. In this way we can capture afterglow in two environments. The first is between bright colors and the second is for black and white (like in wire frame mode). The software used is
Pixel Persistence Analyzer (or PixPerAn for regular users). Pictures showing these ghosting effects are captured with a Canon 350D at a shutter speed of 1/1000 s. We take 50 pictures in burst mode for each test to precisely measure the progression of afterglow between images. This time results are consistent with what we see in games. Finally, practical tests are the same in games, HD and DVD video, web surf etc.
The test computer is self-assembled and has an AMD Athlon XP3500+ processor and NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT card.
