Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/4880/dell-u2311h-affordable-eips
Dell U2311H: E-IPS, Full Adjustments, and DisplayPort
by Chris Heinonen on September 27, 2011 12:20 AM ESTFor years now Dell has been one of the few companies that consistently offers a range of displays using IPS panels for desktop displays instead of only the more affordable TN panels. Now with the availability of e-IPS panels, Dell has been able to offer even more models and lower the price all the way down to $319 for a 23” 1080p display.
The U2311H uses a very similar base to what Dell has been using for years that lets the monitor simply clip in, and allows for rotation to be used as a portrait display as well. The left side of the display has a pair of USB 2.0 ports, to go with the pair located on the bottom of the display. Also on the bottom of the display are DisplayPort, DVI, and VGA inputs, as well as the power input. Located on the front of the display on the right side are the menu control buttons that are unlabeled and nicely disappear into the bezel. The U2311H can adjust in height vertically and has both tilt and swivel adjustments as well, which should make it able to fit into most spaces. It might not be flashy but it gets the job done.
With all the above features, you’ll note that a few items are missing. There’s no HDMI port, making this less desirable as an all-in-one display for use with PCs as well as game consoles. There are also no speakers, though given the quality of most LCD speakers we don’t feel like we’re really missing out. In a similar vein, there’s no audio out, so if you were to use DisplayPort for carrying audio there’s no way to get the audio from the display to an external source. There are perhaps minor omissions, but most of Dell’s higher-end LCDs include such features and they’re worth pointing out. Here’s the full rundown of the LCD specs:
Dell U2311H Features and Specifications | |
Video Inputs |
1 x DVI-D w/HDCP 1 x DisplayPort 1.1a 1 x VGA |
Panel Type | e-IPS 6-bit + AFRC |
Pixel Pitch | 0.265 mm |
Colors | 16.7 Million |
Brightness | 300 nits (typical) |
Contrast Ratio | 1,000:1 (typical) |
Response Time | 8 ms (GTG) |
Viewable Size | 23" (58.4 cm) |
Resolution | 1920x1080 at 60Hz |
Viewing Angle | 178 degrees horizontal and vertical |
Backlight | 4-CCFL edge-light system |
Power Consumption (operation) | 33W (typical) |
Power Consumption (standby) | Less than 1W |
Screen Treatment | Antiglare with hard-coating 3H |
Height-Adjustable | 3.94" Height Adjustment |
Tilt | Yes, range not specified |
Pivot | Yes: Landscape and Portrait |
Swivel | Yes, range not specified |
VESA Wall Mounting | 100 mm x 100 mm |
Dimensions w/ Base (WxHxD) |
21.57” x 14.02” x 7.25” (548 x 356 x 184 mm) |
Weight | 14.22 lbs with stand (6.46 kg) |
Additional Features |
USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Hub (1 USB upstream port and 4 USB downstream ports) |
Limited Warranty | 3 years |
Accessories | Power Cable, DVI Cable, USB Cable, VGA Cable |
Price |
$319.00 MSRP Online Starting at $285 (Plus S/H) |
OSD Menus
Dell has had a nice OSD setup for a couple of generations now that uses four soft keys to control all the settings. Brightness and Contrast of course allows access to those controls, but the majority of the settings are located under the Color Settings menu. Input Color Format can switch between RGB and YCbCr when using the DVI input. Gamma allows a choice between PC gamma (typically 2.2) and Mac (1.8)—though note that since OSX 10.6 the Mac gamma standard has changed to the more common 2.2 gamma setting. Mode selection allows you to choose between Standard, Multimedia, Game, Warm, Cool, and Custom (RGB) modes. If you choose the Custom mode you get the option to calibrate the white balance at a single point using Red, Green and Blue gain controls. Here's a gallery of the various OSD settings.
If you are using any input other than the DSUB15, most of the choices under Display Settings are locked off since they aren’t needed with a digital video signal. Other settings simply allow you to customize the menu interface, including position, time out, transparency, and switching between landscape and portrait orientations. Finally the personalization menu will let you change the default behaviors of the soft buttons to whatever settings you need to frequently access, though Auto-Adjust and Input Source are the only two choices available beyond the defaults. A quick selection of Portrait/Landscape orientation for the menu would also be nice for people that often move the monitor position around.
For an in-monitor calibration, the Dell offers very little beyond the single RGB control if you are in custom mode. This does let you dial in a specific point (I chose pure white) to the D65 standard, or another color temperature if that is required. Beyond this, the gamma only offers two settings and there is no RGB Low option for calibrating another point, so this is as far as you can go without using software for the calibration.
Viewing Angles
One of the hallmarks for IPS displays has been wide viewing angles and the Dell 2311H keeps this up. Moving off to the sides, and from top to bottom, brightness and color stay at very good levels until you start to move to extreme angles where you wouldn’t be able to use the display for work anyway. This also allows you to easily use the monitor in the portrait orientation without having large color or brightness shifts while reading or editing a document. As panels gets larger, having these viewing angles becomes more and more important.
Color Accuracy
Next up I went to calibrate the monitor using an i1D2 colorimeter from Xrite and a copy of ColorEyes Pro using a MacBook Air as the test platform. Initially I attempted to do the calibration on my Windows 7 machine, but my video card seemed to have an issue with the LUTs and ColorEyes, as the dE performance got worse after the calibration than before. Performance on the Mac seemed to be correct and more in line with what is expected after a calibration.
One downside of ColorEyes is that it doesn’t specify the DeltaE formula used and so it is generally believed to be dE 1976 instead of the more recent dE 1994 or dE 2000 formulas that take into account perceptual factors better. With dE 1976 any value below 1.0 is considered perfect for all practical considerations, while a value below 2.0 is considered good enough for print applications. Values below 3.0 are considered invisible to the naked eye and are really the target for all calibrations.
First we looked at the uncalibrated performance with the monitor set to 200 nits and using the include ICM profile from Dell. As you can see, we wind up way off our target dE of 3.0 with an average of 8.6 and a peak value of 14.85. Compared to some other displays this actually isn’t too bad, but it’s nothing you would want to use for serious color work.
For the initial calibration, we used the Custom (RGB) mode on the Dell and calibrated the 100% White Point using the RGB gain controls to be as accurate as possible. We then set calibration targets of 200 nits, D65 for a white point, and a gamma target of 2.2. Once calibrated, we compared the results using the GregTag Macbeth color checker patterns.
Once we calibrate the Dell, we see our average dE has dropped all the way down to 1.56 and the peak dE is at 5.03. Another thing to keep in mind is that the patches that are generating the highest dE values are ones that are made up mostly of blue. Given your choice, blue is where you want the majority of your dE to occur and green is where you want the least to occur, as the blue light is much lower in light output than red or green, and so errors are not nearly as visible to your eye as they would be in the other colors. Additionally, since the blue light output is much lower, it’s also harder for a colorimeter like the i1D2 to read and therefore more subject to reading errors than green would be. This could account for some of this error and a meter with better dark reading support could resolve that, though most people won’t have one of those for calibrating.
For print work, we then calibrated the monitor using the same specifications, only with a target of 100 nits instead of 200 nits. For a lit room most people would consider this to be too dark of an image, but for print work its much closer to what your actual output would look like.
Our average dE here is almost identical at 1.56 but the peak dE is down to 4.75. Again these spikes are occurring in that range that is heavily blue and less noticeable by the human eye. There is a good chance that for the majority of your work you will not have a color error that is visible to the naked eye.
Color Gamut
The Dell measured just below 70% of the Adobe RGB gamut, about where we would expect for a panel with a normal CCFL backlight. For most users working in an sRGB color space, 70% can actually be better than 100%, as higher color gamuts can produce oversaturated colors in non-color-aware applications.
One thing that is different about the panel in the Dell is that it’s a newer E-IPS panel that only has 6-bits of color depth instead of 8-bits, which would typically only provide access to 65,536 colors and not the usual 16.7 million. What this means is that to effectively display all of those colors and shades, the pixels will have to quickly shift intensity levels instead of being able to remain solid at one level. For colors that don’t need to use this method of dithering, such as white, they will look rock solid, but if you look at a black to white gradient, you can notice shades of gray where this dithering is happening. Used at a reasonable distance, you might not notice this at all, but close up you will probably be able to see it. I wasn’t particularly bothered by this behavior, but some people might be.
Color Uniformity
All monitors typically calibrate using a single point in the center of the display, but of course you don’t do all of your work there. Color and brightness uniformity can vary across the panel by a large margin as the LCD backlights are typically positioned at the edges of the screen, except for rare cases, which doesn’t allow for a perfectly even distribution of light. Here we see how the Dell does by taking our 200 nits profile and once again running our color checked at nine different locations on the screen.
The Dell has a low average dE of 1.51 in the center for the display and that creeps up as we move towards the edges, with a peak dE of 3.39 in the upper left corner of the unit. Overall the majority of the error is below 3 and would not be visible to the naked eye, but above what we would prefer it would be for print work. Just like with the initial reading, you can see it is those colors that are made up mostly of blue light that are causing the issue and so the numbers might be a little deceptive in how bad the problem is.
Brightness and Contrast
When pushed to its maximum brightness level with maximum contrast, the Dell U2311H can manage to put out over 300 cd/m2 of light from a pure white screen. This is far brighter than most of us would like (other than perhaps Brian), and it does result in very washed out highlights, mostly related to the contrast level. This isn’t a level you would work at often, but if you needed to because of direct sunlight, the Dell could manage that. When keeping the contrast a maximum but reducing the brightness down to 0, the light output drops down to just over 100 cd/m2 whichis much easier on the eyes.
At these same brightness and contrast levels, the light output of an all black screen is 0.303 nits with max brightness, and 0.098 with minimum brightness. I should note that these measurements were taken with an Xrite i1DisplayPro meter instead of the i1Display2, as it does much better reading lower levels of light output. Unfortunately ColorEyesPro does not support this meter at this point and so I couldn’t use it for the whole calibration.
Looking at the On/Off contrast ratio that this creates, we see that both of these produce right around 1,000:1, so you can choose your preferred light output and you will likely get a contrast ratio right around the same level.
Brightness Uniformity
With 200 nits of light output in the middle of the screen for a white image, the light output drops as low as 161 nits on the left edge of the screen, while staying close to 200 nits on the right side of the display. I’m not sure if it is the layout of the backlights or something else causing this, but the light output is clearly less on the left side of the panel.
With a black screen, we see the same results. Light output is again higher on the right side of the display and lower at the left, with the upper-right corner being the brightest in both cases.
Power Consumption
Since the Dell still uses a traditional CCFL backlight and not an LED backlight, the power consumption falls in line with other traditional 23” displays. At max brightness the Dell consumes 41 watts while at minimum brightness it only consumes 18 watts of power. Heat didn’t seem to be an issue, and while I have no way to measure it, even after sitting here at the display for 2+ hours while I work on this review, neither the screen nor the rear of the panel was very hot to the touch.
Conclusions
Overall the Dell U2311H did a good job as a display, especially when you consider how affordable you can find it available for. The backlight uniformity leaves a bit to be desired, but the dE level was capable of getting to a level that was suitable for print work. The contrast ratio of 1000:1 was very nice compared to other monitors in the same price class as well. While an HDMI input would be nice for those looking to have it serve double duty as a display for gaming or movies, a simple HDMI to DVI adapter will resolve that since it lacks speakers anyway.
We have no problem recommending the Dell U2311H as a step up from the numerous mediocre TN-based LCDs that currently sell for under $200. However, there are other E-IPS LCDs available for under $200, so what you're really paying for here isn't E-IPS but instead it's the other features. What might those be? For one, getting a 23" display with height/swivel/tilt adjustments usually bumps the price up around $50. The other major "extra"? DisplayPort.
Ironically, the royalty-free DisplayPort tends to only show up on more expensive LCDs—a quick search at Newegg for instance shows that the pricing of the U2311H is right in line with other offerings that feature full adjustability and DisplayPort. If you happen to need/want DP support rather than HDMI, it's an important distinction, but you'll pay for the privilege.