We have more than a dozen of these monitors at work and I have two on my desk and one at home. The monitors arrive with an enclosed calibration sheet. Apparently they are factory calibrated now. Because I work on media I needed a color accurate monitor that could also double as a day to day working display for coding, presentations and documents. Out of the box these monitors required less calibration work than any LCD monitor or TV that I've used in the past five years. I saw none of the pink or green tinge referred to in other reviews. Nor was there any noticeable graduation of color tint from one side to another. In fact side by side the monitors appear perfectly matched and even.
The color from these monitors is very neutral, which is to say quite accurate. While they are not 'reference' quality they don't fall far short of the mark. For the price they are a good deal. You should be aware that IPS is known for accuracy and range of colors. The display is not LED backlit, because LED's do not allow the full range of colors you get from older monitors. This was a deliberate choice and the correct one. If you want to go green and simply don't care about color accuracy or vertical viewing angle, get something like the Dell G2410H.
Watching bluray disks on this monitor is also a very satisfying experience be warned that the color neutrality does not make this display as flashy as a TV or TN monitor, but what you get in return is accuracy. At home I do some moderate gaming so I watch out for latency, especially the whole-screen refresh which is always much worse than the stated response times. This is a 6mS display and I've seen it switch whole screen refresh in about 20-25mS. While this may not seem good, it is in fact considerably better than average. Anytime you see a claim of 2mS switching time, be aware it is like saying an amplifier produces 200W of "music power" where in fact it manages maybe 25W RMS at best. So gaming is very satisfactory although not a reason to buy this class of monitor.
In terms of performance, the processor behind these displays seems faster than almost anything else I've seen. The OSD is easy to use and better thought out than my 2408WFP displays. I like that the OSD puts the function graphics right next to the corresponding buttons (so for example you get a tic mark against the button used to accept a setting).
The connections for the monitor include 2 DVI, 1 display port and an hdmi port. As usual the hdmi input stops edid/hdcp support when you switch away to another DVI input. This is annoying for various reasons, but most people won't care.
I particularly loathe TN displays due to their poor color accuracy and ridiculous vertical viewing angles. So 100% of my monitors at home and work are either PVA or IPS types. I have eight at home, including HP and Samsung. I still think that Dell peaked with the 2408 but this IPS display is a worthy successor and for the price point a good deal. I would assume if you are looking here it's because you want an exceptional monitor rather than the high street vanilla variety. If so, you should be very happy with this monitor. It is not far short of perfect.
Dell has fallen from grace in recent years, in no small part due to a deteriorating web site and fierce competition. Dell's website is undermined by lack of consistency, poor navigation, stupid base configurations and a pricing structure that is undermined when you find you can buy a pre-configured machine through a retail outlet at a cheaper price than you can build the equivalent machine online. Their product lines are also poorly differentiated from their competitor's machines. But their monitors are second to none. Almost a good enough reason to buy a Dell system.
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