Glad to see the form factor getting enough love that they're updating already. I've got the U3415W and it's an utterly fantastic monitor for work. Great screen, and the USB hub tying the two USB inputs to different video inputs makes switching between multiple computers incredibly convenient.
Not sure the 17 is worth 300 more, but as time goes on that should drop. I do think the increased curve is an improvement, the wider curve on the 15 is enough to prevent the corners from being at a drastic angle to the user but not enough to place the entire screen equidistant from the user's eyes.
I love my U3415W as well, both for productivity and gaming; the extra immersion in simulation games and extra display space in most others that support 21:9 make it more compelling than 4K, IMO.
It would have been nice to see FreeSync on the new iteration, but by the time the U3419W rolls around, we should see FreeSync support across the board on the GPU side (perhaps excluding nVidia if they decide to be extra stubborn), and hopefully it's just an automatic inclusion on all non-budget monitors.
You must be seeing things. Having a curved screen is a gimmick with no actual, as far as I've read, real science behind needing one. Sure, it might look nice, but I'll stick with a flat AOC Q3477 (3440x1440).
We've tried two curved screens, in work, with the conclusion being that it's nice but not worth it at all (especially on a smaller 23" screen). Opinions differ.
Curved monitors are much more useful than curved TVs. Because the user is sitting much closer to them, the curvature has an effect in making the screen equidistant, which can help the user see small details.
Personally, I work with lots of very small text (I do a lot of programming) and I used to have trouble seeing the text in the far corners of my larger monitors. I've been using this one for over a month now and I can see every corner clearly. It's made a big difference to me.
Because more ports, including 2 with USB fast charging and the ability to daisy chain displays? Decision really only depends on what you value more, the former or whatever the Predator offers. They both seem different enough to me to warrant a place in the market.
(Personally I also like the looks of the Dell more, but there’s bound to be enough people around who’ll prefer the Predator. *shrug*)
Maybe, maybe not. It's not generally listed anywhere easy to find; but there're different grades of a given panel available as the manufacturer bins based on dead pixels, panel consistency, etc. It's one of the reasons why NEC or Ezio monitors are so much more expensive than seeming equivalent models from other companies. Both makers of premium monitors for content creators pay extra to get the best sliver of panels from the manufacturing runs. From the other direction, using lower than normal grade panels was one of the reasons why the 1440p "Korean" monitors were so much cheaper than anything else at the size/resolution a few years ago.
Image quality being better on the Dell is highly debatable; Both the Dell and the Acer theoretically use the same panels, therefore after setting both with proper calibrations they should look identical to the naked eye.
They will look different right out of the box, and many Dell monitors (particularly Ultrasharp lineup) receive a decent enough calibration at the factory.
Image quality is a safer bet on the Dell part, at the very least because of their warranty. Dell guarantees zero bright pixels for the (3-year) length of the warranty on their Ultrasharp displays, while Acer's general warranty considers anything less than 4 defective pixels per million to be acceptable, with no more than 1 in the center area of the display.
I'm not likely to shell out $1K for a monitor only to have up to 15 defective pixels be something the manufacturer just expects me to live with. Perhaps not coincidentally, I've bought nothing but Ultrasharps for over a decade now.
There's one very obvious possible reason, because you use the screen for work, where a sharper curve to help get the most out of the whole screen and daisy chaining and a USB hub that lets you hook up two computers and switch your two monitors, keyboard and mouse between them just by switching video input? I have the X34's freesync cousin, the XR341CK at home and the U3415W at work, and both screens are definitely the right screen for their use.
If your GPU matches, having *Sync is much better than +25Hz. Hell, the experience is smoother than having the same refresh display if you have even the tinyest of (micro)stutter. Source: have two freesync displays and an nvidia display.
I have been skeptical about curved screens. I know someone who got two 30-something inch curved monitors and I have to admit that the curvature does help. I have two standard 27" displays and I hardly ever us the rightmost half of the second monitor. On his superwide desktop the entire area is perfectly usable.
It really does, I've used a flat ultrawide and two curved ones. The corners on the flat one (34UM95) start being dimmer than the middle and are at a noticeable angle to the user's eyes, which is distracting, and I found myself physically shifting in my chair to account for that. The curve is really cool and useful on a monitor that you sit close to.
1900R = 1.9m radius circle, which has a steeper curve than a 3.8m radius circle, given the same viewing distance.
However, circles are circles, so if you viewed the 1900R monitor from 1.9m away and the 3800R monitor from 3.8m away, the curve would appear to be identical, but people don't place their monitor's distance according to their curvature, so both monitors would likely be viewed from the same viewing distance, leading the 1900R to appear to have a pronounced curve.
But yeah, in essence the lower the ####R number, the more pronounced the curve appears to be to any other larger ####R display, given the same viewing distance.
I wonder whether the backlight bleed at the corners is resolved in this new model. I got used to it fairly quickly on my U3415W, but it was disappointing for a premium product with a premium price tag. Overall, this form factor and pixel density is very nice.
That's a shame about backlight bleed. It's a random thing as far as I can tell, I've had good luck with my ultrawides (34UM95, U3415W, and XR341CK), and the only time the faint backlight bleed on my U3415W was noticeable at all in use was when I broke it in playing Alien: Isolation in a dark room. That was a mistake, for the record.
Please don't call it "AMD's". VESA Adaptive-Sync is a license-free standard that's backed by many companies including Intel. By calling it AMD vs NVIDIA you're pitting companies against each other and discouraging NVIDIA from supporting VESA, prolonging incompatibilities.
Well, AMD did pioneer that specific technology, just like Sony and a few other media companies pioneered Blu-Ray disk technologies. Unlike nVidia, AMD was able to get its adaptive sync technology adopted as an optional VESA standard protocol.
Besides, the statement isn't as dividing between the two companies as you make it out to be. The only thing keeping nVidia from optionally supporting the VESA adaptive sync protocol is the fact that they're actively developing walled-garden technologies (Gsync) which requires you to both invest in nVidia GPUs and nVidia approved monitors. If nVidia GPUs supported VESA adaptive sync, there'd be a lot less sales in Gsync monitors, as Freesync enabled monitors have a price differential of $100 (or more) cheaper than the Gsync counterparts.
Why can't Dell lead the way with specifying the critical spec of lag? Instead they list all these other specs that don't even matter (viewing angle, contrast ratio, preset display area?, pixel pitch, ...). Why do we have to wait until a reviewer tests lag, and then have to live with whatever accuracy they were able to achieve with their method???
>specifying the critical spec of lag 1) What do you mean by "lag"? There's several different kinds of lag when it comes to monitor. Input Lag vs. Display Lag vs. Signal Processing?
I'll assume you mean total lag, from mouse movement to movement on the screen. Lag depends on several different factors.
1) The video port you use. (Yes, in some cases some video ports will have less lag than others on a given monitor.) 2) The transition between which colors to what other colors. (Gray-To-Gray changes are slightly faster.) 3) Whether any pixel overdrive is enabled at all during the test. 4) Full-chain input lag is also affected by the responsiveness of the mouse all the way down to the monitor, which is outside the scope of the monitor's capabilities. In other words, no matter how low lag the monitor may be, it cannot reduce lag of other components such as the mouse or computer.
TFT Central articles talk in depth about the method they use for testing lag and even then it estimates the display signal processing time component. Lag comparisons are also only valid when compared using the same tests. That means that some measurements using the Leo Bodnar Lag Testor tool will receive different results than someone using the same equipment and measurement methods that TFT Central uses.
Ultimately, there's no standard in measuring "lag" and therefore, Dell has no reason to shoot themselves in the foot by advertising unofficial lag specs. If they claim 20ms of total lag, someone using a Leo Bodnar Lag Testor may come up with a figure of 32ms and complain that Dell's specification is misrepresentation of the actual product, even though they may have used a completely different tool to measure the total lag and that the tool, in fact, does result in a figure of 20ms.
You just said there's no standard and then reference Leo Bodnar.
I don't really care what method they use: CRT mirror, Leo, oscilloscope. It would be something. So we don't have to wait for somebody to review it and identify this key spec. It would also give Dell control over how its measured rather than rely on some shotty reviewer who might measure it wrong!
The Leo Bodnar Lag Tester device is not an industry-standard lag testing tool. It's simply a device sold by a very specific British company, and isn't available in the US or other countries unless it's imported.
It has an HDMI output and outputs either 1080p or 720p video to a monitor. It has a sensor at the bottom of the device which scans the monitor to detect the differential between when it generates a stimulus and the time at which the sensor detects it on the screen.
And to make matters worse, given that the Leo Bodnar Lag Tester tool always outputs a fixed resolution video signal, most monitors will experience additional lag if it's not the native resolution of the display, in which case it has to scale the video to fit the screen. In some cases, the difference between testing lag at native and non-native resolutions can be absurd, see the Dell U2417H review on TFT Central.
"Correction 16/8/16: We've had a few emails about the lag on the U2417H since we published this review, and comparisons with the measurement made at PCmag where they had used the Leo Bodnar device to measure a 10.2ms total lag. We can't really comment on the accuracy or otherwise of that device, but something didn't seem right. We will hold our hands up here as it looks like we've made a mistake with the lag measurements of this screen. The important thing is correcting that now, as we're sure it has an influence on people looking at buying this screen. Thanks to our friends at Pcmonitors(dot)info who are currently testing the HA model with the same SMTT 2.0 tool we use we've managed to figure out what has happened here and corrected our measurement results above. It seems that (very unusually) the U2417H shows an increased lag when non-native resolutions are used on the screen..."
That should illustrate the innate differences between measuring "lag" through different measurement methods.
What I am interested in is a newer model for the Dell's 5K monitor UP2715K. I hope they release a newer model that fixes the wake-from-standby issue, and with a DisplayPort 1.3.
Do you position your monitor head-on with your face, or do you keep it at a tilt? Oh, you like head-on? Then wouldn't you also want head-on with the parts of the screen that are on the edges?
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xthetenth - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Glad to see the form factor getting enough love that they're updating already. I've got the U3415W and it's an utterly fantastic monitor for work. Great screen, and the USB hub tying the two USB inputs to different video inputs makes switching between multiple computers incredibly convenient.Not sure the 17 is worth 300 more, but as time goes on that should drop. I do think the increased curve is an improvement, the wider curve on the 15 is enough to prevent the corners from being at a drastic angle to the user but not enough to place the entire screen equidistant from the user's eyes.
Black Obsidian - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
I love my U3415W as well, both for productivity and gaming; the extra immersion in simulation games and extra display space in most others that support 21:9 make it more compelling than 4K, IMO.It would have been nice to see FreeSync on the new iteration, but by the time the U3419W rolls around, we should see FreeSync support across the board on the GPU side (perhaps excluding nVidia if they decide to be extra stubborn), and hopefully it's just an automatic inclusion on all non-budget monitors.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
You must be seeing things. Having a curved screen is a gimmick with no actual, as far as I've read, real science behind needing one. Sure, it might look nice, but I'll stick with a flat AOC Q3477 (3440x1440).We've tried two curved screens, in work, with the conclusion being that it's nice but not worth it at all (especially on a smaller 23" screen). Opinions differ.
sscirrus - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Curved monitors are much more useful than curved TVs. Because the user is sitting much closer to them, the curvature has an effect in making the screen equidistant, which can help the user see small details.Personally, I work with lots of very small text (I do a lot of programming) and I used to have trouble seeing the text in the far corners of my larger monitors. I've been using this one for over a month now and I can see every corner clearly. It's made a big difference to me.
ExarKun333 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Why buy this at $1200 when you can get the Predator X34 for the same price and you get 75/100hz?arayoflight - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Not to mention the new ones from LGxype - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Because more ports, including 2 with USB fast charging and the ability to daisy chain displays? Decision really only depends on what you value more, the former or whatever the Predator offers. They both seem different enough to me to warrant a place in the market.(Personally I also like the looks of the Dell more, but there’s bound to be enough people around who’ll prefer the Predator. *shrug*)
saratoga4 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
The 2015 Dell and the Predator X34 are the same panel right? they have similar specs, identical radius of curvature, and I think they're both from LG.DanNeely - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Maybe, maybe not. It's not generally listed anywhere easy to find; but there're different grades of a given panel available as the manufacturer bins based on dead pixels, panel consistency, etc. It's one of the reasons why NEC or Ezio monitors are so much more expensive than seeming equivalent models from other companies. Both makers of premium monitors for content creators pay extra to get the best sliver of panels from the manufacturing runs. From the other direction, using lower than normal grade panels was one of the reasons why the 1440p "Korean" monitors were so much cheaper than anything else at the size/resolution a few years ago.Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Dell hardware is usually available for far less than list price...Dell displays also have better stands and probably better warranty. Image quality is probably better as well.
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Image quality being better on the Dell is highly debatable; Both the Dell and the Acer theoretically use the same panels, therefore after setting both with proper calibrations they should look identical to the naked eye.They will look different right out of the box, and many Dell monitors (particularly Ultrasharp lineup) receive a decent enough calibration at the factory.
Black Obsidian - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Image quality is a safer bet on the Dell part, at the very least because of their warranty. Dell guarantees zero bright pixels for the (3-year) length of the warranty on their Ultrasharp displays, while Acer's general warranty considers anything less than 4 defective pixels per million to be acceptable, with no more than 1 in the center area of the display.I'm not likely to shell out $1K for a monitor only to have up to 15 defective pixels be something the manufacturer just expects me to live with. Perhaps not coincidentally, I've bought nothing but Ultrasharps for over a decade now.
IdBuRnS - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
You mean people actually pay MSRP for Dell products?xthetenth - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
There's one very obvious possible reason, because you use the screen for work, where a sharper curve to help get the most out of the whole screen and daisy chaining and a USB hub that lets you hook up two computers and switch your two monitors, keyboard and mouse between them just by switching video input? I have the X34's freesync cousin, the XR341CK at home and the U3415W at work, and both screens are definitely the right screen for their use.nagi603 - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link
If your GPU matches, having *Sync is much better than +25Hz. Hell, the experience is smoother than having the same refresh display if you have even the tinyest of (micro)stutter. Source: have two freesync displays and an nvidia display.Zak - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
I have been skeptical about curved screens. I know someone who got two 30-something inch curved monitors and I have to admit that the curvature does help. I have two standard 27" displays and I hardly ever us the rightmost half of the second monitor. On his superwide desktop the entire area is perfectly usable.xthetenth - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
It really does, I've used a flat ultrawide and two curved ones. The corners on the flat one (34UM95) start being dimmer than the middle and are at a noticeable angle to the user's eyes, which is distracting, and I found myself physically shifting in my chair to account for that. The curve is really cool and useful on a monitor that you sit close to.prime2515103 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
"1900R vs 3800R"I'm assuming "R" is for radius, is that in millimeters?
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Yes, you're correct.1900R = 1.9m radius circle, which has a steeper curve than a 3.8m radius circle, given the same viewing distance.
However, circles are circles, so if you viewed the 1900R monitor from 1.9m away and the 3800R monitor from 3.8m away, the curve would appear to be identical, but people don't place their monitor's distance according to their curvature, so both monitors would likely be viewed from the same viewing distance, leading the 1900R to appear to have a pronounced curve.
But yeah, in essence the lower the ####R number, the more pronounced the curve appears to be to any other larger ####R display, given the same viewing distance.
xthetenth - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
Having used a flat and curved ultrawide, the effect is more of a noticeable angle between the corners of the screen and your eyes.ikjadoon - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Why is pixel density unknown on the 2015 model? It's also a 3440x1440p 34" monitor, right?chekk - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
I wonder whether the backlight bleed at the corners is resolved in this new model. I got used to it fairly quickly on my U3415W, but it was disappointing for a premium product with a premium price tag. Overall, this form factor and pixel density is very nice.xthetenth - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
That's a shame about backlight bleed. It's a random thing as far as I can tell, I've had good luck with my ultrawides (34UM95, U3415W, and XR341CK), and the only time the faint backlight bleed on my U3415W was noticeable at all in use was when I broke it in playing Alien: Isolation in a dark room. That was a mistake, for the record.AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
> like AMD’s FreeSync or NVIDIA’s G-SyncPlease don't call it "AMD's". VESA Adaptive-Sync is a license-free standard that's backed by many companies including Intel. By calling it AMD vs NVIDIA you're pitting companies against each other and discouraging NVIDIA from supporting VESA, prolonging incompatibilities.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
Well, AMD did pioneer that specific technology, just like Sony and a few other media companies pioneered Blu-Ray disk technologies. Unlike nVidia, AMD was able to get its adaptive sync technology adopted as an optional VESA standard protocol.Besides, the statement isn't as dividing between the two companies as you make it out to be. The only thing keeping nVidia from optionally supporting the VESA adaptive sync protocol is the fact that they're actively developing walled-garden technologies (Gsync) which requires you to both invest in nVidia GPUs and nVidia approved monitors. If nVidia GPUs supported VESA adaptive sync, there'd be a lot less sales in Gsync monitors, as Freesync enabled monitors have a price differential of $100 (or more) cheaper than the Gsync counterparts.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
Why can't Dell lead the way with specifying the critical spec of lag? Instead they list all these other specs that don't even matter (viewing angle, contrast ratio, preset display area?, pixel pitch, ...). Why do we have to wait until a reviewer tests lag, and then have to live with whatever accuracy they were able to achieve with their method???JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
>specifying the critical spec of lag1) What do you mean by "lag"? There's several different kinds of lag when it comes to monitor. Input Lag vs. Display Lag vs. Signal Processing?
I'll assume you mean total lag, from mouse movement to movement on the screen. Lag depends on several different factors.
1) The video port you use. (Yes, in some cases some video ports will have less lag than others on a given monitor.)
2) The transition between which colors to what other colors. (Gray-To-Gray changes are slightly faster.)
3) Whether any pixel overdrive is enabled at all during the test.
4) Full-chain input lag is also affected by the responsiveness of the mouse all the way down to the monitor, which is outside the scope of the monitor's capabilities. In other words, no matter how low lag the monitor may be, it cannot reduce lag of other components such as the mouse or computer.
TFT Central articles talk in depth about the method they use for testing lag and even then it estimates the display signal processing time component. Lag comparisons are also only valid when compared using the same tests. That means that some measurements using the Leo Bodnar Lag Testor tool will receive different results than someone using the same equipment and measurement methods that TFT Central uses.
Ultimately, there's no standard in measuring "lag" and therefore, Dell has no reason to shoot themselves in the foot by advertising unofficial lag specs. If they claim 20ms of total lag, someone using a Leo Bodnar Lag Testor may come up with a figure of 32ms and complain that Dell's specification is misrepresentation of the actual product, even though they may have used a completely different tool to measure the total lag and that the tool, in fact, does result in a figure of 20ms.
AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
You just said there's no standard and then reference Leo Bodnar.I don't really care what method they use: CRT mirror, Leo, oscilloscope. It would be something. So we don't have to wait for somebody to review it and identify this key spec. It would also give Dell control over how its measured rather than rely on some shotty reviewer who might measure it wrong!
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
The Leo Bodnar Lag Tester device is not an industry-standard lag testing tool. It's simply a device sold by a very specific British company, and isn't available in the US or other countries unless it's imported.It has an HDMI output and outputs either 1080p or 720p video to a monitor. It has a sensor at the bottom of the device which scans the monitor to detect the differential between when it generates a stimulus and the time at which the sensor detects it on the screen.
And to make matters worse, given that the Leo Bodnar Lag Tester tool always outputs a fixed resolution video signal, most monitors will experience additional lag if it's not the native resolution of the display, in which case it has to scale the video to fit the screen. In some cases, the difference between testing lag at native and non-native resolutions can be absurd, see the Dell U2417H review on TFT Central.
"Correction 16/8/16: We've had a few emails about the lag on the U2417H since we published this review, and comparisons with the measurement made at PCmag where they had used the Leo Bodnar device to measure a 10.2ms total lag. We can't really comment on the accuracy or otherwise of that device, but something didn't seem right. We will hold our hands up here as it looks like we've made a mistake with the lag measurements of this screen. The important thing is correcting that now, as we're sure it has an influence on people looking at buying this screen. Thanks to our friends at Pcmonitors(dot)info who are currently testing the HA model with the same SMTT 2.0 tool we use we've managed to figure out what has happened here and corrected our measurement results above. It seems that (very unusually) the U2417H shows an increased lag when non-native resolutions are used on the screen..."
That should illustrate the innate differences between measuring "lag" through different measurement methods.
stun - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
What I am interested in is a newer model for the Dell's 5K monitor UP2715K.I hope they release a newer model that fixes the wake-from-standby issue, and with a DisplayPort 1.3.
TesseractOrion - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
No Displayport 1.3? Not very '2017'...AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
What would 1.3 buy?xchaotic - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
In 5 years time this curve will be perceived as 3D is now - a largely useless gimmick.I don't get how curvature could improve my productivity....
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Do you position your monitor head-on with your face, or do you keep it at a tilt? Oh, you like head-on? Then wouldn't you also want head-on with the parts of the screen that are on the edges?Zingam - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link
You haven't actually seen one of those monitors in person?Syed_Listening - Sunday, January 29, 2017 - link
Sporadic pixelation on Monitors is an industry wide problem, Irrespective of the brand. Dell Ultrasharp Monitors appear to be a class apart..