Gateway FPD2485W: 24" LCD Beauty or Beast?
by Jarred Walton on February 22, 2007 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Subjective Evaluation
Given that most users do not have access to hardware display calibration tools, we initially spent some time using the display without ever properly calibrating it in order to gain an impression of how most users would react. We thought we would start with our subjective evaluation before getting to the actual quantitative results.
Having used a Dell 24" LCD for a while now, the first impression we got is that other than a few modified features, there wasn't a huge difference between the Gateway FPD2485W and a Dell 2407WFP - or a 2405FPW for that matter. The addition of HDCP support will be important to some people, but the 2407WFP already has that. The Gateway LCD offers an extra component input, but the Dell LCDs counter by offering integrated flash memory readers. We would also give Dell the advantage when it comes to their On-Screen Displays - and ironically we prefer the 2405FPW OSD to the 2407WFP OSD. So our initial impression is that the Gateway FPD2485W really isn't any better than the existing 24" Dell LCDs, but neither is it worse.
As we used to display more, some of the extra features that Gateway added were noticed. It seems like 1080p support should be a given on any LCD capable of running at 1920x1200 resolution, and many people would like to have 1920x1080 resolution without any stretching. The Dell monitors can run 1080p, but apparently not with HDCP and without doing stretching; the Gateway display can manage HDCP with 1080p at a 1:1 ratio. That seems like a minor consideration, but some people have gotten pretty upset about the lack of unstretched 1080p support on 1920x1200 displays.
One of the other nice aspects about the Gateway LCD is that properly reported all of the standard 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions in its driver (1920x1200, 1680x1050, and 1440x900). At times, we have found it necessary to manually add some of those resolutions on other displays. All of the displays handle those resolutions properly, but frequently only the maximum widescreen resolution shows up with Dell's 24" LCDs.
Other aspects of the display weren't quite as promising. Running non-native resolutions seem to be pretty hit or miss. 1440x900 looked fine - a little blurry, but that's to be expected - but 1680x1050 didn't look good at all. It would probably be sufficient for video content or playing games if you're not too picky, but you definitely want to stick with the native resolution if at all possible. You can always turn off any content stretching if you prefer black bars over poorly stretched content, but the Gateway LCD could definitely benefit from an improved scaling algorithm for 1680x1050 content.
It generally goes without saying that there's always a bit of backlight bleed on LCDs. For the time being, the manufacturers have not yet been able to create an LCD that can fully block all light, so pure black never ends up being completely black. In some instances, this doesn't really matter, and games can actually benefit in our opinion. However, if you're watching a dark movie with the lights out, backlight bleed can be a distraction. The FPD2485W didn't seem to be much worse than other LCDs we've used, but then we noticed that the backlighting tended to be a bit more visible in the corners of our test unit. We took a picture of the display with black content showing to highlight the effect - while the image looks gray, the important aspect is the brighter corners; in person the center is relatively black. The backlight bleed in the corners was definitely worse than elsewhere, but honestly the only time we ever noticed it was when we walked in with the lights out while the "blank screen" screensaver was active. It never bothered us during games or movie watching, but other users might be less forgiving.
Overall, the display provided a good experience, but nothing that we would consider dramatically better than competing offerings. Playing games, watching movies, or simply doing web surfing or office work never presented any difficulties. The display is somewhat brighter than older LCDs like Dell's 2405FPW, but it appears nearly identical to the more recent 2407WFP. (Once you properly adjust the brightness and contrast levels, however, any brightness "advantage" is greatly diminished.) If you already have a 24" widescreen display, there's really no reason to consider upgrading to the Gateway in our opinion, but if you're already on the market for a new 24" display its definitely worthy of consideration.
Now let's take a look at how the display does in actual quantitative testing.
Given that most users do not have access to hardware display calibration tools, we initially spent some time using the display without ever properly calibrating it in order to gain an impression of how most users would react. We thought we would start with our subjective evaluation before getting to the actual quantitative results.
Having used a Dell 24" LCD for a while now, the first impression we got is that other than a few modified features, there wasn't a huge difference between the Gateway FPD2485W and a Dell 2407WFP - or a 2405FPW for that matter. The addition of HDCP support will be important to some people, but the 2407WFP already has that. The Gateway LCD offers an extra component input, but the Dell LCDs counter by offering integrated flash memory readers. We would also give Dell the advantage when it comes to their On-Screen Displays - and ironically we prefer the 2405FPW OSD to the 2407WFP OSD. So our initial impression is that the Gateway FPD2485W really isn't any better than the existing 24" Dell LCDs, but neither is it worse.
As we used to display more, some of the extra features that Gateway added were noticed. It seems like 1080p support should be a given on any LCD capable of running at 1920x1200 resolution, and many people would like to have 1920x1080 resolution without any stretching. The Dell monitors can run 1080p, but apparently not with HDCP and without doing stretching; the Gateway display can manage HDCP with 1080p at a 1:1 ratio. That seems like a minor consideration, but some people have gotten pretty upset about the lack of unstretched 1080p support on 1920x1200 displays.
One of the other nice aspects about the Gateway LCD is that properly reported all of the standard 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions in its driver (1920x1200, 1680x1050, and 1440x900). At times, we have found it necessary to manually add some of those resolutions on other displays. All of the displays handle those resolutions properly, but frequently only the maximum widescreen resolution shows up with Dell's 24" LCDs.
Other aspects of the display weren't quite as promising. Running non-native resolutions seem to be pretty hit or miss. 1440x900 looked fine - a little blurry, but that's to be expected - but 1680x1050 didn't look good at all. It would probably be sufficient for video content or playing games if you're not too picky, but you definitely want to stick with the native resolution if at all possible. You can always turn off any content stretching if you prefer black bars over poorly stretched content, but the Gateway LCD could definitely benefit from an improved scaling algorithm for 1680x1050 content.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
It generally goes without saying that there's always a bit of backlight bleed on LCDs. For the time being, the manufacturers have not yet been able to create an LCD that can fully block all light, so pure black never ends up being completely black. In some instances, this doesn't really matter, and games can actually benefit in our opinion. However, if you're watching a dark movie with the lights out, backlight bleed can be a distraction. The FPD2485W didn't seem to be much worse than other LCDs we've used, but then we noticed that the backlighting tended to be a bit more visible in the corners of our test unit. We took a picture of the display with black content showing to highlight the effect - while the image looks gray, the important aspect is the brighter corners; in person the center is relatively black. The backlight bleed in the corners was definitely worse than elsewhere, but honestly the only time we ever noticed it was when we walked in with the lights out while the "blank screen" screensaver was active. It never bothered us during games or movie watching, but other users might be less forgiving.
Overall, the display provided a good experience, but nothing that we would consider dramatically better than competing offerings. Playing games, watching movies, or simply doing web surfing or office work never presented any difficulties. The display is somewhat brighter than older LCDs like Dell's 2405FPW, but it appears nearly identical to the more recent 2407WFP. (Once you properly adjust the brightness and contrast levels, however, any brightness "advantage" is greatly diminished.) If you already have a 24" widescreen display, there's really no reason to consider upgrading to the Gateway in our opinion, but if you're already on the market for a new 24" display its definitely worthy of consideration.
Now let's take a look at how the display does in actual quantitative testing.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
77 Comments
View All Comments
strikeback03 - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
You skipped quoting the rest of the paragraph:Optimal brightness setting for LCDs is often stated to be 120 cd/m^2. So in many circumstances the extra brightness of the Gateway isn't useful.
JarredWalton - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
400 cd/m2 is the most I could imagine using, and once both LCDs were adjusted the actual white point was a lot closer - meaning even though the maximum on the Gateway was twice as high, once calibrated I didn't use anywhere near that white level. 300+ cd/m2 can be almost painful to look at in my opinion, and 400 or higher is generally overkill.The point is, the only reason Gateway and others seem to have such insane brightness levels is to get better contrast scores. Most people will run around 200 cd/m2, give or take probably 50. But if your black is only able to reach a minimum of 0.35 cd/m2, that means the contrast ratio would be somewhere between 500:1 and 600:1. The "solution" is to simply crank up the maximum brightness, so you can claim a 1000:1 (or even 1200:1) contrast ratio. More is better, right? Except, it's not, because hardly anyone will actually use those super-bright whites.
Also worth noting is that if you max out brightness and contrast (max white level), the color accuracy scores go to hell and the whites all run together, so everything from about 200 or higher on the RGB scale ends up as the same level of white. At maximum contrast, the recommended calibrated brightness (according to Monaco Optix) is 20%, where if I choose 60 contrast the recommended brightness is 61%. As mentioned in the review, the overall color accuracy was better with contrast set to 60 as opposed to 100.
The maximum brightness (100% contrast) was even higher than reported: 500 cd/m2 was pretty close, but black went up to 0.45 cd/m2. Depending on the room you work in, higher brightness may be okay or not. I prefer running closer to 200-300 personally.
DigitalFreak - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
All I can say is that I love my 2405!Painman - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
Besides the already requested input lag tests, modern LCD reviews usually include at least a few gaming tests... some commentary on what kind of visual artifacts are evident with fast moving objects. I had 3 of these Gateways (returned for various defects) and tried to like it, but aside from other problems the smearing was just too much to take... green and brown smudges always popping up in my face. I bought myself an IPS based NEC and I ain't looking back.This isn't a very good gamer panel... thinking about it now sitting in front of this NEC, I can't really say the Gateway FPD2485W is a good ANYTHING panel, tbh.
Aquila76 - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
If you want to see something that'll blow your mind on this display, fire up HL2. At the menu screen, where it's out of focus as it loads the game, it looks like you've dropped to 256 Color mode and are 'dithering' the image. I noticed the same effect when hitting the Nitro in a couple Need for Speed games.knirfie - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
This monitor features DCDi by Farudja, why is there no mention of this in the review (or did I miss it?). And how is the videoquality/deinterlacing over composite/svideo/component?DigitalFreak - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
Page 3:Souka - Friday, February 23, 2007 - link
get an apple cinema display and make sure its calibrated properly....nothing better IMHO... use them all the time at work. Some folk have those Dell units...yuk....color is off, things seem dull, despite all calibration attempts.
Good thing they're just doing web page design and programming....
dcr - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
Could you test WoW and see if you get this "flashing" in the terrain?chizow - Thursday, February 22, 2007 - link
Jarred, nice review of the 2485W, was wondering if you wouldn't mind posting your settings after you calibrated your display with Optix. Reason I ask is that myself and many others felt the color accuracy out of the box on this panel were horrible, especially compared to other displays. I was able to get better results by asking what settings people were using, and obviously what looks good to them will vary person to person and card to card, but it was a big help.Also, it might be worth noting what month your panel was made. There were some serious issues with this panel in early production runs (November), but each successive month seems to correct problems and greatly reduce other problems. Backlight bleed seems to greatly diminish as well as an annoying PSU buzzing problem with newer models.
Lastly, I was glad you mentioned the 1:1 pixel mapping, but I think there needs to be greater emphasis on this aspect of 24" panels or any panel able to do 1920x1080. In the era of HD with all of the inputs this monitor and some competitor models provide (BenQ, Dell Rev. A04), the ability to do 1:1 is a major consideration for the enthusiast. If you have multiple HD capable devices (HDTV, PS3, Xbox360, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) this monitor can basically serve as your entertainment center, all while maintaining its main functionality as a massive 2.3 Megapixel PC display. There's really few other tech-enabling devices I've purchases that can compete with this panel's versatility and functionality.