Dell G2410H Review: A Green 24" LCD
by Brian Klug on May 7, 2010 1:43 AM ESTG2410H - Nature’s Best Friend?
Thus far, the G2410H hasn’t really been able to shine - display performance isn’t bad, but it’s just average. Sure, it can hold its own among other more expensive contenders, but what about that green feeling you’re paying a $330 MSRP for? Thankfully, the G2410H really does impress when it comes to power draw.
We measure power consumption using a Kill-A-Watt EZ at the wall while just displaying the Windows desktop using minimum brightness and maximum brightness.
This blows away the other CCFL LCDs we have in our testbench. Clearly, Dell’s design decisions focused around really making this monitor a power sipper, and that it does. Our testing here verifies the power specifications given by Dell back on page one, besting the case with maximum brightness.
Now, what about that ambient light sensor?
Dell provides three different “Energy Modes,” which basically are scale factors the LCD uses to decide on a particular brightness. The LCD ships with the most economical of the three enabled, which is way too dim for my personal taste. There’s also a bar graph marked “Energy Gauge” which does a surprisingly good job of reporting power draw. Glancing back and forth between this and the Kill-A-Watt, it was apparent that there’s some real power monitoring circuitry at play here and not just a dumb brightness setting.
For these numbers, I measured the luminance of the room where I was testing (an average office with a number of full spectrum CFLs). I averaged about 22 nits of brightness using the i1D2.
| Dell G2410H - Power Consumption | |||||
| Energy Mode | Brightness - White (nits) | Brightness - Dark (nits) | Power Draw (watts) | ||
| Energy Smart Plus | 94 | 0.13 | 10 | ||
| Energy Smart | 108 | 0.14 | 12 | ||
| Standard (manual) | 259 | 0.32 | 20 | ||
| Standard (maximum) | 311 | 0.37 | 23 | ||
| Standard (minimum) | 78 | 0.09 | 10 | ||
Even in my relatively well-lit room, letting the ambient light sensor decide on a brightness results in luminance intensities at about our print (100 nits) standard. Quite honestly, this is way too dim for my taste, unless you happen to live in a cave or have hypersensitive eyes. For office work, the “Energy Smart” setting might be acceptable, but being uncomfortable and possibly straining your eyes isn’t worth the 8 watts of difference - just go unplug something else in the house and pay yourself with some well deserved photons. Keep in mind that if you do turn the lights off, the intensity is going to drop even more, and even with the lights off on the most conservative of settings, power use doesn’t drop below 10 watts.
No matter how you stack it, the Energy Smart Plus and Energy Smart settings seem very close to each other for meriting two different settings; a bit more range would be a welcome tweak.
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tno - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
"unless you’re using an HDMI to DVI cable, you should be running the LCD at native resolution."I am currently using two HDMI to DVI cables in my HT set-up. HTPC (DVI) to receiver (HDMI) and receiver (HDMI) to old Sony XBR 1080i (DVI). This is all HDCP comliant so I don't have any issues. Since I'm moving very far away I will be leaving my tried and true Sony and in the interim between moving and getting a NEW TV I picked u a rather cheap OLD TV (Dell W3000). This older model does not have HDMI either so I will still be using an HDMI to DVI cable. Is this a bad thing?
I'm running at 720p out of the PC on this 13//x768 dislay? Will this be a problem? Should I set the PC to the native rez? Thanks for the article BTW. Great job. I have loved my CRTs, (the XBR plus a behemoth 2048x1536 NEC model for my PC) and hung to them more because of the bargains that they were. I gladly traded the exertion required to lift them for the cheap price and better PQ was just bonus. But the prospect of moving them has lessened their appeal so I will be tube free from now on.
tno
quiksilvr - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
I'll state what I stated before when I commented on the release of the G2410 and heard about these "letdowns".Ahem...
If there are no speakers, WHY DO YOU NEED HDMI? It has HDCP compliant DVI-D. Just spend the whopping $5 and get the DVI-D to HDMI adapter. It's not like this thins is 2560x1400. Its a run of the mill 1080p screen.
aftlizard - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Why do I need HDMI if I don't need audio? Because I don't want to spend the extra money if I don't have to. If I have the cable already or want to spend money on the cable I can find hdmi cables cheaper than a converter or even an hdmi-dvi cable.aftlizard - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Why do I need HDMI if I don't need audio? Because I don't want to spend the extra money if I don't have to. If I have the cable already or want to spend money on the cable I can find hdmi cables cheaper than a converter or even an hdmi-dvi cable.james.jwb - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
Next monitor upgrade: 24-inch or larger, IPS or better, 120 Hz performance.When that comes I'll be happy ;)
JarredWalton - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
I don't know that anyone has done IPS (or PVA/MVA for that matter) at anything above 60Hz. I could be wrong, I freely admit this, but virtually every 120Hz display I've heard about was a TN panel. Blech. When you consider the pixel response times, though, it starts to make a bit of sense. 120Hz should be doable with the 6ms IPS panels, but the 2ms TN panels might switch a bit faster. (Note that in our testing, even the 2ms TN panels still show much 2-3 frames.)Anyway, I'm with you. I'd like 120Hz IPS, with a high resolution 30" panel. LOL. I think I'd need quad-link DVI to do that.
james.jwb - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
display port should do it?svojoe - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
for off griders like myself this is sooooo awesome. 13 watts! Holy crap thats such low power consumption I can not feel bad about draining down my batteries!Brian Klug - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
Out of curiosity, are you on a PV system or something else? I'm moving into a place that's entirely solar powered with a 1:1 PV offset. I'm glad there's someone out there excited by the prospect of a low-power monitor, I mean, 11 watts still is impressive to me as well. Especially considering the brightness you get for that amount of power.-Brian Klug
Porksmuggler - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
Thanks for putting the panel type TN on the first page. $339 for a TN with no HDMI, no thanks. The 1080P isn't puzzling at all, it's all about saving on panel cost. Anyone feel like doing the math on how long you would have to use this "green" LCD to make up for the sticker bloat?