Dell U2713HM - Unbeatable performance out of the box
by Chris Heinonen on October 4, 2012 12:00 AM ESTDell U2713HM Input Lag and Power Use
As I stated on the Nixeus review, since I don’t have a CRT that can do 1440p resolution I’m stuck testing these higher resolution displays at 1080p. Because of that the scaler gets involved, and that can lead to extra delays that you might not see if you run at 1440p. The pixel response should be the same, but the lag could vary from being the same to perhaps the low 1-2ms we see from some displays like the HP ZR2740w.
Here the Dell performs almost identically to the Nixeus that we recently reviewed, which means bad things for gamers. We have over a full frame of input lag, and then 11ms of pixel response time to bring our total lag up to 29.5ms, which is nearly two full frames on a 60 fps game. While the U2713HM is fine for everything else, for games that require fast reflexes and can’t deal with two frames of lag you’ll probably need to look elsewhere. I know some consider two frames to be acceptable and some consider anything over one frame to be unacceptable, so you will have to decide what you can live with.
On the power use side, I don’t know what Dell did to this display but it is stingy when it comes to energy use. Even with the backlight at maximum and the screen pure white, we see only 45 watts of power being used. With the backlight at minimum this drops down to 18 watts of power. No 27” display in here has come close to this yet, and there are 23” and 24” class displays that almost use as much power as the 27” Dell does. I guess the eco consciousness at Dell goes beyond just packaging to the actual power use of the monitor as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
101 Comments
View All Comments
Dug - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Thanks for doing this review. I appreciate the time and work put into it.This is exactly what I've been looking for.
ryko - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
sorry i meant we are seeing 10-20ms on models with a scaler...still not enough to be that concerned abouthaukionkannel - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
There is a lot of talk that imput lag may be due scaler. Any chance of getting allso 1440 mode imput lag in comparison. Not all monitors can do it, but it would be nice to see... or is is impossible because you can not get comparison from ctr?cheinonen - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
No 1440p CRT available means no available no-lag reference display unfortunately. I'll be done with 27" displays here soon I imagine and back to displays that can be tested for lag.Pessimism - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Since you are running several color calibrations with extremely expensive tools, why not provide the resulting ICC profiles to readers on the website? I'm certain the demand is there.cheinonen - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
I don't provide an ICC profile for a simple reason: Monitors (and projectors and TVs and everything else I review and calibrate) are manufactured with a certain tolerance on every component inside of them. If I pull 10 displays off the line and put the same settings into them, I'm almost certain to get 10 different results. I have no way of knowing if the settings from one display are going to benefit or detract from another display.I fully realize I can put up the ICC file and say "Here it is, use at your own risk", but I also know that same ICC file is going to wind up hosted somewhere, or passed to someone as an "AnandTech U2713HM Calibration File" with no explanation as to the fact that it might make your display less accurate, and then a user will either wonder why their display is worse than before, or believe that the review it came from was obviously flawed because that file didn't work for them.
Basically, there's no way to get a display more accurate aside from having your display calibrated, and sharing settings is just as likely to make a display worse as to making it better. I always mention the preset mode I used for testing, as I try to find the most accurate one, but that's the long reason behind no ICC profiles being shared.
Despoiler - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
TFT Central has a review of this monitor and they put up their calibrated ICC files for download.Guspaz - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
It's bizarre that this review does not compare against what is quite possibly the most relevant monitor to compare against, the U2711, which the U2713HM would seem to replace. Dell still sells the U2711, for that matter. Surely it's relevant to see how this model compares to the previous model, since this review gives no indication beyond cost of why somebody should choose the U2713HM over the U2711.twtech - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Dell usually runs periodic sales though, so I'm hoping I can do it for under $2k.secretmanofagent - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Hey, I might have missed this mentioned in the article. Does it have the same antiglare coating that the U2412M has? I have one, and the spotty/blur that it causes on white backgrounds can be pretty annoying.