Dell U3014 LCD Review
by Chris Heinonen on April 15, 2013 2:00 PM ESTThe last Dell monitor that I reviewed, the U2713HM, really impressed me by having a very accurate sRGB mode out of the box. It was the best performing one that we had seen to that point, but since then we’ve switched the way that we evaluate monitors and now use dE2000 data that can’t be directly compared with previously tested displays.
Pre-Calibration with the Dell, the sRGB mode was the most accurate, though I did look at the grayscale on every other mode to be sure before I selected it. The Multimedia preset was the closest other than the sRGB, but color accuracy on it wasn’t nearly as good as it was on the sRGB mode. Looking at the grayscale data, we see that there is a bit of a green push there, and our average CCT winds up at 6389 and not quite the ideal 6503K.
The Gamma has a small dip at 5%, indicating that the gamma is an sRGB target and not our 2.2 target, but there is also a large drop at 95% that I see many times in displays. This indicates that the very peak whites are spaced too tightly together, possibly by an incorrect contrast setting or something else in the display electronics. You’ll see highlights be slightly washed out as a result.
The grayscale dE hovers right around 3-5 for most of the range and has an average dE2000 of 4.3. I did measure a contrast ratio of 905:1 in this mode, with whites just over 200 cd/m2 and black at 0.2225 cd/m2. The grayscale is good here but not excellent.
Colors are much better, with the major errors being in white, but overall the luminance levels are very good. That's the most important aspect and the color errors are low. If we could remove white from the average it would be far below the 2.14 we got, but color performance is very good. They also match up pretty close to the targets, with just slight under-saturation in some colors.
The Gretag Macbeth numbers are very good for a non-calibrated display, and we once again see that the grayscale is the majority of the issue here, with colors being much better. That’s a bit surprising to me as often it’s the other way around, but that is just what we see this time, along with some more slight under-saturation. I included the luminance chart here for the Gretag Macbeth data just to show that the U3014 is dead-on accurate with the luminance levels, which is what you want to see.
Finally when we check out the saturations, we see that some colors are very good, like Yellow and Green, but Red has a noticeable lack of saturation across the gamut, and the issues get larger as we get closer to 0%. These aren’t awful numbers, but they're not as good as we could see.
In the default sRGB mode, the U3014 is still very good, and as we get more displays in for testing I think the quality of those numbers will just improve as we see what other displays manage on our new benchmark. Keep in mind that these are all out-of-box numbers so far, where many displays end up close to double digits for DeltaE.
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zer0future - Monday, April 15, 2013 - link
Would you guys be able to review the new monitors from Monoprice.com? Here is the link for anyone interested.http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.as...
The 27 inch model apparently uses the same panel as the apple cinema display. These prices are also quite competitive so they have me interested.
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
I'm talking to them, though I personally think the 30" would make for a more interesting review as we've covered a lot of the 27" IPS panels now. Also, if you look back at the two LG 29EA93 reviews that I did, you can see that the panel only makes up a small part of the performance of a display. The corresponding electronics are a huge factor in performance, so I don't recommend just looking at the panel to determine the performance.Trefugl - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
It is great to hear that you are in talks with Monoprice! I would be grateful for a review of either model, but would be more interested in the one with an OSD. I'm concerned with having a wide gamut screen that has no sRGB mode or color correction on board, tho the potentially reduced input lag of not having processing is alluring as well.cheinonen - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I don't believe any of the Monoprice displays are wide gamut, only sRGB gamut. It looks like the 30" one has a 10-bit panel, but that's certainly 8-bit with AFRC, which might give you better gradients, but won't give you a wider gamut.B3an - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Chris, i'd really appreciate it if you could help me as i'm thinking of buying this monitor. Do you have any idea at all if the i1Display 2 will calibrate this monitor well? It comes with Eye-One Match 3 software.And what software would you recommend most for calibration? dispcalGUI?
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Personally, I wouldn't use an i1Display2 anymore for color accuracy. With the design of the i1Display2, and the fact that they haven't been made for a year or two now, the filters degrade over time so that anything it is reading now may or may not be accurate at all. It can read light levels correctly, so white and black light output, but not the colors of light. I have a pair of them here and testing them now compared to the i1Pro, I see dE2000 errors > 10 in the grayscale using it. The standard calibrated modes are going to likely be more accurate.I like dispcalGUI. I haven't used the most recent version, but I've been using it for a long time now and they do a great job adding more and more features to it.
von Krupp - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
You know what's missing from this monitor? Support for 5.1 output like its out-going predecessor. I make great use of that feature on my U2711, and not having it here is a major deal-breaker. I run my Xbox 360 to the monitor via HDMI and pipe the audio out through the analogue 5.1 jacks to Logitech X-530s. I would not be able to do that with these new monitors.I might be a hold-out, but one of the primary selling points for me on the U3011 and U2711 was the fact that, for a PC monitor, they offered a diverse array connectivity. You can do HDMI, composite, component, DVI, VGA, and DP all on the same monitor. You can also, as mentioned, earlier, output to analogue 5.1 surround. This monitor is not worth the $1500 asking price in light of this "streamlining" of features. If I'm paying top-dollar for a monitor whose predecessor I already own, I want it to have all of the capabilities of that predecessor and then some. $1500 for what is only a good panel and LED back-lighting is a raw deal no matter how you slice it.
jamyryals - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Chris, my coworker has a Nixeus 27inch monitor attached to a 2012 MBP. His Nixeus has the same problem of not activating after sleep sometimes as well. A simple power cycle gets it going again for him too. Just another data point to indicate where that particular problem may be.l_d_allan - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
The 2010 and 2011 models are coming down in price nicely. I just ordered a U2410 that should be a significant upgrade from my current Samsung TN panel that only has about 70% of sRGB.The only significant difference I'm aware of to the U2413 is the hardware calibration capability, but I have a Spyder rather than X-Rite, so my understanding is that is a non-issue. YMMV.
cheinonen - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
The U2410 is a CCFL backlight and the U2413 utilizes the G-B LED backlight that the U3014 uses. It also has the MiniDP and DisplayPort inputs and a DisplayPort output for using MST, and USB 3.0 over 2.0. It loses the analog inputs that the U2410 has, so if you have a need for those it is certainly the one to use. Since you're using a Spyder, the calibration software is a non-issue.