For a while I’ve been after a new monitor – my 17″ Viewsonic may have been a PC Pro a-listed cutting-edge monitor back in 2005 (when it cost me £187.22!) but now it’s a little small and the colours aren’t quite as vibrant as they were 6 years ago.

Now, I was happy to spend a bit more to getter a higher quality monitor and there were  certain things I wanted (in no particular order)…

• (Ideally) a zero dead pixel guarantee
• 23″ – 24″ screen size
• Not bothered about speakers
• A USB hub would be nice
• Good general output quality and a lack of external light bleeding
• HDMI or DVI input
• Adjustable stand

After much searching I settled on the Dell UltraSharp U2311H – reviews gave me all the above at a price of around £260. Ordering was easy and the delivery quick – I couldn’t be around for the drop-off so I arranged to pick it up from my local UPS office.

Inside the unassuming brown box was the monitor, various leaflets, a CD, power cable, VGA cable and DVI cable. I needed neither of the connection cables as I was going to use my existing HDMI to DVI cable¹.

The monitor is not sexy but it’s not ugly either. It’s more functional – matt black plastic with menu buttons integrated into the side of the display. The stand is highly adjustable and can rotate around for portrait display. It has DVI, VGA and DisplayPort inputs, as well as a side-mounted 2 port USB hub, with a further 2 USB ports mounted on the back near to the video connections². The stand connects via a standard VESA mount, so the monitor is also wall-mountable. It uses a standard power connection and the PSU is built-in. As you can probably guess this isn’t, unlike the LG, a slimline stunner at 18.4 cm deep but neither is it overtly large.

Cables are routed through a hole in the top of the stand but, unlike some of their other monitors, I find this to be a little too low (especially if you have the stand at full height) so the cables are still visible. It doesn’t come with built-in speakers but you can buy a separate “sound bar” to attach to provide this functionality, if required.

I had some initial problems with the included CD, as the software didn’t want to launch under Windows 7 64-bit. Sadly, it’s a real struggle to find downloads on the Dell website without a Service Tag, and these aren’t provided on monitors under 27″. A google search found no official download link from Dell either. However, Microsoft Update automatically picked up on the new hardware and supplied the appropriate software for download.

The CD also contains the manual and, thankfully, that is available from the Dell website.

PC Pro, when recently reviewing the monitor, had the following to say about the image…

After installing the monitor driver supplied by Dell, we weren`t entirely impressed by the image quality. Colours appeared wildly oversaturated, and in gradient tests we noticed obvious banding artefacts.

However, changing the monitor to its Custom (RGB) setting, leaving the individual Red, Green and Blue controls set to maximum and uninstalling Dell’s driver swiftly improved matters. Our test images and Blu-ray discs now looked amazing, and the gradient test showed a smooth transtition [sic] from black to white with no banding.

However, I couldn’t see a difference when I changed the RGB settings. Running the Windows 7 calibration tests, it showed that gamma was a little low – increasing this and re-running cleartype adjustments made a huge difference to the image quality. The end results, and probably all thanks to the IPS (In-Plane Switching) panel being used, are stunning.

Shunning an LCD backlight it means the Dell does draw more power but, as a result, has an impressive level of brightness. Having said that, with no USB devices in use it does still only use 33W (and less than 1W in standby).

Does it have any downsides? Not that I can find.

However, and this isn’t aimed at this monitor in particular, I’m not overly impressed by the aspect ratio of these monitors. The width is good, but the height is barely any more than my old 17″ Viewsonic. For those not wanting to watch films regularly the current ratios don’t work for normal PC usage. When, say, I’m in a code editor and all the code is “butted” up against the left hand side of the monitor, that’s a lot of lost real estate. Like most people I sit centre of the monitor, but just end up spending a lot of time twisting around to look at the left hand side. I’d much rather loose horizontal resolution to gain more vertical (and, no, turning the monitor into portrait mode isn’t a solution – that’s too far the other way!). Bring back the 4:3 ratio monitors!

Summary of Dell UltraSharp U2311H

An excellent monitor with features galore. It’s a little pricey but you get what you pay for, especially in terms of image quality. And if that quality is important to you, then the Dell is an essential purchase.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 21st March 2011.

1. and for those who read my previous post about the problems I was having watching Blu-Ray movies… yes, this monitor does resolve the issue! [↩]
2. note that the USB hub powers off when you switch off the monitor’s power via the corner power button – I therefore use the rear ports for my wireless mouse receiver and a webcam [↩]

Now I have a splendid pair of Bluetooth headphones I’d ideally like more ways to use them, in particular listening to the TV or the hi-fi wirelessly. Step forward Sennheiser’s BTD 300 Audio – a Bluetooth transmitter that plugs into a standard headphone socket! They also have apt-X built in, which means they make a great pairing with my Creative headphones.

Costing £59.99 (that’s the RRP – you can get them for £41.47¹ from Amazon) they are a little steep but are probably one of the best (and the few) solutions available. Coming in a small box you get the device (with captive audio cable), a USB charging cable (USB one end, micro USB the other) and a thick manual.

The whole unit is sealed so the battery and captive cable are not replaceable. At 10cm long that audio cable may be a little short in some situations and it’s quite a thin cable as well – it could be easily broken and, being captive, it’s not replaceable. Thankfully the product has a 2 year guarantee.

Like the Sennheiser headphones I’ve reviewed the manual is a bit rubbish. It’s thick, but that’s due to the large number of language translations. Each language gets just a few pages and most of them consist of poor illustrations.

On the device itself there is a simple button and light. The button is used for powering on and off and pairing. The unit is very light at just 17 grams.

Pairing with my Creative headphones was easy and the sound quality excellent. The battery should last up to 14 hours (and takes about 3 hours to full recharge) before needing a charge and the Bluetooth range is up to 10 metres.

One thing I’d like to ask Sennheiser, what does this mean…

Optimal performance with Sennheiser Bluetooth headphones

It sounds as if you’ll get a better result using their own headphones but I’m not sure how. Personally, I suspect this is just marketing BS.

Summary of Sennheiser BTD 300 Audio

Excellent quality – both physically and aurally, but it looses vital marks for its high price and it’s poor instructions.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 10th March 2011.

1. at the time of this review [↩]

23/24″ 1920×1080 pixel widescreen monitors are becoming pretty much “the norm” these days. What makes the LG E2360V stand-out however is its slimness and generally attractive looks – not necessarily a bad thing in a sea of quite plain alternatives.

It maintains its slimness through a combination of factors – no extras (no USB hub or speakers), an external power supply and a back-lit LED screen. Not taking into account the stand, it’s just 31mm in depth!

The box contains the screen itself, minus the stand (well, not really, a short stubby bit is present, and this screws onto the other part of the stand), the stand, power supply, VGA cable, various paperwork and a CD (containing user guide and drivers). The monitor itself is shiny black plastic. It shows dust like you wouldn’t believe but does make the whole thing look very pleasing to the eye – the rear of the monitor almost acts like a mirror. The tiny bit of plastic holding the screen to the stand is transparent and from here a downward light (blue when on and red in standby) is reflected when the monitor is turned on – in essence, it creates the plastic part of the stand to light up. To the rear of the monitor are the connectors – you have VGA, HDMI, DVI, headphone jack and the power connector. By having the sockets stick outwards (rather than downwards with most monitors) they save even further on the depth of the monitor, but it does mean that you’re not going to be able to wall-mount this (or indeed get it right up against a wall on its stand). The stand doesn’t adjust, and that includes any swivel options, other than a small amount of tilting.

Underneath the screen are the power and menu buttons – 5 of the latter. These feel a bit plasticky to the touch and rattle. The menus themselves offer basic adjustment but nothing too complex. You can, however, store custom settings, and there  are a number to choose from (movie, internet, etc).

LG talk a lot about “Low Power Consumption” but I struggled to find any raw statistics. However, I did and it consumes 30W in normal use and just 0.99W in standby – both of these figures are excellent (LG – why aren’t you shouting more about this?)

Image wise, I don’t use professional display testing devices, but rather the combination of my eyes and various calibration tools – these can be found online, but I use the one built in Windows 7. Calibration showed Gamma to be quite high and brightness a little low. The latter is odd as the screen appears very bright (some say too bright). Brightness is already at full, so the only way to adjust this is downwards. However, with the Gamma adjusted the result was a lot improved. There was no visible back-light bleeding and Inception on Blu-Ray looked fantastic.

Visit the official LG site

Driver and manual updates are not available to download

Summary of LG E2360V

At the RRP of £229, this would put it in the price bracket of high end monitors of this size. Sadly, other than its slimness, it doesn’t have the features to compete. The display is excellent, but the lack of stand adjustment will be a real issue for some. However, you can pick this model up from Amazon for around £173¹ and at that price it becomes competitive again. Certainly, if you don’t need all those missing features and don’t generally fiddle with the stands on monitors and want a monitor that looks very nice then the LG comes highly recommended.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st March 2011.

Gallery

1. at the time of writing this review [↩]