Visually arresting, excellent quality, remarkable 25 inch monitor
review by
manticorp
I've just taken delivery of this monitor from Amazon.co.uk:
Dell U2515H 25-Inch LCD Monitor - Amazon UK ?264.98 (prime eligible)
Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor - Amazon USA $403.36
And I thought I would post some of my first impressions of it here.
For the last 5 years I've been using a pair of
Samsung Syncmaster P2450H screens and, while good, full HD 24" screens they are, they were getting a bit tired. One of the biggest problems I'd had with these old screens was the viewing angles - unless you were sitting right in front of them, then the quality of the picture was just so apalling that, combined with the lack of tilt functionality on the build in stands, they became unusable.
My criteria, in no particular order, for a new screen was:
- Good viewing angles
- At least 24"
- Excellent stand
- Good connectivity
- At least 1080p
- Good price
- Good looks
- Preferably with a thin bezel
While browsing Amazon for suitable replacements products, I had a few alternatives in mind:
But this is where I decided to go with the
Dell U2515H - it offered all of these things in spades. As you can see from my list above, I contemplated a lot of ultrawide monitors, but after seeing this 25" beauty with the 2560x1440 resolution, I figured I would get as much desktop real estate as an ultrawide, but in a much better format.
Here's a quick list of features of the
Dell U2515H:
- 25" IPS Screen
- Height/Tilt/Rotation adjustable stand
- 5x USB 3.0 ports (including fast charging port), audio out, 2x HDMI (with MHL), 2x DP, Mini DP
- 2560x1440 @ 60Hz max resolution
- Super thin bezel (measured at 8mm)
Here's how the box arrived:
And inspecting the lid, we see the instructions for unboxing - thank you Dell:
After an allmighty pull (it was really jammed in there tight!) we arrive at the following:
Here's all the accessories that are packed into the lid, we have:
- DP to Mini DP Cable
- USB Cable
- Power Cable
- Cable Cover
- Stand
- Instructions, CD and calibration report
Now mounting the monitor for the first time:
And without the coverings - we see it in all it's splendour:
I couldn't wait to try it out, so I hooked it up to my old laptop:
Now, my old laptop (Acer 5755G w/ GT540m) doesn't have display port connectivity, so upon connecting up to the monitor with a HDMI cable, the first thing I notice is that it won't output to the full 2560x1440 resolution.
HOWEVER I later on worked out a fix for this, and now the laptop
WILL output to the monitor using a HDMI cable at full 2560x1440 WQHD resolution. See the bottom of this post for more information!
First Impressions
First seeing the screen turned on, it's clear that this is a quality piece of kit. The colours are extraordinary, it's incredibly sharp, the bezel is super thin and the screen is so bright!
Reiterating that last point, it is
BRIGHT.
Out of the box, it is set to brightness 50/100, but cranking it up to 100 this thing chucks out more light than a new sun. In fact, it's so bright, that next to my laptop now, it looks as if my laptop screen is dimmed, when in fact it's at the highest brightness!
Photo of the thin bezel:
The next thing you immediately notice is the viewing angles - no matter where you're standing, the monitor looks exactly the same - this is not something I was used to before, but boy, it seems insane how I lived without it before.
Here's some shots showing the viewing angles:
Another thing that's very noticable is how little light reflects of this screen. I've been very used to using my glossy laptop screen where, if it's on a dark page/game, then all you see is your own ugly mug reflected in the screen back at you.
Not so with the
Dell U2515H - I sit in my office now while writing this on a text editor with a black background with the screen directly facing a window and I can barely see a reflection on it at all.
Amazing. Only at extreme angles do the reflections start to intrude on what's on the screen, but even then it's fairly negligble, especially with brighter content.
Stand
Along with all of the other great features of this monitor is the stand.
The stand is
excellently balanced, meaning you can raise or lower the monitor without expending any effort and it will sit wherever you want it to be along its range. The rotate and tilt features are also extremely smooth and the whole thing feels very planted. Well done, Dell!
Here's the monitor at the bottom range of it's motion:
And at the top:
Rotated:
Tilted fully forward:
Tilted fully backward:
Colour
Placing my laptop side by side with the
Dell U2515H, it is immediately apparent that this monitor has
far superior colour reproduction.
The colours are very crisp and bright without being over saturated. It's hard to tell because of the relative brightess difference, but here's a shot comparing my old laptop monitor to the
Dell U2515H (known as the Natalie Dormer test):
Connectivity
The connectivity on this monitor is
excellent and I am
very impressed with it.
Before I had this screen, I used to have to plug the following into my laptop every day:
- USB Hub (two cables)
- HDMI Cable
- Speaker Cable
- USB Mouse/Keyboard
- Power Cable
But now, with the audio going through the screen (remember it has audio
out, not just in!) and it also acting as my USB hub, I can just have the HDMI cable, 1xUSB port and power cable plugging into the laptop.
Here's a couple of photos of the connectivity:
And of course, these are all neatly covered over with the including cable cover and routed through the stand, the cables look very neat and organised.
And here it is in its final resting place:
And, just for brevity, the calibration report:
Dell Display Manager
The included software CD comes with the Dell Display Manager and some drivers and, after installing and restarting, presents you with the following functionality (including briefly showing a badge/logo on your Dell monitor showing the model):
I'll go briefly over what each section does.
Clicking
change next to the resolution just brings up the windows display dialogue to change resolutions.
The
mode selection refers to a set of profiles that can be activated subtly altering the colours, brightess and contrast of the screen depending on what you're viewing.
Auto mode changes the setting depending on what you're using at the time (if you're watching a video, it will select multimedia mode, if you're just doing word documents, standard mode, etc). This is configurable so you can say which software uses which mode. You can also create custom modes.
Brightness and contrast change the brightess and contrast of the screen (duh), that would normally have to be done using the buttons at the bottom of the screen.
Last but not least is what Dell calls
'Easy Arrange'. This divides your monitor up into the sections shown so that whenever you drag a window into that section, it will expand to fill that seciton. This overlays the screen with yellow borders that turn red when a window wants to snap to it.
This is fairly useful functionality for a screen with such large real estate and it offers a good amount of options to use in terms of positions and sizes. Here's a screenshot:
I would hasten to add, though, that this
stops the default Windows snap functionality, even off the Dell screen, which is somewhat limiting. It also means you cannot full screen a window by just dragging it to the top of the screen, something I use very often.
As such, I would imagine this being of limited use - but a nice to have.
Full WQHD over HDMI
Now, I mentioned previously that outputting full resolution was an issue.
On my laptop, the maximum it was willing to output was somewhere around 2048 x 1152, but thanks to
this handy guide I was able to get it outputting at full glory (albeit at 55Hz).
First I needed to go to the Intel Graphics and Media control panel and choose Advanced Mode:
Then, from the left select Display > Custom Resolutions, and the following popped up:
I just selected yes, and then entered the following settings:
And, after restarting, the resolution appeared in the list in Windows and it worked like a charm, except for one more thing: after setting the full WQHD resolution on the
Dell U2515H, my laptop screen looked horrible and blurry!
After a bit of research, it was becuase of the independent display scaling that windows does automatically for screens of very different resolutions (that is, pixel densities) so that things look the same
size on both screens.
The solution to this was to use a constant scaling on both screens:
While this made things a bit smaller on the DELL and a bit bigger on the laptop, at least things were sharp all round!
Verdict
Pros
- High Res
- Excellent stand
- Excellent viewing angles
- Small bezel
- Brilliant colours and brightness
- Good price
- Awesome connectivity
Cons
- None
- If I had two extremely small gripes: Power cable a touch short and no included HDMI cable
Overall, a truly excellent monitor that I'm sure will last me a long time. I would give it a
9.8/10
Dell U2515H 25-Inch LCD Monitor - Amazon UK ?264.98 (prime eligible)
Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor - Amazon USA $403.36
Pros | Cons |
---|
Bright, contrasty, high resolution display, good stand, great connectivity | Short power lead? |
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