Alright, so here are my impressions after using it and comparing to my S24 over the weekend.
+ The contrast trick I discovered on the s24 works to hide ghosting on super fast pixel overdrive! You don't even have to go down to 0 on the contrast, I can go to 20% contrast and it's a huge difference, and it looks extremely playable in regards to colors/brightness. Holy sh** this is blowing my mind how smooth and clean it looks in motion. If you get this monitor, turn it to 240hz, put black stabilizer to 3, make sure g-sync is enabled and use blur busters vrr v-sync low input guide, set super fast pixel response, put contrast at 20% and brightness to 70% or higher and be prepared to be amazed. This might work for every 240hz panel, considering they all use the same panel. The only thing is, the russian review stated the Alienware had better overdrive and overclocked overdrive compared to the other 240hz they reviewed, so it might not look as clean.
+ The monitor stand is extremely solid, easily the best monitor stand I've ever used. Zero wobble when using the OSD. Also, when I bump my desk, the S24 wobbles, but not the AW25. It's also the heaviest stand I've felt. It has to be like 6 or 7lbs by itself. It also rotates very easy left to right and portrait to landscape with zero effort.. The up/down is a bit stiff, but still smoother than the S24. It also looked really ugly to me in the pictures, but it looks
really good in person.
+ Colors, gradients, and gamma are all better on the 240hz panel than my S24. The colors have a deeper look to them and really pop if you turn up the brightness. It beats the S24 out of the box with no tweaking in every area listed at the beginning of this point. No nvidia cp tweaks or icc profiles were loaded. Even with the S24 tweaked, the AW25 beats it untweaked.
+ Low power consumption. Uses 25watts on 240hz and 50% brightness. 1 watt more than the s24 @ 165hz and 50% brightness. Measured with a killawatt.
+ Blazing fast when turning on/off. The S24 was already fast, but this monitor beats it by a hair. You have to turn off the power saving feature though or sometimes it delays a bit when turning on/off.
+ OSD has some features like black stabilizer where it makes dark areas lighter. It also has a frame rate counter that will show your fps in any-game. The FPS counter is really huge and ugly though, I would never use it. There are also options for the LED's on the back of the monitor. And lastly it has a countdown timer, I have no idea what you would use this for, maybe if you're bad with over-gaming to setup a timed period? There are also some other weird stuff, like image alignment in the gaming section features. There are also a lot of color profiles including a custom one.
+ Motion is clearly more clean. Far less smearing in camera pans, flicks shots, or fast re-adjustments. I will admit though, if you're not moving your mouse around at medium-fast speed, it's really not worth it. For instance, single player games were ai/bots are usually pretty static and predictable, this monitor would be a waste of money in my eyes. The biggest difference I saw with this monitor, was competitive games like Overwatch and Rocket League.
- In Overwatch, when you have those huge battles on the payload in overtime trying to cap a point and everyone is within melee range fighting. It makes the player models a lot bigger being up close, so it turn you get bigger smearing trails. With the 240hz, it's a breeze to track in these scenarios, where the 165hz I just see smear marks until my aim settles. I will try to explain, on 165hz in the scenario I describe, I swipe and see smearing, when swipe ends or smearing ends, I can see target clearly and lock and shoot. On 240hz, when I swipe, I can see targets and lock and shoot without the small downtime of waiting for smearing to end to lock a clear target. On long distance fights, the advantage of this monitor isn't as big of a leap. You can still see the difference, it's just harder to notice, as you're really not making huge or fast swipes tracking targets at long distance. You're going to really see the benefit at medium/close range, like payload fights, tracer flanking you, etc.
- In Rocket League, you see a big difference all the time, as the camera is constantly panning at a medium-fast pace. Going back to 165hz, it's clear as day the 240hz is a big advantage in clarity, especially when you're using Turbo and making turns, which is 90% of the gameplay.
+ 144hz blur reduction is very nice. It's the best blur reduction I've used (I've tried S24 and BenQ XL2411 both 120hz blur reduction).
+ Pixel overdrive is very good. Normal is pixel perfect like the S24. There are also Fast and Superfast, which are also good, but as you should expect, have ghosting, the latter being darker. I can use Fast with no problems and without noticing it much at all. Superfast it's hard not to notice the ghosting. I've been playing with Fast.
+ Menu buttons are much better than the S24, more surface area and better/easier click.
- The stand legs are awful. They extend out really far and take a lot of desk space. If you use a large mousepad, it will be a problem. The S24 stand fits the 240hz panel, so it you could probably buy a similar stand on ebay for like $20 if it bothers you.
- Backlight and uniformity is worse than my S24. I was expecting
this, but what I got worse. That image is from the russian review site of 240hz alienware monitor. If I could get one similar to the image shown in the russian image, I'd be much happier, as he's clearly running it at a high brightness and it's far less noticeable at lower brightness. It also has a blue glow on the edgers, but I can't notice it at all, even with black taskbar. Keep in mind, I exchanged the S24 as my first one I wasn't happy with either.
Edit: Got a replacement and it's much better.
- Coating has a sparkle to it if you look look up close and move your head back and forth. I can't see it at arms length. The S24 does not have this. The coating is also equal to the s24 in terms of not being too aggressive.
- Image not very sharp compared to the S24. I think this should be expected though for 1080p on 24.5". I wish they made these in 23.8" @ 1080p.
- My blb and uniformity slightly affect dark games at times and is can be distracting when I do notice it, even at low brightness. In bright games I don't notice it.
Edit: No longer an issue with replacement.
- The LEDs on the back suck. They're really weak and the colors are static that don't reflect colors on screen. You can barely see them in a dark room reflecting off a wall, let alone during the day you can't see them at all.
Am I going to keep it? If I can get exchange and get a panel with better BLB and uniformity, yes. The other issues don't bother me, but I list them to help others make their own decision. It's definitely not worth $500, though. I recommend grabbing it on sale for $430, getting the $54 dell gift card cashback and selling it for $40, and getting the 7% cashback from mr.rebates or ebates (check which has higher % and I believe ebats has a $10 sign-up bonus,).
In the end, you'll end up paying about $350-$360 for the gsync version or even cheaper for freesync. I used the same method to get the S24 for $306 when it was constantly going for $400+. At the time when I got the S24, they were giving 12% cashback + $10 signup bonus on ebates and they paid it out a month later to
my paypal like $54 for the S24. I was really skeptical, but they actually paid me. You essentially give them a referral and they give you some of it.
If you guys have any questions about rebates, the monitor, etc - just leave a reply.
