Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor, Black

Ive had this monitor for a couple of weeks now and Im very happy with it. My last monitor was a Sylvania 17 LCD that I squeezed well over ten years out of so this was a big upgrade in size and clarity. I dont play many games on the PC so I cant comment on how well it does on games but this monitor is well named as Ultrasharp when it comes to text editing or web surfing. Ive always liked the Dell Ultrasharps, having used them a lot in my occupation, so after doing my research my purchase boiled down to the either the Asus VG248QE or the Dell. The reviews on the Asus were excellent and if I was more into gaming I might have picked that one because of the fast refresh rate, (although a lot of people on youtube are happy using the Utrasharp for gaming ). So far Ive found no bad pixels, no yellow tint or any other flaws, calibration was perfect out of the box. The stand is excellent, very sturdy and adjustable in all directions. The 90 degree flip is nice for connecting cables to the bottom of the monitor. I purchased the Dell AX510 sound bar that mounts on the bottom of the monitor so I could use the on board headphone connector. The sound is good for youtube videos but falls short for music. Fortuneatly, I also have a stereo sound system hooked up so its no big deal. For anybody on the fence about this monitor check out youtube, lots of good info.

Update -- after using a new adapter to connect to my MacBook (VGA to DVI, I believe), the sleep problem seems to be solved! (I did not change the type of adapter, just swapped one adapter for a different one at work.) So the problem seems to have been in the adapter. I am updating from one star to 5 OLD REVIEW FOLLOWS... THE PROBLEM IS NOW SOLVED! I bought this monitor to work with my Macbook Pro, 13-inch, Late 2011 model, running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4. The monitor works great for a few minutes then goes into energy saver mode, goes black and will not wake up unless I use mirroring mode, which I dont want. I want two screens showing different things on each. Dell recommends upgrading the software on my laptop video card which is so far impossible because Intel only seems to offer windows versions of the software for the video card. So, to summarize, the monitor is really awesome when it works, which is hardly ever. Oddly, it worked well for several weeks, so Im not sure its possible to return to Amazon. I have tried many different ways to solve the problem, including turning off the feature on my computer that puts the display to sleep, playing with all the features on the monitor itself, plugging and unplugging everything in various orders, rebooting the laptop over and over, etc, etc... nothing solves the problem. I hope this information helps Macbook Pro users avoid the problems Im having with this monitor.... very, very annoying when you are busy at work!! Meanwhile my cheap old, small Viewsonic monitor worked beautifully with the same laptop, but the image was terrible.

I wanted to find a monitor to connect my MacBook Pro to in order to have a more ergonomic home office. Im an engineering graduate student, so I spend a lot of time at my computer and wanted something that would make reading scientific articles, word processing, multiple monitor-managing, and coding more enjoyable and comfortable. I was directed to this monitor by the recommendation of a good friend who bought one for a similar purpose. This product immediately seemed like a great option; it was very large, had a display-port for connecting to Macs, had a reasonable price tag, and had several unique features that made it even more attractive. Still, as a broke grad student the price tag was a bit much - but I went ahead and found a refurbished unit through Amazon Warehouse (HIGHLY recommend going through them). I purchased the monitor along with a mini Display Port to Display Port adaptor (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TSTDI0/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_2), the unit arrived and I more or less effortlessly put it together and began experiencing the joys of owning a high definition and large screen monitor. I loved this monitor so much that I bought another through Amazon Warehouse to install in my lab office. It was just terrible trying to go back to using just my laptop screen! I will say though, that one of the pixels on the second refurbished unit i bought is dead, which was a bit annoying but I figure it will keep me from using it to watch too much TV in lab. So below I just wanted to speak in more detail about some of the features that were just super nice that make me love this monitor so much. ===Flexible Screen The screen is really, remarkably pliant. You can turn it any which way, angle it up and down, and just get it into whatever position you would possibly want. Perhaps the only thing you could complain about is that the height of the screen cant be altered. ===HD Screen The screen is great for watching any HD content, and the size of the thing makes it large enough to play to the role of a TV. Ive also found the color representation to be high fidelity, which has been very useful in my endeavors as an amateur digital photographer. The screen beautifully renders my images during post-processing and helps me in making my adjustments to contrast and white balance. ===Rotating Screen This has been really nice for reading scientific journal articles, and it allows me to have a more natural reading experience. By more natural, I mean it makes it feel like I have a copy of the journal in front of me because I can see the whole page at once. It makes a big difference for those articles where you want to see the text and the figures at the same time. On another note, it has been really handy in editing portrait-oriented photographs. Normally with this orientation you have to deal with looking at a shrunken version of your picture since the height will be limited by the height of the screen. When you rotate the screen, youre able to see the picture at its full size and you will be able to edit it much more carefully. ===Other The screen is really super easy to calibrate following the instructions given by the Mac OS, so thats nice. Also, the fact that the monitor has its own USB ports are a big plus if you want to set up a permanent external hardrive without having to connect it directly to your Mac every time you get home or to the office. ===Environmental Impact On a more important note, I think it is great to support products (especially those that perform this well) that are conscious of their environmental impact. With this purchase you are getting a fantastic monitor while simultaneously supporting the environment. And seriously, the environment needs some major supporting right now.

First, let me say I really like my Dell U2412m monitor. Ive had it about a month and have thoroughly enjoyed using it everyday, and for the price point, this is a wonderful monitor with an excellent feature set. However, its not perfect. The first one I received had severe clouding in the right top and bottom corners. Of course, these come setup with the brightness at an eye searing 75%, and the clouding diminished a bit when I turned it down to a more reasonable 30%, but it was still quite evident on a dark image, and not acceptable for my main purpose of photo editing, so back it went (thanks Amazon for the easy no hassle exchange!). The second one also has a tiny bit of clouding in the corners, but only when viewed really close-up, and mostly not visible at all except on a completely dark screen. So, not perfect, but acceptable. I really like the 16x10 ratio, its a nice big workspace. The build quality seems up to Dells high standards, and I love the stand, with its easy and yet very secure adjustments. I will say that the color on my second monitor leaned toward the green, cyanish side (yuck). Unfortunately, the color controls in the main menu are not fine enough for the kind of color adjustments that were needed, but luckily for me, I found some sites on the internet that described how to carefully access the service menu, and I was able to tweak the color to perfection using some very good LCD monitor test images I found using Google. So, lets wrap it up: Pros: 1. Good build quality 2. Excellent color and picture (when tweaked correctly) 3. Easy and stable stand adjustments. 4. Works beautifully with both my new Mac Mini AND my 10 year old Mac G4 (using a USB switch) 5. Lots of inputs and USB connections 6. 3 Year warranty Cons: 1. A bit of clouding in the corners, but generally not visible during normal use. 2. Only USB 2.0 3. No HDMI input So, would I recommend this? Yes, but with qualifications. Be sure and check your screen for unacceptable clouding, and be prepared to tweak the brightness, contrast, and color. If you can live without HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, than this monitor should be on your short list. UPDATE (March 4, 2013): I really like this monitor. It has performed flawlessly over the last 5 months. The bit of clouding in the corners doesnt seem to show up in real world use. No color drift and no problems whatsoever. I leave it on 24 hours a day and it automatically goes into power-saving mode whenever I put the computer to sleep. For the price, this is quite a nice monitor. Update (Sept 5, 2013): The thing I like most about this monitor, it just works. I know that sounds simple, but in this complex world of cables, and operating systems, and weird stuff, its nice to have something that I can just plug in and it works perfectly, all day, every day. The color has been SUPER stable, with no drift. The slight clouding in the corners hasnt gotten worse, and doesnt effect my day to day photo work. All-in-all, an excellent and reliable monitor.

The Dell Ultrasharp series are my favorite monitors. I currently own 4 Dell UltraSharps. Most / all are typically IPS based (in plane switching) and offer the best viewing angles and clarity. The U2412M is currently my primary monitor. I own one that I purchased about 3 years ago directly from Dell. I decided to replace my secondary monitor (which is a Dell U2311H) with another U2412M which I purchased from Amazon. Out of the box the monitor looked great. The antiglare coating on this latest revision is not as aggressive as the older version I currently own. Colors and text look more vibrant and clearer. The one problem I had (which is mentioned quite often in the reviews here) is a slight yellow cast on the whites. I purchased a hardware calibration tool (ColorMunki Display) specifically to calibrate the new monitor. Even after calibration, I could not get rid of the yellow cast. Unfortunately that meant sending it back. I wished it didnt have that problem since I really like the new revision (mainly due to the lighter antiglare coating). I will be on the lookout for a good price on the newer U2415 model.

A few weeks ago an old ASUS 19-inch 16:10 Aspect Ratio monitor I had was dying so I decided to start looking for another monitor. I use my computer for work, audio-recording, general web browsing, and some gaming. The pros of this monitor are basically that it is a 16:10 monitor in a sea of 16:9 monitors. It had a good better than hd resolution at 1920x1200, and it was HUGE. The colors were very in-your-face making photos clear. Some of the cons are that it has only USB 2.0 ports in a hub on the monitor, a yellow tinting along the side that would not go away, and the glow (or backlight bleed whatever you want to call it). The glow is a big one. The previous monitor I had was a TN monitor. After considerable research I decided to buy this one since many of the reviews said it had good colors and good viewing angles because it is an IPS Panel. It did have good colors in the areas where the color wasnt tinted yellow. The left side had a strip of about one inch that was coloring everything yellow no matter what angle I moved to. However the biggest issue was the glow, which was present during the day (bright lights are in my home office so I can reduce eyestrain), but worse at night when everything was darker. Before I continue I will have to give a little background on myself. I suffer from Migraines with Aura, if you dont know what that is I urge you to look it up. Then look up a visual demonstration. I am extremely photosensitive and suffer from frequent headaches. All these issues are unrelated to my eyesight and I do get my eyesight tested regularly and have perfect vision. The major issue pointed out in the pictures is the Corner Glow. Reading the descriptions of other monitors and some input on forums I discovered that IPS glow is something that you have to live with. The problem is that I cannot live with it. At a distance the glow disappears...somewhat (the one with minimal bleed is the one taken furthest away from the monitor). I could place it further from my face, but in order to read the screen at a further distance I would need either computer glasses with a magnification or to set the text size a bit bigger. Setting the text size bigger somewhat defeats the purpose of having 1920x1200 monitor resolution as the enalrged text causes pages to take up just about as much space as a 1920x1080 monitor. Another issue is that I dont have a large enough desk to set my monitor more than 3 feet from my eyes. This edge glow was strange as I dont recall it ever being present on any of my previous monitors. If you research Migraine with Aura you will see that it causes a blind spot in the field of vision, the glow on the bottom edges triggered that as it washed out the colors on the lower corners. I can understand how some users can live with it if they dont have this issue, but I could not. Constantly seeing lighter spots in the corners of the screen was unacceptable. Another thing I must point out is that the monitor was bright as can be and lowering the brightness below around 90% caused this thing I learned to be called: PWM Flicker, which explains why I ended up getting a headache after using it for a while at 50% brightness. I dont recall where but it was noted that this monitor begins the PWM flickering at anything below 100%, if this is so I didnt really notice it until I hit 89% brightness. Also, I must note that lowering the brightness DOES NOT get rid of the glow. Some research on IPS Glow uncovered that pretty much the only way to avoid it is to shell out some cash for a high quality IPS Monitor with an A-TW Polarizer. So while the color was nice, Id rather have poorer colors in exchange for something that wont give me a migraine whenever I use it. I eventually went with a high-refresh rate, flicker free monitor that doesnt hurt my eyes or head. Overall: Your Mileage May Vary.

Pros: - Viewing angle: Much better than a TN monitor: This is very important for monitors that are 24+ inches as all TNs look significantly darker at the top even when sitting right in front of them. This is very noticeable in dark areas of movies and games. All IPS variation monitors address this problem well. The Dell u2412m seems to not have quite as good a range as other IPS monitors, but it doesnt really matter if youre sitting right in front of it. - Sturdy base: Rock solid. Does not wiggle when typing or even shaking a less-than-sturdy desk. - Color reproduction: The range of colors is very good, minus blacks, once properly calibrated with a spectrometer. There might be a tad bit extra hint of blue, but nothing terrible. - No dead pixels: I absolutely hate dead pixels. It is a very common issue. Luckily, this monitor did not have a single one. Cons: - Factory Default settings: Out-of-the-box, the colors are waaaaaaaay off. Like you took a translucent blue paint brush to your monitor. Using Windows 7s monitor calibration tool is not sufficient, you will need either a really good third-party program such as EzTune or, for better accuracy, a monitor spectrometer such as the Xrite ColorMunki. - Blacks are poor: This is to be expected of an IPS monitor. I was unable to calibrate my monitor to distinguish between 96-100% blacks. - Anti-glare coating: Oh god. Where to begin? When I first turned my monitor on, the first thing that popped into mind was Wow, this monitor is really dusty. How did this happen? Upon turning my monitor off, and taking a better look at it, there wasnt any dust on it at all. I then turned it back on and looked closer. It was the Anti-glare coating that was applied to it, reflecting light produced from the monitor into the wrong directions and producing what looks like small, dull, red and green specs. I then began to speculate. Maybe they just used way too much anti-glare coating on my monitor? After-all, it received so many positive reviews on Amazon. Well, after looking around at other websites for reviews, it turns out that it is a very common complaint about this monitor. The dusty-looking screen is very distracting. Like looking through a window that had collected dust for a few years. Solid colors do not look like solid colors, bright colors look murky, and no matter what you do, you cant get over looking past the dirty screen. The Anti-glare coating itself is not very effective. I have a window to the side and it seems to somehow reflect some of the light back at me in a dull satin shine. For reference, my old monitor has a very glossy mirror-like finish and there is no glare at all on it. If the window was behind me, however, it would be a very different story. I really wanted to like this monitor. I really did. But the anti-glare coating is such an eye sore. This is unacceptable for me in a monitor. I have an old Gateway FHD2400. It was a TN medium-low-end monitor for its time, and it has a better picture than the Dell u2412m due to everything looking so clean. The only thing I liked better about the Dell is that it has a better viewing angle. Needless to say, I sent the monitor back. Out of the hundreds of purchases I have made on Amazon, 95% of them being technology related, this is the only item I have ever sent back for a refund. I had high expectations of the Dell u2412m, but was very disappointed in the end. I would like to see Dell cease use of the useless anti-glare on this otherwise nice monitor. Edit- For more information on Anti Glare with Hard Coat 3H, the coating Dell uses on their IPS monitors, google dell u2711 anti glare review.

Cutting to the Chase (Value vs product & purpose): I was upgrading from a Dell 20 16:10 ratio (1680x1050) 2007 LCD Monitor which had no actual problems with it, but I wanted more real-estate and a higher res image. I wanted colors, and was willing to pay for them, because I do do layouts and basic photo-editing from time to time, but I ultimately chose this over the 2413 and Im glad I pocketed the extra $200. For about $300, its a great buy and $50 cheaper than directly from Dell. I did some research in the way-back machine and it seems like I paid close to $500 7 years ago when I got my old 20, so paying 300 for a larger, higher res and more vibrant screen, is really quite a good deal... especially since 2007 dollars are about 50% + more valuable than our inflated monopoly money today. (Side lesson kids: so long as we print money, dont bother saving any in your mattress!) My work is Architecture, so added area for CAD or REVIT drafting is important- and 24 certainly feels like a lot to me. Most firms Ive worked at provide 20 screens. Ive used big 30 in apple screens, back when they had the clunky plastic frames. Frankly I feel like 24 is a nice compromise between size and working my neck muscles searching for the tool bars at the extremes of the screen. I also play games like Fallout3 and Bioshock Infinite, Civ franchise and SupCom, so I was worried about all this talk of lag (more later). The first thing my wife noticed when I plugged in the monitor was that the colors in the desktop background were more vibrant than the old monitor: three people had distinctly different lip and skin tones which didnt show nearly as clearly before. This is revealing, since when emursing myself in reviews for monitors, I started to feel like the 2412M would be a compromise.... Performance: Even from people who professed their love for the 2413, I kept reading about ghosting problems, about cyan color trails and input lag and gaming modes, and other things which sounded either REALLY irritating or complicated. I dont feel like flipping through settings menus to make an experience fluid feeling or good looking - I constantly flip back and forth between games, work, web browsing, or videos, and dont want to have to sort out the menu every time. I cant compare this model with another model because I only bought one of them! So heres a list of items about THIS monitor Ive found to be true in my experience: Q:Anti-Glare coating? A:It looks great. Supposedly its an advancement over the 2410, and not as good as the 2413. Well It is certainly an advancement over the 2007 I had, and way better than anything Ive been provided on the job. It looks smooth and clear to me, although it does not have the almost glossed look that the 2413 claims to have. Since I have to stare at the screen professionally for 8 hours a day, and then i come home and feel like playing a videogame or watching netflix for a few hours... this screen seems perfect, and I wouldnt want it any glossier. Q: Input Lag, or total lag, or transmission lag... that sort of thing? A: All kinds of fears about 6ms vs 8ms vs 1ms vs 2 ms got me really wound me up for NO REASON. Finally one of the reviews I read linked me to a reflex-reaction website, and I found that from click-to-click, although I could at times be quite fast, generally speaking, my fastest clicks could easily vary 10-20ms. So worrying about 2ms or a 6ms on-paper difference between this monitor and another monitor, even a TN fast gaming monitor, starts to seem really silly, at least to a non-pro gamer who isnt hopped up on a dozen energy drinks, who isnt nitrogen-cooling his CPU to eek out another dozen frames per-sec on his first person shooter. No noticeable response time problems here, which is why I suppose Ive heard that a lot of Gamers choose this monitor. Q: Color? A: Colors look great. It is supposed to cover most of the sRGB Gamut. I can tell you its a lot more vibrant than what Im used to. getting all wound up about color calibration is another thing most people just not need to worry about. I plug and play and havent had a problem. No weird color shifts here. The white looks white, the reds are red. Snozberries taste like Snozberries. Maybe the 2413 would have been all of my graphic dreams come true, but really I wouldnt have used it to its fullest, and unless your profession is colors, you probably wouldnt either. Read Fuzzy Wuzzys review for details about how in order to use the monitor to its fullest, you need to have an unbroken line of image processing from beginning to end optimized for that level of quality. Q: Backlight Bleed / glowing/ pixles? A: I dont see any bright light-leaks at the edges or anything, but when the screen is black, it isnt quite as black as Id like it. This is my first IPS monitor, and it seems like standard fare to have a bit of glowing, but its nothing I notice regularly. While gaming or web browsing or watching videos its something I dont notice at all. The pixles are fine, although I checked for dead pixles, I didnt find any. Q: Overall build quality/ customer service? A: Good, no defects, and I am sensitive since I once ordered a DELL laptop which came with a popped up piece of plastic trim. The monitor was Surprisingly light, although its larger than my old one. Seems sturdy. Not knocking it around or anything, so its not wobbling. The action for moving or rotating the monitor is very smooth and efficient. Aesthetically I like its clean lines. Well worth the value, no regrets. Cheers!

Pros: - I bought an IPS display for good color and this monitor has it. I was blown away at first when I switched to it. And I miss it now that Ive returned it. Im having trouble finding another monitor that will match the display quality of this one. - Great viewing angle without color distortion. Cons: - The anti-glare coating was more noticeable than other Dell monitors Ive used. It wasnt extremely distracting, but it was there. Especially plain white surfaces, like web pages, would shimmer a bit. - The IPS glow, especially in the bottom right corner. I didnt think it would bother me that much, but it did. I havent seen IPS glow this bad on Apple IPS displays so I wasnt expecting it from the Dell either. Under certain circumstances it was almost completely invisible, but on dark images, especially those near black, it was extremely noticeable and distracting. I found myself tilting the monitor, moving it around, moving my head, trying to make it go away, but didnt. For comparison, the U2312HM also has this problem but for some reason it is much less visible. - The monitor failed spectacularly after less than two months of use, with bands of random color running down the screen. I probably just got a lemon, but it impacts my perception of the monitors reliability. Service: - I had problems getting Dell customer service to help me because they expect the monitor to have a Service Tag number or for you to have a Dell order number. This monitor came with neither from Amazon, so you can expect to get zero help from Dell if something goes wrong with your monitor. Amazon finally took it back from me, but buyer beware buying Dell products from anyone other than Dell.

Coming from TN panels, I was really impressed with this monitor. Considering that its a eips instead of the other. I used to game on 3 TN panels on eyefinity portrait and I thought that was amazing. I decided to upgrade because the horrible viewing angle. So, I bought 3 of these bad boys for eyefinity portrait. At first I was a bit skeptical about it being an IPS panel that stuck with 60hz refresh rate and 8ms would be bad for fps. Thats not the case. Powered by two 6970s with the combined resolution of 3600x1920(no bezel correction) I was blowned away by the crisp quality of the color when playing BF3 and Starcraft 2. However I did notice that its a bit slower than my old TNs when it come to ghosting, but thats a good trade off for better colors. I though the colors are good right off the box but I was wrong, after calibration(I downloaded the ICC from TFT Central and make sure the color temp are around 6500k which can be change in monitor factory menu) I notice that they looks a lot better than before. Pros: 1)1920x1200 (extra pixels are always welcome in my book) 2)Color reproduction for a e-IPS 3)Awesome viewing angle especially in portrait 4)Good for gaming also 5)USB ports are very handy 6)Very good stand and good construction Cons: 1)Anti-glare coating are very aggressive in this monitor. When I did my dead pixels test and I notice that the monitors seems dirty so I took a piece of cloth and wipe them down. However its the AG coating that make the monitors appear to be dusty or grainy. To me its kinda annoying, some might not find it annoying at all. I love white background so the AG coating are a bit distracting. 2)Backlight bleed are a bit strong in this monitor. Being an LED, I understand that you cant avoid it. Out of the 3, one seem to be worse that the other 2. 3)Thick bezels are one thing that eyefinity/surround gamer tend to stay away from. I agree that the bezel are a bit thick in these but you cant avoid it. After playing for more than a month, youll get use to it. You can also debezel them but that will void your warranty...unless youre good.... 4)No HDMI. Bummer but I learnt to live without it. Overall, I love my U2412m. Its a completely different experience when playing on portrait. You can feel more immersible and with good viewing angle you cant go wrong with these. One thing to note is to good look at it locally before you pull the trigger.