Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD

[Meshuggah]

im guessing u didnt watch that CNN special bout gateway/dell customer call center... it was on few months back bout how its all overseas calling cuz they only pay them like 5$ a day

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i watched it, and thats why i now officially hate outsourcing...its not really the fact that they are taking our jobs away, or that they cant even speak our language...its the simple fact that these bast*** companies can get away with **** like this...they cut so many corners to make themselves more money...and when someone tries to take any of their money? SUE SUE SUE!

its ridiculous

[Frank]

i watched it, and thats why i now officially hate outsourcing...its not really the fact that they are taking our jobs away, or that they cant even speak our language...its the simple fact that these bast*** companies can get away with **** like this...they cut so many corners to make themselves more money...and when someone tries to take any of their money? SUE SUE SUE!

its ridiculous

585060667[/snapback]

LOL, I'm just the opposite. I am not happy about it because they take the jobs away, and I get crappy support as a customer.

[darkmark327]

The bottom line is everyone hates it, but what do companies care about? $$$$$ (even though it costs them because unhappy customers are not repeat customers)

[knowleqe]

Mine is Rev. A00, MFG date : October 2004.

I don't have any dead pixels but I have slight backlight bleeding. I'm currently debating whether to exchange it or not.

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ron21, could you post a picture of your backlight bleeding please? also one with a widescreen dvd if you don't mind. i'd like to compare our backlighting. thanks alot

[NY1]

ron21, could you post a picture of your backlight bleeding please? also one with a widescreen dvd if you don't mind. i'd like to compare our backlighting. thanks alot

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I don't have a digital camera. But i found this pic online. I have the same amount of backlight bleeding as in this pic :

The only way you can see the backlight bleeding is if you put a completely black wallpaper and turn off all the lights. During the day this monitor looks perfect.

[Gcubed]

I'm still having trouble displaying movies without the bars on top and bottom. It seem's from the pictures in the first post (review) "finding nemo" is playing in full screen. I tried the same movie in nero showtime and it sitll displyaing small black bars on top and bottom of the movie but not side bars. Is it because the monitor is 16x10 and movies are 16x9, or is there some way to stretch the movie to fit the screen. I'm using gforce 3 64mb with latest drivers. Windows media player will not play the movie properly at all. shows black bars on top and bottom.

Any help would be appreciated.

[NY1]

I'm still having trouble displaying movies without the bars on top and bottom. It seem's from the pictures in the first post (review) "finding nemo" is playing in full screen. I tried the same movie in nero showtime and it sitll displyaing small black bars on top and bottom of the movie but not side bars. Is it because the monitor is 16x10 and movies are 16x9, or is there some way to stretch the movie to fit the screen. I'm using gforce 3 64mb with latest drivers.  Windows media player will not play the movie properly at all. shows black bars on top and bottom.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Some movies are 16x9 and some are 16x10. With 16x9 you will have small bars.

[yannisanf15]

I have some questions that were somewhat talked about in the forum but i just want to make sure they are true (anyone is welcome to answer me lol)

1. You can return a a lcd for any amount of dead pixels (even 1) or for backlight problems UNTILL YOUR satisfied?

2. What is the proccess you have to go through to return it? Call ask for what ? custumer support? etc

3. When sending it back for an exchange, DELL pays for your shipping??

4.Dell sends a new monitor out before you even send yours back?

[unimatrixzer0]

I have some questions that were somewhat talked about in the forum but i just want to make sure they are true (anyone is welcome to answer me lol)

1. You can return a a lcd for any amount of dead pixels (even 1) or for backlight problems UNTILL YOUR satisfied?

2. What is the proccess you have to go through to return it? Call ask for what ? custumer support? etc

3. When sending it back for an exchange, DELL pays for your shipping??

4.Dell sends a? new monitor out before you even send yours back?

585063007[/snapback]

2 and 4 I can answer since I was in that situation today. I opted to call, however someone on here recommended to email support instead so you don't end up speaking to someone from India. I just wanted that person touch so I wouldn't have to forward several emails back and forth. Be warned though, if you don't have much patience email, its almost impossible to understand those people from India or hear them clearly enough. I called cust support who then transfered me to tech support to establish that the monitor really defective. They'll ask you a lot of stupid questions over and over even though you might have answered them already in your previous statement,... yes, they're that dumb.

And they'll send you the replacement monitor Next Day and then you ship the defective one back in the box your replacement came in. I assume they take care of the postage and include some kind of label from UPS to just stick on the box. Can't be sure on that since I won't have my replacement until tomorrow or the day after. Fast service though considering I just called this afternoon about a replacement.

I must live really close to whereever the monitor originates from since it goes directly to the UPS hub for my region then to me.

[unimatrixzer0]

I don't have a digital camera. But i found this pic online. I have the same amount of backlight bleeding as in this pic :

http://cereal.rutgers.edu/~tian/2005fpw_backlight_01.png

The only way you can see the backlight bleeding is if you put a completely black wallpaper and turn off all the lights. During the day this monitor looks perfect.

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Wow, I didn't have any backlight bleeding like that what so ever. Its not because the brightness is all the way up is it?

[yannisanf15]

My 2005fpw is out for delivery! i will post what its like when i get it

If UPS wants a signature and im not there,would they leave me a note and i can pick it up later today at UPS STORE?

[NY1]

Wow, I didn't have any backlight bleeding like that what so ever. Its not because the brightness is all the way up is it?

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Nope it has nothing to do with brightness. I can put my brightness level to 100 or 0 and still have the same amount of backlight bleeding.

[Meshuggah]

well guys, im sorry to hear about your experiences....hopefully since this will already by my second 2005 coming in....maybe i wont get that problem....it does suck though, they sent the other monitor with DHL again...i told them to send with someone else since they 'lost' my other monitor...but i just found out they shipped with them... :/

oh well, as long as no DHL worker steals my monitor again, i should have it sometime tomorrow *crosses fingers* ....ill post my pic soon i guess

[unimatrixzer0]

well guys, im sorry to hear about your experiences....hopefully since this will already by my second 2005 coming in....maybe i wont get that problem....it does suck though, they sent the other monitor with DHL again...i told them to send with someone else since they 'lost' my other monitor...but i just found out they shipped with them... :/

oh well, as long as no DHL worker steals my monitor again, i should have it sometime tomorrow *crosses fingers* ....ill post my pic soon i guess

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Maybe they did leave it and someone stole it from outside your house? Once had a Fedex or UPS guy delivery me something and right after I quickly openned the door and grabbed my packages from outside, this little bunch of spanish kids jumped out from the neighbors yard in front of my home. They noticed the Fedex/UPS guy had left something in my front door so before they got in their car one of them quickly ran to my front door to swipe to package but was greeted with nothing since I had grabbed it a few seconds before :yes:

I get ****ed when they don't leave stuff outside, but now I don't mind so much. I rather wait the extra day when I can plan to have someone home instead of having it stolen.

[Hypoxiaicon]

Wow... really?

If I bought one in the UK and it has just 1 Dead Pixel I can call them up and return with no quibble??

[acliff]

Dell are reasonably good about customer satisfaction. I have a stuck green subpixel, and very slight backlight bleed, so if I wanted to I could probably get a new one, but I don't think it bothers me enough. If the problem begins to annoy me, I'll have a rant down the phone, and get a new one.

Wow... really?

If I bought one in the UK and it has just 1 Dead Pixel I can call them up and return with no quibble??

585065771[/snapback]

[Meshuggah]

Maybe they did leave it and someone stole it from outside your house? Once had a Fedex or UPS guy delivery me something and right after I quickly openned the door and grabbed my packages from outside, this little bunch of spanish kids jumped out from the neighbors yard in front of my home. They noticed the Fedex/UPS guy had left something in my front door so before they got in their car one of them quickly ran to my front door to swipe to package but was greeted with nothing since I had grabbed it a few seconds before?:yes::

I get ****ed when they don't leave stuff outside, but now I don't mind so much. I rather wait the extra day when I can plan to have someone home instead of having it stolen.

585065755[/snapback]

im hispanic, thanks for the stereotyping :crazy::

it wasnt stolen here, it was stolen at DHL's main office when the order first arrived...trust me, the order itself on dhl was never even updated past the main office...

:::edited my post, no need for a flame war

Edited December 8, 2004 by Meshuggah

[sfalcon]

im hispanic, thanks for the stereotyping  :crazy:

it wasnt stolen here, it was stolen at DHL's main office when the order first arrived...trust me, the order itself on dhl was never even updated past the main office...

:::edited my post, no need for a flame war

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I don't see any stereotyping... He didn't say all Spanish children steal things, did he?

[Meshuggah]

I don't see any stereotyping... He didn't say all Spanish children steal things, did he?

585067161[/snapback]

good point, and for some reason i totally missed that...im glad i edited my post before it ws too late :)

[nuscur]

lol god damn it i got my replacement today and it has 3 dead pixels stuck in green but no backlight issue MOFO!

[OrangeChicken]

dude im getting worried there seems to be so much complaints about this monitor, do any of u guys still regret getting it? Is it still worth it in the end everybody??? I am gettin mine hopefully this week. I am so worried if ill have to go through customer service in India

[nuscur]

i love the pic...... but im wondering if i should of gotten the 2001FP... :(

sidenote: god damn it i hate towelheads i was on hold for 20mins and got one and shes like lemme transfer you WTF!

[acliff]

After owning this monitor for about a week now, I guess I should make an update. The full review I was planning is being posponed in leu of coursework... the lecturer is having a laugh and trying to make us design and code an operating system. As if I can do that....

Anyway, my thoughts:

Packaging:

Came in a huge brown box, monitor and stand come seperate. Everything was pretty well packed in polystyrene, unlikely to take much damage in transit. However, I am used to the packaging for my shuttle SN45G and the hercules 920pro 17inch boxes, which I still retain, as they are sturdy, compact, and have convenient carrying handles.

The 2005fpw has no such thing. Carrying it to lans might be a little difficult.

First impressions:

The stand comes out first, looks particularly fancy with twisting parts in all directions. Alot more adjustment options. Very useful. Quite heavy, but I guess thats needed for it. One thing I did notice was the stand seems spring loaded, so actual adjustment is misleadingly easy. Almost too smooth action, which caused me to almost drop the thing as I lifted it by the screen. At this point, the height adjustment and the tilt adjustment suddenly moved, and my heart almost stopped. Don't be foolish like me, and when you move yours, hold it by the stand AS WELL as the screen.

On taking out of the box, the actual screen part has the VGA cable attached. At first I thought this was unremovable, like my hercules, but then I saw the screws, unscrewed the cable, and no harm done.

The screen seemed lighter and smaller than I first expected, but you can never tell these things without turning it on.

Monitors side to side:

I placed the dell next to my hercules, and compared styling and size. The bezel on the hercules seems ridiculously wide, but the design of it is far more attractive in my opinion. The height of both screens seem the same, but obviously the 2005fpw is a huge amount wider. (as it should be) Still looks a little small to be 20 inch.

Screen quality:

oh my god, my eyes! At first I thought I had a faulty monitor as it was hugely bright. I had the room dark at the time, so it was almost blinding. However, once my eyes got acclimatised to it, it is an absolute joy to use. I'm not a colour, contrast expert or photoshop master, but the colours look as they should, whites are bright white, blacks are black (except for a very minor backlight bleed in the top right corner) and everything in the middle is shown on the screen with ease.

Once I set up the extended desktop, I was dragging windows between my hercules and dell, and noticed several things. I hadn't noticed before, but the hercules has a slightly yellowy tinge on all of its whites, and the dell is colgate white. Its was like seeing a before and after picture at a teeth bleaching clinic. However, the hercules seems a little easier to look at as it is less bright.

I could of course lower the brightness, but I quite like the fact that its so bright. I've tried turning up the brightness and colours for the hercules, but I cannot for the life of me get rid of that yellow tinge. Any tips? (its running off the VGA)

On a secondary opinion, when dragging, there is very little ghosting. While scrolling forums, the dell appears to ghost less (not completely free of this problem, but my eyes are quite sensitive) than the hercules, and everyone knows that the hercules is a pretty damn fine LCD.

Games:

Games. Widescreen. Works SO well, I can't believe there aren't widescreen monitors in greater abundance. Same about the lack of support, but I assume it will be similar to the uptake of DVDs. It can't be too hard to patch most games to support widescreen... but what do I know, I do a computer science course :/

3 main games were tested/played, some other games i think are having problems with drivers, my computer occasionally crashes, but i'll sort that out eventually. Driver cleaner to the rescue. If that doesn't work there is always the reformat option...

Half life 2 - The god of games. 1680 x 1050 res 6x temporal AA, 16x AF. x800pro @ xt. Absolutely stunning. You won't believe how much the widescreen adds to the experience. In addition to having a wider field of vision, it makes it feel more cinematic, due to the aspect being originally for films. Has a subconcious cinema effect, which is quite welcome, makes it more immersive I feel.

I couldn't detect any ghosting, but I obviously need time getting used to playing games on this monitor, as after a couple of hours I was feeling a little motion sick. I think its the information coming from your peripheral vision that does it.

CS: source - What can I say, wider field of view helps. As does headphones with incredible soundstaging. I could tell to roughly 10degrees what direction someone was shooting/running from. Doesn't look as good as hl2, but thats hardly the monitors fault.

Far Cry - Computer slightly struggled with the same settings as above, so I brought the tAA down to 2x, and the AF to 8, and it seemed to work fine. And good it looked too. Again, no ghosting problems, only problem being, i'm not used to using a mouse in widescreen. I kept overcompensating up or down, and not moving fast enough to the left or right. My FPS brain is primed for 1280 x 1024, so its a little bit ofa jump, but I'm sure I'll get used to it through practice.

Rome: total war - didn't realise this had a widescreen setting until last night. Not as graphically intensive as the above, but it looked fantastic in its own way. Again, looked incredibly cinematic in widescreen, especially in the cutscenes, and scripted sequences. And the fact that you see so much of the world in the battle view is really quite a pleasant thing. Doesn't make you any better at the strategy element though, which I probably shouldn't have been hoping for. No problems at all with the game.

Work:

I am a computer science student, and as such read more code/text than should be legal. Add that to forum addiction, and you've got a lot of characters read per day. I have to say, test looks great. Its pleasant to see such clear text on such a pure white background. I get the same feeling as I do when I buy a brand new book, and the pages are beautifully white. EVERY time I turn on the computer :D

The first day, my eyes fatigued due to the brightness, but now its completely fine, and I can just look at the screen for ages, without any negative effects. Even more wonderful is the rotation. I have to say, 16:10 20inch screens look positively towering when you have them vertical. So much text on the screen. With help of the firefox text size changing function, I managed to fit the entirity of the overclockers forum index on the screen. Coding seems less of a pain, reading lecture notes is almost pleasurable.

DVDs/ DivX (shh)

This is where the screen really shines. Widescreen format, means smaller black lines on the top and bottom, which means much bigger real estate for films and TV series. And they look unbelievably good. Aside from the slight backlight bleed in the top right corner, which doesn't really matter at all, the colours were crisp, the movement was good, and the picture was huge. Who would have thought looking at DVD on a computer could look so nice? Watching the DVD (hero at the time) with high quality headphones, was such an experience, it felt like watching it on a 42inch sony plasma.

I will update once I see more films.

Misc thoughts:

I got a dead subpixel stuck on green near the centre, but I don't actually notice it at all. On pitch black screens, I get a slight bleeding backlight in the top right corner, but its not irritating me at the moment, so I shall keep it for now.

The surface of the screen is quite hard, and when you push on the screen, it doesn't have that ripple effect of other LCDs. Seems sturdier and harder to damage. Probably still wouldn't survive a punch from me due to coursework frustration, but at least cleaning the screen won't be such a tiptoe job.

The upright widescreen is so incredibly fantastic. So fantastic in fact that I relish the thought of having two upright dell 2005fpws on my table. As you can probably imagine I've been trying to tell myself that I can afford it, and that I can afford to change my brand new gigabyte x800pro vivo, for a dual DVI x800xt. Shame that I can't, maybe next year....

I have decided however, that due to the difference in colour and design, I can't bear to keep my hercules and I am selling it. Which I wouldn't have dreamed of doing when I bought it, but I need to fund this current dell, and I'm getting fairly good offers for the hercules. It needs a good home. Any offers? :p

Things to add in future update/review:

PIP and PBP, I don't actually have anything to plug into these, but if I get a digibox like I'm planning, then an update will be in order. Perhaps I'll steal my housemates gamecube/PS2/xbox and see what happens.

USB2 hub. It has one. Anyone want a review of it? No? I thought as much.

Conclusion:

I have written a great deal for a small update. In fact its positively review sized... goes to show what lengths i'll go to to avoid coursework due in tomorrow. And perhaps goes to show how much I like this new screen of mine. When i have more time, i'll refine what I've written here, incorporate some pictures, bulk it up with some idle chitchat, and possibly have got better at CS:source (pah). More importantly, start saving for a second one. I must have two...fgsdgh

[k22]

do you they do any quality control at all or do they just expect people to accept crap? after reading this I think that Dell must be shipping your returned monitors to others in this thread and just passing them around until one of you is willing to accept the imperfections. seriously though they should have a QC test that would prove that it has no dead pixels before shipment. it makes no sense not to if you are going to have a return at any cost policy.

[knowleqe]

nice review acliff, btw what are your settings for brightness/contrast? mine are 5/50 and the whites are still tremendously white.