Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD

[InternalStorm]

GOT MINE!

I can't tell if there's any backlight issue... it looks just fine. I will wait until it's nite time so I can have pitch black, but seriously it is much much wider than I expected! And TOO bright. I thought I would be OK with the brightness but it's a bit too bright. It's nice that I can play games at 1280x768 as it is even a lower resolution than 1280x1024 so it plays smoother and looks great ! Also, how do I move the screen up and down? It seems to be stuck in the lowest position... and where do the cables go? they are sort of in a strange position right under the LCD, and theres seems to be a rubber thing on the back of the stand to put the cables in but not sure how that works... thanks!

Oh.. and where in the ATI drviers do I make the brightness not so bright? And for some reason it only shows 60Hz refresh rate in the display properties, I can't go to 75!

[Brownbay]

Hey Toxicity,

Heh, for some reason... I wasn't really WOWED by the monitor when I first laid eyes on it out of the box... I guess that?s because I've been looking at so many reviews of its bigger 24" brother. But I've only used it for a few hours last night and I must say... I?m starting to like it... This is my first LCD so it's gonna take some getting use to.

So... If you wanna move the screen up and down... just grab a hold of the bottom of the base with one had and with the other just push up or down on the back of the monitor... it comes up and down fairly easily.

As far as the cables go... you?re going to have to shove them down the "rubber thing"... send them down in order in this order: DVI --> Power --> USB, it should all fit. I'm also curious as to what brightness setting you've got yours set at. As I mentioned in my earlier post.... it was too bright for me... even at 0 that I had to use my Vid-Card to tone it down even more.

Good Luck!... and P.S. Post some pics of what it looks like in the dark... wanna see how bad my backlight bleeding is compared to yours. And What Revision/Build Date-Location did you get?

[InternalStorm]

Hey Brownbay,

I got a second hand one because I am in Canada and wanted to get a good deal without paying full price at Dell.ca... it is revision A01 and I will post pics tonite. Made in Mexico, there IS a small little cluster of grey pixels and I don't know how to get them unstuck. I used the PSP flasher video and it didn't work, but I can't do much about it and I won't be pickey. I am using ClearType as it definately makes text nicer to look at.

My settings for brightness are at 0 right now and it is still too bright it's burning my eyes. Where in the ATI drivers do I change brightness?

[Johnr]

I have been looking at the Dell 2001FP, but somebody got a 2005FP in a Dell BOGOF offer and am tempted to buy it over the 2001FP (Especially since it works out around ?70 cheaper!)

What will it look like compared to my 17" SyncMaster 172v Samsung TFT and how easy is it to attach to the stand? (I've seen pics of the box and the panel and stand come in different pieces :ninja:: )

Also what is the tilting feature like? I've heard it won't 'lock' in a position, would that mean I could half tilt it and it wouldn't go back into a neutral position? Want my monitor to look straight so I'm not bending my head to look at the screen!

[InternalStorm]

I have been looking at the Dell 2001FP, but somebody got a 2005FP in a Dell BOGOF offer and am tempted to buy it over the 2001FP (Especially since it works out around ?70 cheaper!)

What will it look like compared to my 17" SyncMaster 172v Samsung TFT and how easy is it to attach to the stand? (I've seen pics of the box and the panel and stand come in different pieces?:ninja:a: )

Also what is the tilting feature like?? I've heard it won't 'lock' in a position, would that mean I could half tilt it and it wouldn't go back into a neutral position?? Want my monitor to look straight so I'm not bending my head to look at the screen!

586110377[/snapback]

I would get the widescreen version. It is much better. The 24 inch Widescreen is a bit too much... this 20 inch is HUGE compared to my 17 inch CRT, and a 24 inch probably wouldn't hardly fit on my desk or it would look unproportioned since there is a wooden sill above it. It is huge as far as I'm concerned. I thought it might be too small when I ordered it by looking at the pictures people posted, but in person, it is very very large and almost too big on the desktop.

Took me maybe 3 minutes to fumble around to get the LCD on the stand, but really it's just a matter of snapping it into place. There are little hooks that you just slot in... easier than I thought really. I still can't get mine to move up and down on the stand though. It tilts side to side and up and down but I can't move the stand to make the monitor higher no matter how hard I pull up it won't budge! It was up when I opened the box and I easily pushed it down and now it's stuck down....

Oh ya and you can make it crooked, but really it's not like it's hard to make it straight, and it's nothing to worry about really. Easy enough to position straight and it does sort of "sit" in a straight position.

[Steven]

I still can't get mine to move up and down on the stand though. It tilts side to side and up and down but I can't move the stand to make the monitor higher no matter how hard I pull up it won't budge! It was up when I opened the box and I easily pushed it down and now it's stuck down...

586110394[/snapback]

Hey can you say duh! :laugh:

Edited June 24, 2005 by Steven

[mistical]

I just noticed that programs that I always have open on my desktop are starting to burn onto the LCD screen. Is this normal?

I know it is for like some types of tvs, because some shows had that problem, one that I heard had that happen to them was TechTV. Just what I heard, but I know of this problem just did not think I'd have it on my LCD? Havn't heard about it at all in this topic, since I've read almost every post before I bought it and have continued to read them after I did a month and week ago or something now.

Anyways, for example, DU Meter, Rainlendar and AveDesk you can see where it was exactly if you were to move the windows.

[Steven]

how easy is it to attach to the stand?

586110377[/snapback]

anymore noobish questions please consult the user guide. :laugh:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/moni...glish/index.htm

[InternalStorm]

Well...the thing is I got mine second hand as I already said and it never came with the big color diagram so I had no idea where the butons were. I tried pushing it as well but it didnt seem to budge until I forced it, so it must have been stuck.

Anyways, I want to give everyone my impression of the 2005fpw. This thread and review helped me immensely in making my final decision- that I would go from a square screened 17 inch HORRIBLE 60hz refresh rate NEC CRT, to a widescreen 20 inch LCD... pretty big leap as far as I'm concerned. I was never a believer in LCD's until I saw my friends gaming rig with a 17 inch LCD that had no ghosting and insane clarity- I just had to have one! And after finding out how to see the flicker of the CRT refresh rate, it really started bothering me, and my eyes as well.

I had several concerns:

A) From the looks of all the pictures the screen look very nice with a great picture, but would the wideness of it make up for it being not as tall as a 4:3 20" monitor? Enough to make a difference from my 17"?

B) Would my graphics card (a 9800 Pro) be able to handle games at their native resolution well and still look good?

C) Would I be able to do gaming without too much hassle of changing config files, and would they look good? And along the same lines, would movies look good even if they had the black bars?

Those were my main concerns. It turns out, most of those concerns ended up being total opposites. Instead of being a concern, they turned out to be positives! To answer "A", the screen was HUGE! If anybody is skeptical that the screen looks not so big from looking at peoples pictures, throw that thought away! It was big enough for my desk, and the 24inch to be honest would be overkill. When you see on in person it is a 10 times different experience. It looks much larger, and even when it's turnd on it looks bigger than when it is off. I sit about 2 1/2 feet from it because it is so large, and it fills up my entire vision. Anything larger would just be too disproportionate and overwhelming.

The outcome of "B"... well, as I started to figure out more as i read around the internet, their is two major resolutions when it comes to a 16:10 widescreen display. 1680x1050 being the native resolution... it is slightly smaller than 1600x1200 on the 4:3 monitors, which gives you a slight performance boost when playing games at that resolution compared to a 4:3 monitor. Then there is the 1280x768 resolution, which is less demanding than 1280x1024 which most people with 17 inch monitors play at including myself. This meant that I could play at the lower resolution and get better frames than at my regular 4:3 resolution of 1280x1024, and be able to crank on some higher quality settings like AA/AF. The quality was still amazing and the frames surprised me! I could play Far Cry maxed out at high quality and 6x AA / 8x AF and get around 30 FPS. The large screen brought the games to life! With HL2 I could max everything out and have above 30 FPS.

Now if I were to play at 1680x1050, I found that the image CLARITY went up considerably. This made me want to play at the high native resolution at all times, and it is possible with most games. I could get playable frame rates (above 30 at all times) in Far Cry, and I could enable 2x AA/ 4x AF in HL2 and get very high frame rates. I sacrificed some quality, but the picture was so much better, and to be honest YOU NOTICE NO DROP IN PLEASURE when playing because the quality of the screen and picture is so immersive. You have to try it to believe it, but widescreen gaming is the way it's meant to be, and with an older graphics card, it is actually better to play in widescreen as i found out, because of the increased immersiveness even with lower settings.

Concern "C"... now this was a no brainer. Now, Battlefield 2, DID NOT come with built in widescreen resolutions. I have not tried Doom 3 or other games, but Far Cry DID have it built in, and most well done was Half Life 2 / CS:S. Halo had the lower 1280x768 resolution built in, but not the native. There are ways to make games run with simple tweaks and field of view changes but really it is quite simple once you get the hang of it to make games run in widescreen. It's just a shame that Dice didn't do it with BF2, but if you look at screenshots for Ghost Recon 3 (is that the game?) that is coming out soon, they are done in widescreen, as well as certain other games, which really makes me hope it will become mainstream in the future to include the setting. It is no extra work for the programmers other than a quick field of view tweak in the game engine. There was NO GHOSING whatsoever, and any blurring that did occur was natural as the picture was moving fast. This happened on my CRT and on any monitor, and is just normal to see bluring when moving fast. I could not see any visible ghostly trail in games. Contrast was very good, and everything looked very rich in color which brought photographs to life my mom even commented on its great colors. When watching DVD's, it filled much of the screen and can be stretched slightly without image distortion as well. There is much more picture to be seen than on a 4:3 monitor, and it could very well second as a mini entertainment center for DVD's as the quality and viewing area is incredible.

Now onto the build quality and picture quality... the stand footprint is very small, and I have so much more room on my desk now than with my big CRT, an it gives my whol room a much more modern look. The colors matched my keyboard/mousepad/computer case and speakers very well. It was easy to assemble, and the quality of the stand is of very high grade. The metal an plastics used are extremely sturdy, and the bottom of the stand grips very tight to the surface it's on to insure no slipping around. The menus were very easy to navigate, and the LCD overall was very sleek and well designed to take up as little room as possible.

As stated over and over again, this display is BRIGHT! I cranked the brightness down to 0 (which is really a mislabelled backlight setting) and it only lowers the brightness about 70% or so of the total backlight power. This is really unfortunate as it has taken me all day and I still am not totally OK with how bright it was. I thought I would get used to it quick, but it is the main thing that bothers me. When in games its fine, but when browsing the net or using Windows it can get overwhelmingly bright. I am getting used to it though, and it looked even too dark later in the day, so i am assuming I am getting used to it. Also remember to change the brightness settings in your graphics card drivers, as the picture brightness is washed out by default and looks much better if the drivers brightness setting is put down slightly.

Several stuck grey pixels but I will get used to them as I am sick of RMAing things. Backlight issue I doubt will bother me, it's pretty good and I don't care to do much stuff in the dark anyways. Several complaints is that in the dark at an angle the screen looks very reddish. Also, there seems to be a slight warp in the picture when looking from slightly above the monitor as if it were a fisheye effect and the screen is dipping in the middle top portion somewhat. These are not big deals, but the things I did notice.

Other than that- WOW! This is a beast... it brings computing to life in all forms, and after getting used to the widescreen, you will never go back. It is indeed a work of art, and something that will be the prized posession of my room for a long time ;)

[darkmark327]

I just noticed that programs that I always have open on my desktop are starting to burn onto the LCD screen. Is this normal?

I know it is for like some types of tvs, because some shows had that problem, one that I heard had that happen to them was TechTV. Just what I heard, but I know of this problem just did not think I'd have it on my LCD? Havn't heard about it at all in this topic, since I've read almost every post before I bought it and have continued to read them after I did a month and week ago or something now.

Anyways, for example, DU Meter, Rainlendar and AveDesk you can see where it was exactly if you were to move the windows.

586112478[/snapback]

I noticed my taskbar doing the same thing; I got worried so I turned on auto-hide. Turn on a screensaver and/or have the monitor go into standby after 10 minutes or so. Also dont' keep any programs on top.

Edited June 24, 2005 by darkmark327

[Glorious]

Pics... what do you guys think I should do?

586101468[/snapback]

The VP201B by Viewsonic doesn't show them but the screen is basically all bright when theres nothing on it. It looks fine playing movies.

[darkmark327]

The outcome of "B"... well, as I started to figure out more as i read around the internet, their is two major resolutions when it comes to a 16:10 widescreen display. 1680x1050 being the native resolution... it is slightly smaller than 1600x1200 on the 4:3 monitors, which gives you a slight performance boost when playing games at that resolution compared to a 4:3 monitor. Then there is the 1280x768 resolution, which is less demanding than 1280x1024 which most people with 17 inch monitors play at including myself. This meant that I could play at the lower resolution and get better frames than at my regular 4:3 resolution of 1280x1024, and be able to crank on some higher quality settings like AA/AF. The quality was still amazing and the frames surprised me! I could play Far Cry maxed out at high quality and 6x AA / 8x AF and get around 30 FPS. The large screen brought the games to life! With HL2 I could max everything out and have above 30 FPS.

Now if I were to play at 1680x1050, I found that the image CLARITY went up considerably. This made me want to play at the high native resolution at all times, and it is possible with most games. I could get playable frame rates (above 30 at all times) in Far Cry, and I could enable 2x AA/ 4x AF in HL2 and get very high frame rates. I sacrificed some quality, but the picture was so much better, and to be honest YOU NOTICE NO DROP IN PLEASURE when playing because the quality of the screen and picture is so immersive. You have to try it to believe it, but widescreen gaming is the way it's meant to be, and with an older graphics card, it is actually better to play in widescreen as i found out, because of the increased immersiveness even with lower settings.

Believe me, it is so worth it to play at native res. I had an AIW 9800 Pro and ran into similar situations, and I upgraded to an x800xt and HL2/CSS at 1680x1050 with AA/AF is amazing.

Concern "C"... now this was a no brainer. Now, Battlefield 2, DID NOT come with built in widescreen resolutions. I have not tried Doom 3 or other games, but Far Cry DID have it built in, and most well done was Half Life 2 / CS:S. Halo had the lower 1280x768 resolution built in, but not the native. There are ways to make games run with simple tweaks and field of view changes but really it is quite simple once you get the hang of it to make games run in widescreen. It's just a shame that Dice didn't do it with BF2, but if you look at screenshots for Ghost Recon 3 (is that the game?) that is coming out soon, they are done in widescreen, as well as certain other games, which really makes me hope it will become mainstream in the future to include the setting. It is no extra work for the programmers other than a quick field of view tweak in the game engine.

Yes, it sucks that most games don't have built in widescreen support and some you can't even hack. Such as NFSU2 :(

As stated over and over again, this display is BRIGHT! I cranked the brightness down to 0 (which is really a mislabelled backlight setting) and it only lowers the brightness about 70% or so of the total backlight power. This is really unfortunate as it has taken me all day and I still am not totally OK with how bright it was. I thought I would get used to it quick, but it is the main thing that bothers me. When in games its fine, but when browsing the net or using Windows it can get overwhelmingly bright. I am getting used to it though, and it looked even too dark later in the day, so i am assuming I am getting used to it. Also remember to change the brightness settings in your graphics card drivers, as the picture brightness is washed out by default and looks much better if the drivers brightness setting is put down slightly.

Don't turn down the brightness, make sure your room is well lit.

Other than that- WOW! This is a beast... it brings computing to life in all forms, and after getting used to the widescreen, you will never go back. It is indeed a work of art, and something that will be the prized posession of my room for a long time ;)

586112634[/snapback]

Amen--haha, I also just bought a 1704FPT and a dual-monitor stand. Going dualies with my previous CRT (19" trinitron) just didnt' cut it compared to this monitor.

[Brownbay]

Well... I don't want to burst anyone's bubble here... but there IS ghosting. However, for the most part... even in BF2 or CSS (intensive games) you won't notice the ghosting during regular play at all. The only reason I even noticed ghosting is because I was actually looking for it and I did everything I could (stuff you'd normally never do during normal game play unless you were on crack) to get it to ghost.

For example, I'd run really fast around a corner and move my mouse for side to side and intently watch the corner of the wall... Only then did it ghost. But you have to ask yourself... how many times am I going to stare at the corner of a wall in a firefight and move my mouse from side to side really fast?

Also, if you've been using a fairly good CRT... .24 dot pitch, Trinitron tube, etc... you might notice a degradation in text quality... Although, to be honest, I'm not even sure if it really is a decrease in image quality of just personal preference. I think for the most part that CRT's seem to be softer on text where as LCD's are sharper... and if I'm not mistake the 2005FPW has a .25 dot pitch in stead of .24, so eh...

I guess in the end a GOOD CRT could still best this Dell.... however, you'd have to be really picky to notice the difference. Not to mention the fact that CRT's take up an ENORMOUS amount of space. It's simply amazing how much space I've saved.

[runsmoove]

Wooo I cant wait for mine to come now :D

[Razor_D]

Got mine today! :) Looks wicked,

I was on 1600x1200 17inch CRT before, and really, if anything, this seems bigger (clearly its actually a few pixels less).

The burning worries me a bit, anything i can do to stop that, as i just my pc for a good 12 hours a day, and have the taskbar on (really dont want to have to turn on auto hide).

I got a A01 UK version, and while theres some backlight blending, its not enough to bother me... even during films its ok :)

-Raz

[darkmark327]

It went away once I turned on autohide; annoying but oh well. You could also move it to the top every so often I guess.

[xcspear]

Im thinking about getting one of these monitors on ebay. Its brand new and comes with a 3 year warranty. Will I be able to return it to tell if there are backlight or other such issues? Im just a little worried since im not ordering it from dell directly.

[Glorious]

If it comes with the dell warranty and reciept you should be fine.

[xcspear]

Can just the warranty be fine?

[CJC]

Just got a 2005FPW and LOVING IT! :woot:

[InternalStorm]

I got used to the brightness. it is very nice ;) can't get enough of it. And I am purchasing a ViperJohn modded X800XT PE AGP that can do over 7500 in 3DMark2005 at highest quality drivers settings all on air cooling! I will play every game with native res. then haha

[BigRain]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and I've to admit that I didn't read all 114 pages of comments to this thread.

I've just bought my 2005fpw a few wks ago and while there's no dead pixel of bright pixels. I do notice that at a blank (black) background, the upper right and lower left portions of the LCD have a brighter shadow than the rest of the screen.

Is this normal? I don't know if I should bother with asking for a replacement unit because I don't want to receive another one but then later find out having dead pixels.

Please advise!

[l77Il7H]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and I've to admit that I didn't read all 114 pages of comments to this thread. 

I've just bought my 2005fpw a few wks ago and while there's no dead pixel of bright pixels. I do notice that at a blank (black) background, the upper right and lower left portions of the LCD have a brighter shadow than the rest of the screen.

Is this normal? I don't know if I should bother with asking for a replacement unit because I don't want to receive another one but then later find out having dead pixels.

Please advise!

586121622[/snapback]

you have improper backlighting. this is a known issue with this dell lcd. i suggest getting it replaced. most of us don't have that problem but it's pretty common, as i heard from complaints. good luck.

[BigRain]

you have improper backlighting. this is a known issue with this dell lcd. i suggest getting it replaced. most of us don't have that problem but it's pretty common, as i heard from complaints. good luck.

586122878[/snapback]

Thanks for the reply. I won't notice the backlight problem unless say during watching DVD when the top and bottom portions are blanked out. Is this a good enough reason for them to replace the unit?

[Vice]

If you tell them you have bad back light bleeding they will send you a new LCD ASAP. and you only have to send your LCD back once you receive the new one.