mc_nibbles
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A note to readers: This review does not contain technical review data about this monitor as I do not own any calibration or testing equipment.
Having a good monitor is just as important as anything when it comes to gaming or creative digital work. Of course work and play usually require different equipment, but for some that may not be the case.
With the Dell S2340M some may be able to blend there work and play into one single affordable 23" IPS display.
Introduction and Specs
The Dell S2340M is an extremely affordable IPS display coming in at just $160. That's on par with the pricing of a modern 23" TN panel display.
Now for those who don't know about monitor display panels, I'll give you the short and easy. By design lower cost TN panels suffer from not-so-great viewing angles, as well as color/image quality shifting across the viewing angle. Most IPS displays do not suffer from these ailments, providing a wider and more accurate viewing angle. These are things that are important to people who do things like edit photos, video, or other creative color work. These can also be beneficial to people who play games. They also usually provide a wider gamut of colors.
On the other end of things, most TN panels have a fast response time, meaning there is less ghosting of the images between frames in situations like gaming. Affordable IPS panels usually have slower response times, but only by a few milliseconds. This is where an IPS panel might not be a good option for a gamer.
I always suggest to users that before you buy a display, you go out and try it. Everyone's eyes are different, and some may find the color/response time/etc of one monitor pleasing while it may give others a headache.
Specs
Diagonally Viewable Size:
58.42 cm (23")
Horizontal: 509.18 mm (20.05")
Vertical: 286.41 mm (11.28")
Maximum resolution:
1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz
Aspect Ratio:
16:9
Pixel Pitch:
0.265 mm
Brightness:
250 cd/m2 (typical)
Color Support:
Color Gamut (typical): 82%4
Color Depth: 16.78 million colors
Contrast Ratio:
1,000:1 (typical)
8 million:1 (Dynamic Contrast Ratio)
Max Viewing Angle: (typical)
(178° vertical / 178° horizontal)
Response Time: (typical)
7 ms with overdrive (gray to gray)
Panel Type:
In-plane switching
Panel Backlight:
LED
Connectors (S2340M):
VGA & DVI (HDCP)
Power consumption (normal operation, typical):
19 W
Power consumption (activeoff mode):
<0.5 W
Stand:
Tilt
Security:
Security lock slot
Height:
398.9 mm (15.70 inches)
Width:
532.2 mm (20.95 inches)
Depth:
175.8 mm (6.92 inches)
What comes in the box: The display itself, an easy to assemble stand, power brick, user manual, and a VGA cord.
Look and Feel
Right out of the box the Dell S2340M shows what kind of build quality you can get for $160 today. It has a small bezel that's actually part of the glass front, with a single wide extruded plastic section at the bottom of the monitor sporting the Dell logo. The back has is textured and smoothly contoured, keeping with the sleek and simple design. The overall thickness of the screen is quite small too, thanks to the LED back light.
It has one power button and four control buttons on the right bottom side, and a small LED indicator light on the right bottom section. When the monitor is on it glows white, and when it's in low power or sleep mode it glows orange.
The stand is also very minimalist, consisting of a flat glossy base and a grey metal-looking arm. It allows a range of +4 to -22 degrees of adjustment, and is super simple to install, requiring only a single tool less bolt to attach the base to the arm, and a simple push-button insert to attach the monitor to the arm.
On the back of the monitor you will see a cable management slot, and though I think it's a great idea, my DVI cable is much too thick to actually fit in it. The Power cable and the supplied VGA cable are both able to fit in it without problems. As far as connectivity you have a VGA and DVI port, A/C, and a lock port. Unlike most monitors that use the simple three prong power chords, this monitor uses a power brick. Though it works fine, it can be a bit of a hassle if you lose the brick or it stops working.
With the wide arm the monitor is actually farely stable, requiring a lot of force to get it to wobble. Overall it feels very solid, and I personally think it's one of the better looking sub $200 monitors because of it's super simple design.
Setup
The Dell S2340m is very easy to set up. Simply plug in the power source, hook up the monitor via the DVI or VGA port to your computer, and power it on. With the factory default settings I find it to be a bit green/yellow. That can easily be changed through the monitors easy to use menu system.
To access the menu, you hit the second button from the bottom on the right side of the monitor. This is where that simplistic design can be a pain, there's no markings as to which button does what, you just have to know (or better yet look at the manual).
After you've gotten that far it's much easier. The menu is lined up with the buttons on the side of the monitor, so you simply have to press the button next to what you want to do. From the factory you have easy access to your presets, brightness/contrast, and the menu system.
I'll just get straight to the menu itself so we can go through everything. Now that you're in a much larger menu, the top two control buttons are used for up/down, the third is to enter each sub menu, and the last one is used to exit the menu. You will see at the top of the menu there is an "energy use" bar, this changes to show you how your settings affect the total energy usage of the monitor. The first menu we happen upon is the brightness/contrast, which is pretty self explanatory. At full brightness this monitor is much too bright for me, I prefer around 80-85, and for contrast 70-75 seems to produce the most natural results.
The next menu option is input source. Here we see that you can chose Auto select, VGA, or DVI. The later two are just what they say, while auto select senses which input is getting signal.
Next is color settings. You can chose from RGB or YPbPr (which I have not seen a use for as far as computers go), as well as a variety of presets, all of which could fit a particular persons needs. I personally like the multimedia preset, though I use custom color to correct for a slight tint. When chosing the Custom Color you can adjust the R G B color ranges to make your own personal color profile
On to the display settings, where you can chose the aspect ratio, which once again isn't something most modern PC users will need. You can also adjust sharpness, and I find the standard 50 to be just right. you can also reset the settings listed at the bottom of the menu. As you can see there are lots of options that are unavailable on this model, and I have found no documentation explaining why. I have tried VGA, DVI and HDMI via an adapter and these settings never become available.
Next you have your "other" settings. This is where you adjust the menu language and look, energy efficiency settings, and more. DDC/CI is what allows your computer to change the monitors settings for things like color calibration. the LCD conditioning feature is for when images become "stuck" and is supposed to help relieve this issue if it happens. The last option in this menu is a factory reset, which will reset everything all around.
Finally you have the Personalize menu. This is where you can set the function of the two upper buttons on the side of the monitor to whatver you would like.
Subjective Performance
My intended use for this display was for photo editing, video editing, and graphic design. For those purposes I think the Dell S2340M performs well, but of course not at the level of a professional 8 bit IPS panel. I also use it for gaming, which is does perform reasonably well at despite it's not-so-fast response time of 7ms.
Initially I found the factory settings to have a slight green/yellow tint, which has been hard to counteract with the integrated controls. Between adjusting the RGB levels and brightness/contrast levels, I have been able to get it to reproduce pretty accurate colors. This was my main gripe with this pannel, the factory quality control and calibration isn't to the level I'm used to with most IPS displays. Then again this display cost much less than the other IPS displays I have used.
Once I got that sorted, I started working. After a few hours, I felt much less fatigued than I used to with my older HP 2311x. The crisp picture paired with the wider color gamut and more accurate colors put less strain on my eyes, allowing me to work longer without feeling the need for a break. The viewing angles and less gamma/hue distortion across those viewing angles was also very pleasing, leaving me more confident with the end results of my work since I didn't have to worry about the position of my eyes affecting the outcome as much as I did with the 2311x. The only downside I found with this monitor in a creative situation is that the glossy screen is extremely reflective, and if you cannot set up your rooms lighting behind the display it may prove too much for some users. There are upsides to glossy displays, as they usually provide the user with a sharper image. But sitting next to a matte IPS panel in a dark room I find the difference to be very small.
Now a bit of technical talk. This monitor is based on a 6-bit panel using FRC (Frame Rate Control) as opposed to the more expensive and more accurate 8 bit panel. This means that it uses FRC technology to achieve the advertised 16.78 million colors by alternating , where a true 8 bit panel can produce these without it. In some lower end displays this means that when trying to represent heavy gradients or extremely small differences in colors the screen can possibly flicker, or simply not produce the colors at all. I regularly use Photoshop and Adobe After Effects and have found that this monitors FRC implementation is spot on and it has no problems at all producing these types of slight color differences without issue.
After I finished a bit of work, i started up CS:GO to see how well this thing handled games. I was pleasantly surprised to see little/no ghosting even during the fast paced first person shooter action even when pushing the monitor to it's full 60hz potential with my titles achieving 70-80+ FPS. Another thing I enjoyed was the great color and contrast I was able to see, when moving from an older/lower quality TN panel display it was quite a difference. Keep in mind this is a subjective view on the performance of this monitor, and that some users can (or feel like they can) see the difference between a 2ms and 7ms response time. While I myself can sense there is a difference between the two, 7ms is still plenty fast enough for my eyes.
Conclusion
Overall I am very impressed with the dell S2340M. It's a very solid budget IPS monitor for the asking price, and provides beginner photographers and graphic designers a quality representation of there work. It will also provide those gamers who feel a few extra ms of response time is worth it for the image quality and viewing angles this panel can give compared to a TN display.
The build quality is good, providing a sturdy product with a solid base and an overall great look and feel. The only downside I found with the design of the S2340M is that the cord management in the back only fits smaller cables, though that's not a deal breaker. The glossy front panel is also something I'm not too fond of for some situations, but that depends on your preferences and the environment the display will be used in.
The menus are easy to navigate and provide plenty of functionality for the regular user. I'm still disappointed in the fact that I cannot get access to some of the more advanced controls. I have contacted Dell about this and was unable to get a clear answer as to why this monitor lists controls that cannot be used. It could very well be that because of the price of the display there are hardware and software limitations making these adjustments unavailable, but they are even mentioned in the manual so it's kind of misleading.
I would've liked it to come better calibrated as I don't own any sort of calibration device, and calibrating a display by eye is very time consuming and usually not very accurate. Then again I can't expect dell to spend the time or resources doing this for a display they sell at such a low price. They do state that it's factory calibrated, but it didn't come with any formal documentation like some of the higher end IPS displays do. I still find myself resetting to factory defaults to see if it was really that unpleasant, and I can say that it really was. This could also be a quality control issue, where my monitor went by without proper calibration, but in the end it's something I was able to work around without any major fuss.
Overall the Dell S2340M is a decent budget IPS display that the hobby photographer or just-out-of-college graphic designer can pick up for the same price as most TN panels. It has also proven to be a good gaming option too, providing awesome image quality and great viewing angles.
Pricing and Availability
Amazon: $159.99
Best Buy: $159.99
Newegg: $159.99
Having a good monitor is just as important as anything when it comes to gaming or creative digital work. Of course work and play usually require different equipment, but for some that may not be the case.
With the Dell S2340M some may be able to blend there work and play into one single affordable 23" IPS display.
Introduction and Specs
The Dell S2340M is an extremely affordable IPS display coming in at just $160. That's on par with the pricing of a modern 23" TN panel display.
Now for those who don't know about monitor display panels, I'll give you the short and easy. By design lower cost TN panels suffer from not-so-great viewing angles, as well as color/image quality shifting across the viewing angle. Most IPS displays do not suffer from these ailments, providing a wider and more accurate viewing angle. These are things that are important to people who do things like edit photos, video, or other creative color work. These can also be beneficial to people who play games. They also usually provide a wider gamut of colors.
On the other end of things, most TN panels have a fast response time, meaning there is less ghosting of the images between frames in situations like gaming. Affordable IPS panels usually have slower response times, but only by a few milliseconds. This is where an IPS panel might not be a good option for a gamer.
I always suggest to users that before you buy a display, you go out and try it. Everyone's eyes are different, and some may find the color/response time/etc of one monitor pleasing while it may give others a headache.
Specs
Diagonally Viewable Size:
58.42 cm (23")
Horizontal: 509.18 mm (20.05")
Vertical: 286.41 mm (11.28")
Maximum resolution:
1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz
Aspect Ratio:
16:9
Pixel Pitch:
0.265 mm
Brightness:
250 cd/m2 (typical)
Color Support:
Color Gamut (typical): 82%4
Color Depth: 16.78 million colors
Contrast Ratio:
1,000:1 (typical)
8 million:1 (Dynamic Contrast Ratio)
Max Viewing Angle: (typical)
(178° vertical / 178° horizontal)
Response Time: (typical)
7 ms with overdrive (gray to gray)
Panel Type:
In-plane switching
Panel Backlight:
LED
Connectors (S2340M):
VGA & DVI (HDCP)
Power consumption (normal operation, typical):
19 W
Power consumption (activeoff mode):
<0.5 W
Stand:
Tilt
Security:
Security lock slot
Height:
398.9 mm (15.70 inches)
Width:
532.2 mm (20.95 inches)
Depth:
175.8 mm (6.92 inches)
What comes in the box: The display itself, an easy to assemble stand, power brick, user manual, and a VGA cord.
Look and Feel
Right out of the box the Dell S2340M shows what kind of build quality you can get for $160 today. It has a small bezel that's actually part of the glass front, with a single wide extruded plastic section at the bottom of the monitor sporting the Dell logo. The back has is textured and smoothly contoured, keeping with the sleek and simple design. The overall thickness of the screen is quite small too, thanks to the LED back light.
It has one power button and four control buttons on the right bottom side, and a small LED indicator light on the right bottom section. When the monitor is on it glows white, and when it's in low power or sleep mode it glows orange.
The stand is also very minimalist, consisting of a flat glossy base and a grey metal-looking arm. It allows a range of +4 to -22 degrees of adjustment, and is super simple to install, requiring only a single tool less bolt to attach the base to the arm, and a simple push-button insert to attach the monitor to the arm.
On the back of the monitor you will see a cable management slot, and though I think it's a great idea, my DVI cable is much too thick to actually fit in it. The Power cable and the supplied VGA cable are both able to fit in it without problems. As far as connectivity you have a VGA and DVI port, A/C, and a lock port. Unlike most monitors that use the simple three prong power chords, this monitor uses a power brick. Though it works fine, it can be a bit of a hassle if you lose the brick or it stops working.
With the wide arm the monitor is actually farely stable, requiring a lot of force to get it to wobble. Overall it feels very solid, and I personally think it's one of the better looking sub $200 monitors because of it's super simple design.
Setup
The Dell S2340m is very easy to set up. Simply plug in the power source, hook up the monitor via the DVI or VGA port to your computer, and power it on. With the factory default settings I find it to be a bit green/yellow. That can easily be changed through the monitors easy to use menu system.
To access the menu, you hit the second button from the bottom on the right side of the monitor. This is where that simplistic design can be a pain, there's no markings as to which button does what, you just have to know (or better yet look at the manual).
After you've gotten that far it's much easier. The menu is lined up with the buttons on the side of the monitor, so you simply have to press the button next to what you want to do. From the factory you have easy access to your presets, brightness/contrast, and the menu system.
I'll just get straight to the menu itself so we can go through everything. Now that you're in a much larger menu, the top two control buttons are used for up/down, the third is to enter each sub menu, and the last one is used to exit the menu. You will see at the top of the menu there is an "energy use" bar, this changes to show you how your settings affect the total energy usage of the monitor. The first menu we happen upon is the brightness/contrast, which is pretty self explanatory. At full brightness this monitor is much too bright for me, I prefer around 80-85, and for contrast 70-75 seems to produce the most natural results.
The next menu option is input source. Here we see that you can chose Auto select, VGA, or DVI. The later two are just what they say, while auto select senses which input is getting signal.
Next is color settings. You can chose from RGB or YPbPr (which I have not seen a use for as far as computers go), as well as a variety of presets, all of which could fit a particular persons needs. I personally like the multimedia preset, though I use custom color to correct for a slight tint. When chosing the Custom Color you can adjust the R G B color ranges to make your own personal color profile
On to the display settings, where you can chose the aspect ratio, which once again isn't something most modern PC users will need. You can also adjust sharpness, and I find the standard 50 to be just right. you can also reset the settings listed at the bottom of the menu. As you can see there are lots of options that are unavailable on this model, and I have found no documentation explaining why. I have tried VGA, DVI and HDMI via an adapter and these settings never become available.
Next you have your "other" settings. This is where you adjust the menu language and look, energy efficiency settings, and more. DDC/CI is what allows your computer to change the monitors settings for things like color calibration. the LCD conditioning feature is for when images become "stuck" and is supposed to help relieve this issue if it happens. The last option in this menu is a factory reset, which will reset everything all around.
Finally you have the Personalize menu. This is where you can set the function of the two upper buttons on the side of the monitor to whatver you would like.
Subjective Performance
My intended use for this display was for photo editing, video editing, and graphic design. For those purposes I think the Dell S2340M performs well, but of course not at the level of a professional 8 bit IPS panel. I also use it for gaming, which is does perform reasonably well at despite it's not-so-fast response time of 7ms.
Initially I found the factory settings to have a slight green/yellow tint, which has been hard to counteract with the integrated controls. Between adjusting the RGB levels and brightness/contrast levels, I have been able to get it to reproduce pretty accurate colors. This was my main gripe with this pannel, the factory quality control and calibration isn't to the level I'm used to with most IPS displays. Then again this display cost much less than the other IPS displays I have used.
Once I got that sorted, I started working. After a few hours, I felt much less fatigued than I used to with my older HP 2311x. The crisp picture paired with the wider color gamut and more accurate colors put less strain on my eyes, allowing me to work longer without feeling the need for a break. The viewing angles and less gamma/hue distortion across those viewing angles was also very pleasing, leaving me more confident with the end results of my work since I didn't have to worry about the position of my eyes affecting the outcome as much as I did with the 2311x. The only downside I found with this monitor in a creative situation is that the glossy screen is extremely reflective, and if you cannot set up your rooms lighting behind the display it may prove too much for some users. There are upsides to glossy displays, as they usually provide the user with a sharper image. But sitting next to a matte IPS panel in a dark room I find the difference to be very small.
Now a bit of technical talk. This monitor is based on a 6-bit panel using FRC (Frame Rate Control) as opposed to the more expensive and more accurate 8 bit panel. This means that it uses FRC technology to achieve the advertised 16.78 million colors by alternating , where a true 8 bit panel can produce these without it. In some lower end displays this means that when trying to represent heavy gradients or extremely small differences in colors the screen can possibly flicker, or simply not produce the colors at all. I regularly use Photoshop and Adobe After Effects and have found that this monitors FRC implementation is spot on and it has no problems at all producing these types of slight color differences without issue.
After I finished a bit of work, i started up CS:GO to see how well this thing handled games. I was pleasantly surprised to see little/no ghosting even during the fast paced first person shooter action even when pushing the monitor to it's full 60hz potential with my titles achieving 70-80+ FPS. Another thing I enjoyed was the great color and contrast I was able to see, when moving from an older/lower quality TN panel display it was quite a difference. Keep in mind this is a subjective view on the performance of this monitor, and that some users can (or feel like they can) see the difference between a 2ms and 7ms response time. While I myself can sense there is a difference between the two, 7ms is still plenty fast enough for my eyes.
Conclusion
Overall I am very impressed with the dell S2340M. It's a very solid budget IPS monitor for the asking price, and provides beginner photographers and graphic designers a quality representation of there work. It will also provide those gamers who feel a few extra ms of response time is worth it for the image quality and viewing angles this panel can give compared to a TN display.
The build quality is good, providing a sturdy product with a solid base and an overall great look and feel. The only downside I found with the design of the S2340M is that the cord management in the back only fits smaller cables, though that's not a deal breaker. The glossy front panel is also something I'm not too fond of for some situations, but that depends on your preferences and the environment the display will be used in.
The menus are easy to navigate and provide plenty of functionality for the regular user. I'm still disappointed in the fact that I cannot get access to some of the more advanced controls. I have contacted Dell about this and was unable to get a clear answer as to why this monitor lists controls that cannot be used. It could very well be that because of the price of the display there are hardware and software limitations making these adjustments unavailable, but they are even mentioned in the manual so it's kind of misleading.
I would've liked it to come better calibrated as I don't own any sort of calibration device, and calibrating a display by eye is very time consuming and usually not very accurate. Then again I can't expect dell to spend the time or resources doing this for a display they sell at such a low price. They do state that it's factory calibrated, but it didn't come with any formal documentation like some of the higher end IPS displays do. I still find myself resetting to factory defaults to see if it was really that unpleasant, and I can say that it really was. This could also be a quality control issue, where my monitor went by without proper calibration, but in the end it's something I was able to work around without any major fuss.
Overall the Dell S2340M is a decent budget IPS display that the hobby photographer or just-out-of-college graphic designer can pick up for the same price as most TN panels. It has also proven to be a good gaming option too, providing awesome image quality and great viewing angles.
Pricing and Availability
Amazon: $159.99
Best Buy: $159.99
Newegg: $159.99
