Another Dell 2001FP 20" LCD Monitor Review by Arogan
(
Editor's note: This review was first posted on our
awesome FirstAdopter.com 2001FP discussion board.)
This thread helped me decide to purchase the 2001FP so I thought I would join in on the discussion. $750 direct from Dell. Free shipping. Arrived in 24hrs. This is my initial report with only a few hours of testing. All tests were performed using DVI.
- No dead/stuck pixels. No "screen door" effect that I can tell. Back light is nice and even.
- After turning on clear type the text looks great at 1600X1200. Since I sit pretty far back from the monitor I just increase the font size in windows, eudora, IE, etc and everything is fine. I can still read normal size text at 1600X1200 even from several feet back but I just prefer larger fonts. The monitor is just that sharp.
- Contrast seems fine. Default settings don't burn your retina's out.
- Pivot landscape/portrait
- Lots of inputs: analog vga, dvi, s-video, composite, usb2.0 hub (2 ports on the bottom and 2 on the left side which are very accessible. Xbox looks pretty good on it with some blur. I tried Ninja Gaiden.
- Controls are well layed out. One single button cycles through the 4 inputs.
- Good monitor placement adjustments: height, rotate, pivot, angle
- Very thin bezel.
- 18 lbs (including stand), much cooler than that old adi 19" crt.
Games
- UT2004 @ 1024X768X32. It looks very very good. When playing normal it looks just great with no ghosting. If you pan back and forth really fast (which you normally wouldn't do constantly) you will notice a slight blur effect. It's hard to describe. It's not exactly ghosting but it looks different from a crt.
- Far Cry @ 1024X768X32: Very similar to ut2004 and just looks great. Very playable.
- Counter Strike Condition zero @ 1024X768X32: Again much much better than the planar pl191m. It had this weird jerking motion. Almost like poor framerate yet I was pegged at 60 fps (vsync on). At 1600X1200 it ran smooth. I had to uncheck mouse smoothing at that res otherwise it felt a bit laggy. After that it played great. The only problem is your crosshair is a bit small at 1600X1200. It's weird this jerking motion was only apparent in CS and not in the other 2 games at the same interpolated 1024X768. I still need to try the other stretch setting (aspect). They are 1:1, fill, and aspect.
It's not the perfect monitor (I don't think one exists yet). Gaming on a LCD I think just takes a bit of adjusting. Having said that this monitor blows away the planar pl191m for gaming. It's a BIG BIG improvement. I had purchased a planar about 6 months ago and just couldn't stand the ghosting and returned it.
I consider myself pretty picky about these things. Based on this initial experience so far I think this monitor is a keeper!
More info about the jerky motion
Hmmm....Did some more testing. It seems like a refresh rate of 75hz causes the jerky motion issue in games. I'm not sure why since I thought refresh doesn't have much meaning with LCD monitors. What happened before is 1024X768 supports 60-75hz while 1600X1200 only supports 60hz. Counter strike at 1024 starts with 75hz but if you make any video changes like gamma and apply it restarts CS but at 60hz (which is very smooth). Anyway, Is there a way to make CS always use 60hz in opengl? Refresh Override (available with CRT) is not an option under ati display tab when you have a LCD hooked up. I even tried reforce which didn't help. I have an ati 9700 pro.
I guess I could just play CS at 1600X1200 which looks great but then the crosshair is a bit too small.
After several more hours of game play (with no motion sickness or ill side effects) I'm completely use to the 2001fp. I'll never go back to a CRT now. I consider myself a pretty hard core fps gamer and this monitor has met my needs. CS seems to be pretty harsh on LCD's (probably the older engine and the color pallet) and it's very playable on the 2001FP. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!
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