Dell 2407WFP

I broke down and bought a Dell 2407WFP monitor on Monday. It arrived this afternoon. I have read plenty of complaints and negative things about this monitor, and while some of them are true, it’s still a gorgeous piece of equipment.

I have an A02 revision, which is the version that fixes the color banding and blurry text issues that have been widely reported. I've only been using it for a day, but I have not noticed a hint of banding or blurred text in my daily use. And no dead/stuck pixels to boot!

The problems that do exist are not deal-breakers for me. First, there appears to be a bug in the firmware that makes it impossible to display 1600x1200 mode without stretching to fill the screen. I'm not a PC big game player, and the monitor runs natively at 1920x1200, so I can't imagine this would affect me.

Secondly, the video display using the component inputs is pretty horrid. I hooked up my HD cable box via the component input, and it's ugly. Very ugly. However, I bought this to be a PC monitor using the DVI-D input, so again, I can't imagine this will affect me much, though it would be nice if it gave a nice, crisp image.

Finally, the monitor lacks an HDMI input, and there are conflicting reports as to whether it actually supports a 1080i and/or 1080p source. Again, since it's a PC monitor for me, and I'm not watching DVDs or any other HD content, it doesn't affect my decision.

The picture-in-picture rocks, the brightness is blinding, and overall I'm quite happy. If you're planning on using the display as a PC monitor and you can stay out of 1600x1200 or don't mind the stretching in that one resolution, go buy one.