DELL 2005FPW - sub £400?...

[CYLEE]

Hi there

Looking at posts on this forum as well as others, it appears that there are places out there selling them for as little as £370! anyone kind enough to tell me me who? - have done my own research, but alas to no avail!
oh, and anyone got any comments as to what this monitor is like for gaming (ghosting etc) ??

Thanks guys (and gals)

[Gipo]

they were on aria.co.uk specials for a day for that price. sposed to be good though (apart from some issues with dead pixels, backlight etc, usual tft probs). Apparently going to be dropping again in price soon

[marine_boy50]

Hi there

Looking at posts on this forum as well as others, it appears that there are places out there selling them for as little as £370! anyone kind enough to tell me me who? - have done my own research, but alas to no avail!
oh, and anyone got any comments as to what this monitor is like for gaming (ghosting etc) ??

Thanks guys (and gals)

I been looking at a new monitor for 2 years now, i am a graphic designer (i now use a pc however, not mac anymore, thats another story) I play alot of games, usually UT03 and racing games, and have been currentlly using a La Cie 19" and Diamondtron 21" CRT monitors in dual mode, both were very good, but are begining to show their age (bit blurry).

I was put off flat panels for quite some time with the reponse times and huge price. My colleage next door bought a AG Neovo 19" and although looks lovely, it only has a maximum res of 1280x1024, and with always using 1600x1200 the res was not high enough. Plus he had a response time of 16ms and still had slight ghosting on UT2004.

I have been on ALL the forums regarding flat panels particulary this 2005FPW monitor forum, I am one of those geeks that has to research alot (thats half the fun isnt it). I was, as you can imagine very confused about what model to go for and worried about getting dead pixels from any manufacuter particulary with regards to the dell 2005fpw, plus the dredded back lighting issue.

After much dilema, I took a risk and opted for the del 2005fpw, I took another risk and bought it off ebay arghh!!!

THE RESULT...

I paid approx £435 including delivery, which was next day.
The box came looked rather plain and small (compared to the size of the box my 21" CRT came in). I opened the package which looked like it had already been opened, it had, the ebay seller checks all the monitors for backlight and deadpixels (also it had the VGA cable attached, since learned they all come with it attached). Everything i needed was there at the top of the box including a DVI cable so i quickly dived down the bottom to get to the panel, my first impressons were that it was smaller than i was expecting, quite a bit smaller, i pressed on with the installation and hooked the panel onto the stand, which is heigth adjustable, height was another of my worries.

Then the big moment of truth, the switch on, I squinted my eyes looked away and powered it up..... mmmm bios screen looks black, mmmm i looked closer,, hurray no dead pixels, pheww!!! Windows loaded and the DVI adjusted evertying for me. Superb!!!!!!! I honestly did not know what backlighting was, I did some tests like everybody on the forums says, and to be honest if it has some backlighting problems, i cant see any!

The screen is well built, sturdy, great stand, very contemporary looking and thin bezel, I think the thin bezel makes the screen seen smaller than it is, i have a friend that has a apple 20" and it looks alot larger, but it has a 1.5inch plastic bezel around it.
I have had lots of nice compliments from my customers (usually were paying you too much if you can afford something like that, ha!) it looks the bollocks on the desk, but smallish until you sit infront of it, then you realise why you didnt get a 19", because of the res.

It even has a 4 port usb hub, two usb under the monitor and two on the right hand side which is really handy for my ipod, flash card reader and usb external hard drive (it is a powered hub also)

The picture quality is superb in DVI, very very very sharp, the colours are superb everything about the screen is excellent, even compared to my old expensive pro CRT displays. I have sold my old CRT's to an office next door, and when i go back to see them, the screen looks very bulky and the quality is very blurry at 1600x1200, something i did not notice working on it every day, so i am glad i upgraded. In fact i was starting to wear my glasses at work over the last year, but now I dont use them anymore, as the new TFT screen is so sharp.

BAD points. Not any really, the only thing i would say is being used to 1600x1200 displays the resolution of this 2005fpw is only 1680x1050, so your monitors is really only an extended 19", my thought was that the extra 400 pixels could be used for palletes. I often think the 20" version with a res of 1600x1200 would have been a better buy, but the monitor does look the bollocks being widescreen and is completely usable.

Then what happened next typical...

The 24inch model came out with a resolution of 1980x1400 (or something like that) i was gutted at first, I probably would have gone for that if it was available. Then I thought, mmm I could just buy another 2005fpw. I used a dual display system with my crt's and to be honest I missed being able to display all my indesign, photoshop palletes anyway.


So you know what, I was so imprressed with the monitor, i got another one! and from the same guy on ebay.

Next day, powered it on, no dead pixels again!!! and no backlighting issues. So now i am the proud owner of two widescreens and i am well chuffed. Everybody goes wow when they come into the office and when i think about it its a better option than 1 x 24inch, for the same approx price you get tons more deskspace and also when working on documents you get to use 1 full document window completely expanded on a full screen, uncluttered with ANY palletes at all and in widescreen. Truly remarkable.

Downsides is that the secondary monitor is attached by the spare d-sub on my 9800pro, and the quality of the screens directly side by side is very noticable.
On its own the d-sub screen looks totally presentable and workable, but when you have two idental screens directly infront of you, you can clearly see which is DVI, so i have just purchased a secondary PCI radeon 9200se with DVi for £36 which will sort out this problem.

My only other niggle is that they are so wide, when you have two together you have to move your head from left to right alot, give you a bit of neck ache intially, but you get used to it and the pain goes away, thats when I often think maybe two 20" regular TFT models may have been a better buy, more pixels and less moving your head. BUT as i say, they do look the bollocks!! and oh yes good for widecreen movies if you watch them on your screen, i dont its for work only.

Overall I cannot knock these monitors, i have two great screens both with no dead pixels, look fantastic, good builld quality, they are the newer A01 models, which are manufactred in Mexico, mine were assembled in Jan 05 and Feb 05.

The problems Ii kept reading about so many times in the forums, just simply did not apply to my screens. Now I am either very very lucky or Dell seems to have sorted out the manufacuring issues.

I would also like to thank eric for his excellent service with checking the screens for dead pixels and backlighting and his quick dispatch, if you are interested here is his url http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZericbunny

I have attached a screen shop of indesign CS with all palletes open and a full screen to work on (3360x1050) http://www.slamdesign.com/desktop.jpg (736k)

And a couple of shots of what the screens look like together on my desk
http://www.slamdesign.com/two_2005fpw.JPG (1.32mb)

I consider myself a joe bloggs consumer, but graphics professional, so appreciate a quality image, and this delivers, I hope this mini review has been helpful, as all the other posts have helped me in my decision, so this is a little bit of payback.

hope this helps you out!

[arthurleung]

Too bad the monitor is still WAY TOO EXPENSIVE here. It only cost $500 in the states but we need to pay £400 for that here.

[Nick F]

Would one of those dell monitors work with a 9800 pro?

[MD]

yep it will

[Merlin4458]

im confused u plugged it into ur 9800 pro and the pic quality wasnt that good so u bought a 9200SE. And its good now? how does that make sense. Im a noob btw

[Daymonkey]

well yeh he was using d-sub and could see the difference to dvi, so he bought a new card so he could use dvi and get the best quality out of the monitor.

[derthballs]

I bought the 2405 (24" version) direct from dell yesterday and got it for £550 after haggling - you can haggle with dell, and no doubt get the 2005 at a lower price.

[Merlin4458]

9200 SE isnt a new card....is it?

[Daymonkey]

9200 SE isnt a new card....is it?

well no but its not for games and its his secondary card so i doubt it really matters.

[arthurleung]

derthballs, finally UK Dell's LCD price(quote) can somehow match deals in the state.
(Current best deal in the states $959.2 + tax)

I think we all need a(or two) Dual DVI card(s)

[GuruJockStrap]

Have to echo what marine_boy50 posted above.

I recently purchased a 2005FPW from the same guy.

Paid and it arrived the next day.

Screen was free of any pixel errors and backlight bleeding issues.

Mine came to £410 all in.

[marine_boy50]

9200 SE isnt a new card....is it?

OK back from holiday now and the 9200se has arrived.

It was the cheapest ATI Radeon i could find with PCI interface £29, (i wanted another radeon, as a nvidia graphics card and driver on the same system smells like trouble) that said its got 128mb of DDR and DVI & D-sub, just hooked up the dvi to the secondary and the image quality is as expected now superb. This card is not used for games, thats why the primary monitor is hooked up to the 9800pro (which still cuts the mustard i must say). D-sub on a tft is quite frankly a waste of time when you see the difference, next to one another).

The colours are now identical, before they were completely different. something worth considering.

Overall a great cheap way of getting two dvi, my other option next year is to either get two sli 6600gt's with a new motherboard, or a top of the range nvidia which i notice has now got two dvi.

[rajagra]

other option next year is to either get two sli 6600gt's with a new motherboard, or a top of the range nvidia which i notice has now got two dvi.

A single 6600GT card can give dual DVI outputs, like my XFX cards do. 2 of these cards give 4 DVI ouputs in non-SLI mode, but in SLI the outputs of the second card are disabled.

[McGreggor]

I bought the 2405 (24" version) direct from dell yesterday and got it for £550 after haggling - you can haggle with dell, and no doubt get the 2005 at a lower price.

That including VAT?