I never upgrade my monitors quickly. In the last ten years I've only had four monitors, and one was bought just a year ago. I believe monitors last about three years at least.
But due to a sudden influx of funds and an urgent piece of work, I had to pick up a super-accurate, high resolution and large format monitor. I had been thinking of the 2707, but for only 30% more I could pick up a 4 megapixel monitor - the Dell 3008WFP.
After some struggle and some threats to cancel the order, my Dell shipped. Note that Dell has updated the product page to mention 8 weeks lead time since, while I got mine in just under four. It was lying with Dinesh (dingemini, who supported me very efficiently through this whole period) for about a week before it reached me - so make that three. While I open the package and use all my bodily strength to heft the beast on to my workspace, you go read the manufacturer-speak:
* High-Definition 30" Panel – Offers ultra-high resolution and superb colour for content-creators, designers, video, gaming and entertainment.
* 2560 x 1600 Native Resolution – Offers up to 77% more content compared to Dell 24-inch monitors.
* 3000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio – Produces darker blacks for sharper images, crisp text, better colour saturation and greater detail for HD entertainment.
* FULL HD 1080P - Supporting the highest video content standards and comes with an HDMI connector.
* Dell TrueColor Technology – 117% colour gamut for rich, life-like imagery that has accurate colour representation better tones and hues, and supports Adobe 98 colour standard.
* Extensive Connectivity – Seven connection options: VGA, DVI-D with HDCP, HDMI, S-Video, Component, Composite and DisplayPort give you a wide range of connection options.
* State-of-the-Art Design – With its brushed aluminum housing, glass stand base, and Dell-patented cantilever arm, the Dell 3008WFP looks as beautiful from the back and side as from the front.
The package is very simple. Apart from the monitor you get a DVI cable (24AWG dual-link, nice stuff), a VGA cable, a Displayport cable, power cable, manual and a CD, plus a cleaning cloth. I have no idea what's on either the manual or CD just yet.
[BREAK=Aesthetics]
The monitor is gorgeous. A brushed grey aluminum front bezel surrounds the 30 inch screen, and is somewhat prone to fingerprints. A microfiber cloth is essential, and Dell includes one in the package. The screen is not glossy, but not the dull matte finish of most LCDs. It reflects very little to no background, and at the same time very little light. The glossy side surround (which I've done a cheap number on by not removing the shrinkwrap from yet) and the highly polished composite base complement the chrome logos on the front and back. My old Viewsonic looks dull and drab by comparison.
The cantilever arm sits on a curved frame. The balance looks precarious, but it's really quite stable. Unless, of course, you jiggle the controls a lot, in which case the whole monitor and stand jiggle. Which I need to, but we'll talk about that later.
It looks great from the side and back too. The vents on the back are totally functional, not just for show.
I wish I had a decent camera, but I don't. So I'm using the HotHardware review pictures. Excellent photography throughout and a brilliant review as well. I'm posting a link for it here, do visit them and read up, and visit a couple of sponsors to support them. If you must know, this was one of the reviews I trusted to buy this monitor in the first place!
Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30-inch LCD With DisplayPort - HotHardware
The Front
The Back
[BREAK=Ergonomics]
The weight is distributed quite evenly. The curved arm ensures that the base does not need to be super-heavy, and therefore easier to maneuver. The thing is it takes big arms to go all the way around the sides to carry and position. Once in place, the tilt, swivel and height adjustment are an absolute delight. The flex points are all well-weighted, and stop moving when you do. Very easy to reach the position you need without hitting the end-stops all the time. The height adjustment takes time to get used to, but once adjusted it's not gonna move around too much far as I can see. You can see a view of the swingarm that makes it all possible here:
Swingarm
Controls are neatly placed on the right, and the LED is out of the way so it doesn't blind you while looking at the monitor - this was a pet peeve with many mid-range monitors. I had hoped it would switch off like the Apple monitors, but Dell aint' no Apple, not just yet.
Controls
Source selection is quite inconvenient if you have multiple sources. The Viewsonic auto-switched sources, but the Dell has to be manually switched if one source goes into standby. Also when switched on for the first time, the monitor only checks the last used source, not all sources.
I wish there was a projector-like system where the monitor would hunt through the inputs to check for active inputs before going into standby. The other thing I don't like is that because the controls are off center, the monitor physically jiggles a lot when you're cycling through the controls. So at least ten times a day I have to watch the monitor dance,as I switch sources. I really long for a remote, and this is with just two sources. If you had a console also hooked up along with a DVD player and a couple of PCs, you'd be quite unhappy at the end of the day.
The rear is also pretty fiddly, because you're essentially working blind due to the size of the monitor. The inputs are labelled so they're easy to read, but fitting connectors is quite a job. Again, there's no way you're possibly going to be moving inputs around a lot, so fit and forget is the mantra here. Since this was migrating into the existing system, advance planning was not possible. I just swept the dead rats off the table and on the monitor went. If you pre-plan, you can save a lot of bother.
The OSD is a mixed bag. While it's really easy to use, you cycle through keys that read + and -. Or was it - and +? Anyway. I woulda preferred arrows, as the - sign doubles up to scroll down or left and the + to scroll up or right. First- time users may find it a little weird, but you can get used to it in time. Maybe a second reason to introduce a remote with a 4-way scroll? The menu options let you control practically everything. Position, colour space, fill mode, there's even a sharpness control. [sarcasm]It also lets you adjust the brightness and contrast!!![/sarcasm] I still haven't navigated the entire menu, and I've had the monitor for three days now.
A few pics of the OSD now:
OSD1
OSD2
[BREAK=Features and functions]
On to the good stuff. The 3008WFP has a ton of inputs. 2 DVI-D, 1 VGA, Composite, component, S-video, HDMI, DisplayPort. There's a 5.1 decoder onboard and a power output jack for the soundbar.
Connections
The decoder only works from the HDMI input (even though DP is supposed to be able to carry sound it's not been implemented by Dell, and no, it's not firmware correctable), and the output is available as three 3.5mm jacks. So you don't *need* a soundcard if you have an HD audio + HDMI solution on your motherboard and video card, or a 690G/similar which is supposed to be able to pass audio through the DVI output and a dongle or cable for conversion to HDMI. Time to find out, but not in this review. We shall also talk about the SQ of the onboard decoder in a later review.
The analog inputs accept resolutions of up to 1920x1200, and the digital inputs accept up to 2560x1600. Not sure which resolution applies to the HDMI port. The dot pitch is .25mm, which is not uncomfortably small, but you do need good eyesight if you're at a distance. If you didn't have good eyesight you'd anyway look for a monitor with a larger dot pitch, so text is easier to read...
It also functions as a USB hub. There is a single B type jack on the back with two ports available next to it. Plus two more ports on the left of the monitor. And a card reader as well - SD, MS, XD, MMC, CF.
USB and Card reader!
No kitchen sink. That's the 3010WFP you're thinking of.
[BREAK=In action]
I guess this really defines the word 'monitor'. Though the accuracy is not spot-on out of the box, I can see why the wider colour gamut is so very important. The saturation is rich, like a CRT. The reds are deep and don't have the typical orange tint of LCDs, and the greens are rich and not grayish. For the first few days I let myself adjust to the colours, as they seemed too fluorescent to me. But after some Photoshop calibration, I realised they were almost spot-on.
No use of pictures, not even the best camera can do it justice, and anyway the colours will be what you see on your monitor, so it's kinda pointless.
The monitor can work in multiple colour spaces. I tried a few then left it in AdobeRGB, where it seems the best to me. Spyder coming soon, then we'll have a better and more accurate monitor.
Brightness out of the box is set at 75, which is way too bright. I brought it down to about 10, where it reaches some kind of balance between a good white and black level. By default, Dynamic contrast is switched off. Switching it on modulates backlight brightness in accordance with the displayed image. I tried it, had it switched on for 10 minutes, then switched it off. Games look great with DC, and maybe movies (can't be sure), but I can't do Photoshop with it on, or studio work. It's just too distracting to have the backlight brightness fluctuating.
With this monitor, I can actually see defects in pictures I thought were perfect. Games look awesome and videos look acceptable when blown up. If a photo is grainy or not well-lit or with the wrong skin tone, this monitor is going to tell you that. Just like a good pair of nearfield studio monitors (as in, speakers). Some colours are a little off, but nothing some Spyder loving can't fix. Also differences between cards and cables is very apparent. The VGA output of the 690G looked acceptable on my old monitor. On the Dell, it was greenish, blurry and generally unusable. I had to switch to DVI, and am now upgrading the connection to Dual-link. However, it is still no comparison to the G80 image qualilty in 2D mode on my main rig.
[BREAK=In action, part Deux]
We don't know what scaling chip is used. The scaling quality is acceptable for movies, utter rubbish for text and 2D graphics (which I kind of expected), and quite good for games. So no new ground broken here, CRTs are still the champs of managing multiple resolutions at equal sharpness. However not very disappointing either, and the bonus is that the monitor allows 1:1 operation. You get black around the unused screen area, but that's fine by me. You basically can choose between the risk of a blurry image or smaller real estate.
Input lag and smearing is all but unnoticeable, and the 8ms doesn't seem any slower than the 2ms my Viewsonic delivered. Viewing angle is claimed at 178 degrees, but I would put it at about 90 degrees till I can trust, which makes it fine for over-the-shoulder presentations and sit-down-at-a-distance-and-watch-movies occasions. In any case the thing is so frickin big you will never be at a 0 degree angle to every part of the screen. By comparison, my little office TN laptop (also a Dell) looks different from every single millimeter shift of the head, let alone 90 degrees. So I'd rate the 3008WFP as excellent.
Backlight bleed is a real issue. It is unavoidable in a monitor this size and without LED lighting, but this particular unit has one pain point. A very irritating spot just under the top of the screen in the center. It bugged me a lot on day 1, but that location is mostly the taskbar and the menu bar, so the workspace is fine. With sufficient ambient lighting there is no issue. If you watch a lot of movies with no ambient light on and with black bars on the top and bottom, you might give this monitor a miss. On second thought, you'd rather buy a TV for that sort of use anyway. I don't use it like that, so I'm getting used to it. In the long term if it bothers me or causes my calibration to go all funky (no, not you, Funky!) I'll ask for a replacement. It doesn't see to affect the white uniformity though, but I need to calibrate it before making any comments.
Last thing to mention is the heat. This thing runs hotter than most CRTs. The thermal design is quite good, but the amount of heat coming off the thing is more than from my gaming PC. The vents at the sides on the back bring in cool air, and the vents at the top let it out. Good thing it has plenty of space at the back. Even the front of the screen runs warm. I'm seeing a big problem in summer, even though it made the last few days of winter a little more bearable. Time for that AC in the living room.
[BREAK=Summary]
I'd give this monitor an 8 out of 10. The two things that irritate me are the input switching problem (which is a big black mark in my book) and the bit of backlight bleed. Here's a quick summary:
Pros:
She's a looker!
Amazing colours, if almost flourescent at first sight
Decent scaling from non-native res
Great viewing angles for a 30" screen
Enough inputs to keep you going till 2015
Truthful and accurate colours
Lots of added features: 5.1 decoder, card reader, USB hub
Superb black levels
Ability to work in different colour spaces. Support for sRGB (for web design), Adobe RGB(print), desktop, Video and gaming profiles.
Cons:
Price, price, price. Oh my God, I almost bled a full month's pay into this thing.
Heat - someone call the fire brigade!
Backlight bleed - when will LCDs ever fix this?
Input switching. Come on guys, it's logical to have a better system for something with so many inputs!!
You can see the pictures from my pitiful little cellphone camera here. This is the complete setup as of this writing. I am in the process of migrating my rigs into new configurations and a new workspace (and a new camera), so stay tuned.
Dell 3008 WFP - a photoset on Flickr
To come:
1. Short-term usage report
2. Colour calibration results
3. HDMI audio test report
4. Bundled software report
5. Better pictures
But due to a sudden influx of funds and an urgent piece of work, I had to pick up a super-accurate, high resolution and large format monitor. I had been thinking of the 2707, but for only 30% more I could pick up a 4 megapixel monitor - the Dell 3008WFP.
After some struggle and some threats to cancel the order, my Dell shipped. Note that Dell has updated the product page to mention 8 weeks lead time since, while I got mine in just under four. It was lying with Dinesh (dingemini, who supported me very efficiently through this whole period) for about a week before it reached me - so make that three. While I open the package and use all my bodily strength to heft the beast on to my workspace, you go read the manufacturer-speak:
* High-Definition 30" Panel – Offers ultra-high resolution and superb colour for content-creators, designers, video, gaming and entertainment.
* 2560 x 1600 Native Resolution – Offers up to 77% more content compared to Dell 24-inch monitors.
* 3000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio – Produces darker blacks for sharper images, crisp text, better colour saturation and greater detail for HD entertainment.
* FULL HD 1080P - Supporting the highest video content standards and comes with an HDMI connector.
* Dell TrueColor Technology – 117% colour gamut for rich, life-like imagery that has accurate colour representation better tones and hues, and supports Adobe 98 colour standard.
* Extensive Connectivity – Seven connection options: VGA, DVI-D with HDCP, HDMI, S-Video, Component, Composite and DisplayPort give you a wide range of connection options.
* State-of-the-Art Design – With its brushed aluminum housing, glass stand base, and Dell-patented cantilever arm, the Dell 3008WFP looks as beautiful from the back and side as from the front.
The package is very simple. Apart from the monitor you get a DVI cable (24AWG dual-link, nice stuff), a VGA cable, a Displayport cable, power cable, manual and a CD, plus a cleaning cloth. I have no idea what's on either the manual or CD just yet.
[BREAK=Aesthetics]
The monitor is gorgeous. A brushed grey aluminum front bezel surrounds the 30 inch screen, and is somewhat prone to fingerprints. A microfiber cloth is essential, and Dell includes one in the package. The screen is not glossy, but not the dull matte finish of most LCDs. It reflects very little to no background, and at the same time very little light. The glossy side surround (which I've done a cheap number on by not removing the shrinkwrap from yet) and the highly polished composite base complement the chrome logos on the front and back. My old Viewsonic looks dull and drab by comparison.
The cantilever arm sits on a curved frame. The balance looks precarious, but it's really quite stable. Unless, of course, you jiggle the controls a lot, in which case the whole monitor and stand jiggle. Which I need to, but we'll talk about that later.
It looks great from the side and back too. The vents on the back are totally functional, not just for show.
I wish I had a decent camera, but I don't. So I'm using the HotHardware review pictures. Excellent photography throughout and a brilliant review as well. I'm posting a link for it here, do visit them and read up, and visit a couple of sponsors to support them. If you must know, this was one of the reviews I trusted to buy this monitor in the first place!
Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30-inch LCD With DisplayPort - HotHardware
The Front
The Back
[BREAK=Ergonomics]
The weight is distributed quite evenly. The curved arm ensures that the base does not need to be super-heavy, and therefore easier to maneuver. The thing is it takes big arms to go all the way around the sides to carry and position. Once in place, the tilt, swivel and height adjustment are an absolute delight. The flex points are all well-weighted, and stop moving when you do. Very easy to reach the position you need without hitting the end-stops all the time. The height adjustment takes time to get used to, but once adjusted it's not gonna move around too much far as I can see. You can see a view of the swingarm that makes it all possible here:
Swingarm
Controls are neatly placed on the right, and the LED is out of the way so it doesn't blind you while looking at the monitor - this was a pet peeve with many mid-range monitors. I had hoped it would switch off like the Apple monitors, but Dell aint' no Apple, not just yet.
Controls
Source selection is quite inconvenient if you have multiple sources. The Viewsonic auto-switched sources, but the Dell has to be manually switched if one source goes into standby. Also when switched on for the first time, the monitor only checks the last used source, not all sources.
I wish there was a projector-like system where the monitor would hunt through the inputs to check for active inputs before going into standby. The other thing I don't like is that because the controls are off center, the monitor physically jiggles a lot when you're cycling through the controls. So at least ten times a day I have to watch the monitor dance,as I switch sources. I really long for a remote, and this is with just two sources. If you had a console also hooked up along with a DVD player and a couple of PCs, you'd be quite unhappy at the end of the day.
The rear is also pretty fiddly, because you're essentially working blind due to the size of the monitor. The inputs are labelled so they're easy to read, but fitting connectors is quite a job. Again, there's no way you're possibly going to be moving inputs around a lot, so fit and forget is the mantra here. Since this was migrating into the existing system, advance planning was not possible. I just swept the dead rats off the table and on the monitor went. If you pre-plan, you can save a lot of bother.
The OSD is a mixed bag. While it's really easy to use, you cycle through keys that read + and -. Or was it - and +? Anyway. I woulda preferred arrows, as the - sign doubles up to scroll down or left and the + to scroll up or right. First- time users may find it a little weird, but you can get used to it in time. Maybe a second reason to introduce a remote with a 4-way scroll? The menu options let you control practically everything. Position, colour space, fill mode, there's even a sharpness control. [sarcasm]It also lets you adjust the brightness and contrast!!![/sarcasm] I still haven't navigated the entire menu, and I've had the monitor for three days now.
A few pics of the OSD now:
OSD1
OSD2
[BREAK=Features and functions]
On to the good stuff. The 3008WFP has a ton of inputs. 2 DVI-D, 1 VGA, Composite, component, S-video, HDMI, DisplayPort. There's a 5.1 decoder onboard and a power output jack for the soundbar.
Connections
The decoder only works from the HDMI input (even though DP is supposed to be able to carry sound it's not been implemented by Dell, and no, it's not firmware correctable), and the output is available as three 3.5mm jacks. So you don't *need* a soundcard if you have an HD audio + HDMI solution on your motherboard and video card, or a 690G/similar which is supposed to be able to pass audio through the DVI output and a dongle or cable for conversion to HDMI. Time to find out, but not in this review. We shall also talk about the SQ of the onboard decoder in a later review.
The analog inputs accept resolutions of up to 1920x1200, and the digital inputs accept up to 2560x1600. Not sure which resolution applies to the HDMI port. The dot pitch is .25mm, which is not uncomfortably small, but you do need good eyesight if you're at a distance. If you didn't have good eyesight you'd anyway look for a monitor with a larger dot pitch, so text is easier to read...
It also functions as a USB hub. There is a single B type jack on the back with two ports available next to it. Plus two more ports on the left of the monitor. And a card reader as well - SD, MS, XD, MMC, CF.
USB and Card reader!
No kitchen sink. That's the 3010WFP you're thinking of.
[BREAK=In action]
I guess this really defines the word 'monitor'. Though the accuracy is not spot-on out of the box, I can see why the wider colour gamut is so very important. The saturation is rich, like a CRT. The reds are deep and don't have the typical orange tint of LCDs, and the greens are rich and not grayish. For the first few days I let myself adjust to the colours, as they seemed too fluorescent to me. But after some Photoshop calibration, I realised they were almost spot-on.
No use of pictures, not even the best camera can do it justice, and anyway the colours will be what you see on your monitor, so it's kinda pointless.
The monitor can work in multiple colour spaces. I tried a few then left it in AdobeRGB, where it seems the best to me. Spyder coming soon, then we'll have a better and more accurate monitor.
Brightness out of the box is set at 75, which is way too bright. I brought it down to about 10, where it reaches some kind of balance between a good white and black level. By default, Dynamic contrast is switched off. Switching it on modulates backlight brightness in accordance with the displayed image. I tried it, had it switched on for 10 minutes, then switched it off. Games look great with DC, and maybe movies (can't be sure), but I can't do Photoshop with it on, or studio work. It's just too distracting to have the backlight brightness fluctuating.
With this monitor, I can actually see defects in pictures I thought were perfect. Games look awesome and videos look acceptable when blown up. If a photo is grainy or not well-lit or with the wrong skin tone, this monitor is going to tell you that. Just like a good pair of nearfield studio monitors (as in, speakers). Some colours are a little off, but nothing some Spyder loving can't fix. Also differences between cards and cables is very apparent. The VGA output of the 690G looked acceptable on my old monitor. On the Dell, it was greenish, blurry and generally unusable. I had to switch to DVI, and am now upgrading the connection to Dual-link. However, it is still no comparison to the G80 image qualilty in 2D mode on my main rig.
[BREAK=In action, part Deux]
We don't know what scaling chip is used. The scaling quality is acceptable for movies, utter rubbish for text and 2D graphics (which I kind of expected), and quite good for games. So no new ground broken here, CRTs are still the champs of managing multiple resolutions at equal sharpness. However not very disappointing either, and the bonus is that the monitor allows 1:1 operation. You get black around the unused screen area, but that's fine by me. You basically can choose between the risk of a blurry image or smaller real estate.
Input lag and smearing is all but unnoticeable, and the 8ms doesn't seem any slower than the 2ms my Viewsonic delivered. Viewing angle is claimed at 178 degrees, but I would put it at about 90 degrees till I can trust, which makes it fine for over-the-shoulder presentations and sit-down-at-a-distance-and-watch-movies occasions. In any case the thing is so frickin big you will never be at a 0 degree angle to every part of the screen. By comparison, my little office TN laptop (also a Dell) looks different from every single millimeter shift of the head, let alone 90 degrees. So I'd rate the 3008WFP as excellent.
Backlight bleed is a real issue. It is unavoidable in a monitor this size and without LED lighting, but this particular unit has one pain point. A very irritating spot just under the top of the screen in the center. It bugged me a lot on day 1, but that location is mostly the taskbar and the menu bar, so the workspace is fine. With sufficient ambient lighting there is no issue. If you watch a lot of movies with no ambient light on and with black bars on the top and bottom, you might give this monitor a miss. On second thought, you'd rather buy a TV for that sort of use anyway. I don't use it like that, so I'm getting used to it. In the long term if it bothers me or causes my calibration to go all funky (no, not you, Funky!) I'll ask for a replacement. It doesn't see to affect the white uniformity though, but I need to calibrate it before making any comments.
Last thing to mention is the heat. This thing runs hotter than most CRTs. The thermal design is quite good, but the amount of heat coming off the thing is more than from my gaming PC. The vents at the sides on the back bring in cool air, and the vents at the top let it out. Good thing it has plenty of space at the back. Even the front of the screen runs warm. I'm seeing a big problem in summer, even though it made the last few days of winter a little more bearable. Time for that AC in the living room.
[BREAK=Summary]
I'd give this monitor an 8 out of 10. The two things that irritate me are the input switching problem (which is a big black mark in my book) and the bit of backlight bleed. Here's a quick summary:
Pros:
She's a looker!
Amazing colours, if almost flourescent at first sight
Decent scaling from non-native res
Great viewing angles for a 30" screen
Enough inputs to keep you going till 2015
Truthful and accurate colours
Lots of added features: 5.1 decoder, card reader, USB hub
Superb black levels
Ability to work in different colour spaces. Support for sRGB (for web design), Adobe RGB(print), desktop, Video and gaming profiles.
Cons:
Price, price, price. Oh my God, I almost bled a full month's pay into this thing.
Heat - someone call the fire brigade!
Backlight bleed - when will LCDs ever fix this?
Input switching. Come on guys, it's logical to have a better system for something with so many inputs!!
You can see the pictures from my pitiful little cellphone camera here. This is the complete setup as of this writing. I am in the process of migrating my rigs into new configurations and a new workspace (and a new camera), so stay tuned.
Dell 3008 WFP - a photoset on Flickr
To come:
1. Short-term usage report
2. Colour calibration results
3. HDMI audio test report
4. Bundled software report
5. Better pictures
.
reps due 
hyeah:
Single card