Posts Tagged 2709W

My latest purchase/investment finally arrived today. It came in a box much bigger than I was expecting!

It’s one of Dell’s latest 27-inchers – the 2709W. Let me just start off by saying that this thing is HUGEEEE!!! It is also sweet. The resolution of this monitor at 1920×1200 is the same as most 24” monitors, but I have found in the first few hours that it is much more comfortable to view this resolution on a 27″ monitor rather than the 24″.

Here are some basic highlights of the monitor from the Dell website:

The 9-in-2 card reader occupies its usual spot, and there are 4 USB 2.0 ports, as usual. Connectivity is definitely better than before with Displayport, HDMI, 2 x DVI and component, so that makes up for the aesthetic loss somewhat. I already have enjoyed the breeze of popping my SD card out of my Nikon D50 and popping it right into the side of the monitor, instead of having to use a USB cable to put these images up. I’m always in favor for simplicity.

One cool thing that the monitor has is is capacitive touch controls. Here though, they somehow detect your presence even before you touch them through some sort of ambient light sensor. It’s pretty cool. Normally, you don’t see anything except the blue status/power light. When you approach it (with your hand or an inanimate object, I did attempt to fool it with my mouse) a light mysteriously appears.

You touch this light… and four more appear, along with the menu on the screen (shown left). The five blue lights act as soft buttons for the menu, and this one is fairly intuitive as far as monitor menus go. Pull your hand away, and the lights disappear into the black bezel one by one. It’s pretty cool.

The display quality is where the 2709W redeems itself and really blows me away. I think that this is one of the best choices for people who watch movies on their  computer monitors, like I do, simply because of the quality of the graphics. Lag was not noticeable at all. The color accuracy is good, and out of the box, they were quite decent, and after a little calibration, quickly became about perfect.

Most 24- and 27-inch models have some sort of built-in scaling, and this one does as well. No “blurs” were visible at any time, even in BIOS on Windows and Startup on Mac OS X, so kudos to Dell on this feature. Thank God it didn’t have any dead pixels, or I would’ve been highly disappointed.

All in all, the Dell 2709W is great. It doesn’t look particularly fancy, none of its bits cry out for attention, but its performance speaks for itself… excellent. I am still amazed with the deep blacks, the contrast and the overall image quality. The 2709W offers a smattering array of inputs that would please just about anyone, making this a very strong offering. I’m really excited about the HDMI input, and will shortly be hooking up my Xbox 360 to the display. It’s going to make for some awesome gaming next year in my apartment!!!

Overall, I give this Dell 2709W an 9.89999 out of 10. Highly recommended to anyone looking to buy a new monitor!

I purchased the monitor for only $579 instead of the full retail of $849 due to a special Dell is running right now. Pick one up today.Dell included free shipping. I ordered it Sunday afternoon, and it was here Wednesday midday shipping out of Nashville, TN. Hard to imagine that this was listed for $1299 when it was first introduced a few months ago. I wonder why the price has dropped so much so quickly. Obviously Dell is hurting, but I can’t believe there isn’t enormous demand for this high-quality monitor!!