No flicker, no fade. Careful what you pay. Discounts abound.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Everything. Huge pivoting widescreen monitor. Very fast. Amazing price.

Cons: Cables may tug on screen in portrait mode and doesn't rotate a full 90'.

The Bottom Line: 
Fantastic monitor. 12ms 20.1" widescreen that pivots. Plug-n-play, even under Red Hat (with minimal config tweaking). Even better deal with Dell 25% off electronic coupon. Doesn't disappoint.

Author's Review
As a computer tech that recommends hardware to clients, I searched for over a year before stumbling upon this amazing monitor. Quick answer: Buy it, you'll love it.

Any LCD with response time (the speed at which a pixel changes color) under 25 is fast. The 2005FPW (FPW: Flat Panel Widescreen) checks in at a mere 12ms. And to do it with a 20.1" LCD is amazing.

No blurring or fading on fast moving graphics. "Need for Speed 5" in "widescreen" mode is incredible. DVD movies in widescreen turns your PC into a movie theater. Where else are you going to find a 20" flat screen TV for under $500? (no, it doesn't include a built-in TV tuner, but I already have a TV card in my PC).

Definitely go for the separate AS500 "audio bar", which clips right onto the bottom on the monitor. Two 7watt speakers with volume knob, sounds great and integrates perfectly with the monitor (an extra $50, plus s/h, from Dell, but you can find them for half that on eBay. Speaking of which, do NOT buy your 2005FPW on eBay like I did, or the Dell 3-year warranty will be under the retailers name (even if you buy it new), and transferring the warranty is a headache.

This monitor also has an integrated 4-port USB 2.0 hub (two ports more than any other monitor I've seen). This is a *really* nice touch. Two ports easily accessible on the side and two more on the bottom of the unit with the rest of the plugs.

At this writing, the 2005fpw currently sells on Dell's website for $486 with free shipping. And if you buy a "25% off electronic Dell coupon" on eBay for $2.50, you can save yourself a bundle. Wish I'd known that before I bought mine.

A feature that I love that most don't mention is that the screen "pivots". Both the nVidia and ATI graphics software have a built-in "rotate" feature to rotate the screen sideways. Change the video setting on your card then simply tilt the screen clockwise 90 degrees for full-page viewing. Great for editing documents or reading web pages with less scrolling. There's nothing you need to lock/unlock to do it. Just turn the screen sideways with your hands. The big huge base is very heavy and won't fall over easily (it has rubber feet under it to prevent sliding).

Only two, very minor annoyances with this feature: the height adjustable stand only has two positions... all the way up (about 7.25" from desk to bezel) or all the way down. This is to ensure that you don't whack the bottom of your monitor on the table when you rotate it. And second, while there are definite "notches" the screen clicks into in normal (wide) and portrait (long) position, if your PC is on the right-hand side like mine is, the cables plugged into the bottom tend to pull the screen back one or two degrees after you turn it (too much play between positions), and portrait mode doesn't seem to reach a full 90' degree turn. A mild annoyance I hope Dell fixes in future designs.

(UPDATE: It appears the stand DOES allow full height adjustment. The stand post is snug enough to hold most any position, it just doesn't *lock* in any other positions. Sorry for any confusion.)

LCD's perform best in their "native" resolution, which in this case is a whopping 1680x1050. My eyes are getting too old to read everything with the default Windows settings, so I increased the size of all the Windows fonts, buttons and icons to make them big enough to see (right-click the desktop and click "Appearance"). You'll probably want to do this too. Expect to tinker with your Windows settings for about a half hour before you get it just right.

Dell claims you need a beefy video card to drive this monitor, but people have reported no problems with cards as low as a Radeon 7000. No additional drivers were needed on my XP-Pro machine. The video card instantly detected the plug-n-play monitor and booted up in it's highest resolution.

I had a 19" CRT before this, which generated so much heat, I didn't have to turn the heat on in my home during most of the (mild Texas) Winter. This LCD produces FAR less heat, which will probably save me a ton of money on my A/C bill this Summer. While the CRT was a 19" inch, only 17.5" inches were viewable. Here, all 20.1" inches from edge to edge give me an additional 1.3" of screen on each side... and the higher resolution translates into even more workspace.

A nice narrow bezel and slim design minimize desktop real-estate. My desktop was never deep enough for both my 19" CRT and my keyboard, but that is no longer a problem with an LCD.

To give you some idea of what to expect, the screen is wider than my (standard Windows) keyboard by about an inch (including the narrow bezel) and more than a foot tall (the bezel is about 3/4" wide on all sides). Your choice of VGA, DVI, S-video or Composite (yes, like a TV) inputs. It even has "PIP" (Picture In Picture) if you plug a TV or VCR into either the S-video or Composite input jacks. A button on the front of the monitor lets you select placement of the PIP screen, including "side-by-side" with two images of equal size on the same monitor (I suppose you could mount it on the wall and use it as a TV, but don't quote me on it. I don't even know if a wall-mount kit for it exists).

The viewing angle is he widest I've ever seen on an LCD. According to Dell; 178' degrees from all sides (8' degrees better than every other LCD I've seen) and it's true. The screen also tilts side to side and up/down about 30', more than enough to find a good viewing position.

Bottom line: Fantastic monitor. No flicker, no fade, enormous size, amazing price. I searched for over a year and I've seen it all. Any monitor worth spending an hour reviewing must be great, and this one is.

(Addendum: I forgot to add, avoid "version A00" of this monitor. "A00" suffered from "light leakage" around the edges of the screen. This problem was corrected with version "A01".)

(Update: Oct '06 - More than a year later, I still love this monitor. I can report now that I've used as low as an old MX440 nVidia VGA card, and now an ATI 9550dvi with no trouble. A beefy video card is not required to drive this monitor. It also produces more heat than I first realized, probably the same as a 17" CRT.)