Top Notch Monitor! Many features are not noticed at first glance.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Includes most standard video inputs, sturdy and attractive design, exceptional scaling capabilities. HDTV support!

Cons: Some backlight bleed, no component input.

The Bottom Line: 
Tons of features including support for HDTV resolutions (1080p!). Sturdy but flexible design. The 16:10 aspect ratio is sort of odd, but not uncommon and widely supported. No component input.

Author's Review
I have owned this monitor for about a year now. Some great reviews have been written for this product, so I will use this to cover the parts of the monitor that seem to be left uncovered, including scaling options, the Master Brightness/Contrast control, and HDTV support!


Design
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The base of the stand is a large semicircle and the stand itself does its job well, allowing height, tilt, and rotation adjustments. Monitor shaking during adjustments is almost non-existent, and ultimately I don't feel like I could knock the monitor over if I wasn't careful. The monitor attaches to the stand via metal tabs that click into place. Removal requires pressing a button on the back to withdraw the tabs, ensuring a secure attachment of the monitor to the stand.

On that note, assembly was very easy. Snap the monitor to the stand in a single stroke and plug in the necessary cables. Your video card's Plug'n'Play will take care of the rest, including the less common resolution of 1680x1050 (I didn't even install the drivers that came with it for Windows XP or Windows Vista.). There is a cable management slot that follows the back of the stand that cables can be inserted into for a cleaner appearance and less tugging from the cables when the monitor is rotated.



Features
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PIP

If you're like me and love features, this monitor will not disappoint. Video inputs are S-Video, Composite, D-Sub (analog display), and DVI. From these video inputs, the PIP and PBP functions allow you to easily choose between the inputs. It is worth noting that you cannot select DVI and D-Sub at the same time for PIP or PBP. Therefore, do not expect to be running one computer on one picture and another computer on the other, unless one of them is running through the S-Video or Composite inputs.


Adjustments

You have full image customization of the inputs, including color, hue, brightness, sharpness (for analog inputs), sync (for D-Sub), and size and location of the PIP, offering an extremely flexible interface.


Scaling and HDTV Support

Scaling is a feature often overlooked, and this monitor excels in this category, offering at least 25 different resolutions ranging from 640x432 to 1920x1080 (yes, that is 1080p) (excludes 1600x1200) while the native resolution is 1680x1050. If you include the rotated resolutions, this list grows to a whopping 50 unique resolutions.

I'll start with a feature that many owners of this monitor probably don't even know about; this monitor is programmed to handle popular Progressive HDTV formats! 480p, 720p, and 1080p can all be scaled to fit on this monitor (interlaced modes are NOT supported through VGA and DVI, an "Invalid Signal" error is displayed). 1080p is the real shocker because the monitor is scaling the image down rather than up to fit onto the screen. However, these resolutions are not provided by Plug-and-Play. For ATI users, these resolutions can be forced on through the Catalyst Control Center under "HDTV Support." I don't know if N-Vidia users have a similar option.

That being said, this monitor does not have Component input. You're going to have to use an HDMI>DVI cable (PS3, Xbox360 Elite) or a VGA Cable (XBox360 has one available). I should also point out that this monitor most likely does not have HDCP decryption (it is not advertised as having it), so HD-DVD and BluRay titles are generally out of the question if you choose the HDMI>DVI route. An Xbox360 might allow you to play HD-DVD titles over the VGA connection, however. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The resizing method of the input signals (analog and digital) can also be adjusted, although they are not perfect (For some resolutions, usually over analog inputs, Fill doesn't fill the entire screen or Aspect produces a very strange aspect ratio). The options are: 1:1 (image is centered on the screen as an exact reproduction; 1080p defaults to 'Fill'), Fill (image is resized to fill the entire screen regardless of aspect ratio), and Aspect (image is scaled to its largest size while maintaining the source aspect ratio; this also works with 1080p to get the 16:9 aspect ratio).



Rotation
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The monitor rotates 90° clockwise for a portrait view that, coupled with a video card that allows desktop rotation (which is a vast majority of them), grants a very, very tall desktop. I can get about a page and a half in Microsoft Word in Print Layout, and long web pages no longer tire your hand from using the scroll bar all the time.


Image
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I will agree with most that this monitor is excessively bright. However, it seems that many people haven't noticed that there is a master Brightness/Contrast control accessed by pressing the (-) button (the label is branded into the plastic). This can tone down the hyperactive backlight. I have a window behind my monitor, however, so the max brightness setting is ideal for viewing in the afternoon sun.

As with most LCDs, the image is sharp as a tack (and makes those jaggies really noticeable in older games) and desktop space is plentiful. Colors are bright and blacks are black. There is some backlight bleed, but this is only noticeable in dark screens such as scene changes and loading screens which usually don't matter anyways. I have two bad pixels, but it is also negligible outside of black screens.

Non-PC video is decent. As with many LCDs, resizing an analog signal results in a kindof distorted image. Sharpness can be adjusted for Composite inputs, but this is a problem of LCDs, not just this particular monitor.



Overall Impression
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Definitely worth the money if you have it. I'd recommend a 16:9 monitor if you can afford it, but this monitor has many resizing abilities that blow all other monitors out of the water. It may be a Dell product, but it works beautifully, has a very sturdy yet flexible design (height, tilt, and rotation adjustments), and plug'n'play took care of the installation. 1680x1050 is a wierd resolution, but most recent games support it and most older games support custom resolutions. Tons of inputs/outputs for the multi-functional enthusiast.