Wider is better. Better for movies, games...anything.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Big screen, very wide, good refresh rate, great colors, low cost, great deal.

Cons: Minor backlighting issues for black graphics due to overall monitor brightness.

The Bottom Line: 
Awesome 16:9 aspect ratio, very good resolution of 1680x1050, low cost, very bright, super color ratio of 600:1, dell does have a good return policy if you don't like it.

Author's Review
Recently my main project has been building a new gaming computer, and my wife asks me what we can do about my aging 17" Samsung CRT monitor. I tell her that we can move the CPU box around so the monitor doesn't stick out so far, or move the desk out some, she responds with "why can't we buy one of those new LCD monitors".

Understandably this came as a shock to me because I had just plunked down $900 for the components for our new system. It hadn't even crossed my mind to buy a new monitor, why fix something that is working fine? (my CRT)

After a week or two I was browsing around the deal sites that I frequently visit (slickdeals, fatwallet) and saw a sweet deal on a very big LCD monitor, the Dell 2005FPW 20" wide LCD. I called my wife from work and told her about it, she agreed and within five minutes I had the deal sealed on dell.com.

Now you know why I needed it, but next you'll know why I chose this particular monitor.

Pro's & Con's
Before anything lets get the pro's and cons over with for the people just looking for that.

Pro's
1. 20" Viewable display, with a 16:9 aspect ratio. What that means is you take a normal 20" monitor and make it wider, thus you get the 16:9 aspect ratio.

2. High contrast ratio, 600:1, means the colors really POP.

3. Good refresh rate of 12ms, not the industry leader but enough that you won't get streaking or ghosting (two effects caused by refresh rates over 20ms when playing games or action movies).

4. The monitor is bright, I mean the light it puts out is bright, this helps with the colors and the overall sharpness of the monitor. Using a light reader on a cd/m2
scale this monitor puts out a score of 246 in contrast to the Viewsonic VP201b which scores a much dimmer score of 179.

5. Cost, there is almost no comparison, using coupons readily available you can get this monitor for about $390 at dell.com. I've even heard of it going for $360 with some harder to find coupons, but I got mine for $390. Compare that to the viewsonic VP201b which pricegrabber.com lists the lowest price available at $580. This monitor is a steal.

6. Lastly you get a top resolution of 1680x1050, which is a very good resolution, a little wierd than the standard numbers but that's because of the wide screen.

Con's
Ok yes there are some cons but to be honest the pro's outweigh them by a fair margin.

1. The base is not sturdy enough. Dell seemed to go for appearance over function with the base, instead of having a wide base for a wide monitor they went with a small one, if you try to adjust teh screen, the monitor will move around on your desk.

2. Not every game supports the wide screen, yes you will love it for movies and most games but some you'll either have some black on each side of the viewable screen or you can go buy a hack for the game to force it to support your monitor.

3. The max resolution of 1680x1050 is not the slightly better of 1600x1200 but that is the cost of the wider screen. For me I am used to 800x600 so this is a huge jump up for me.

So that's it for the pro's and con's, if you want more details keep reading.

THE FEATURES

The view
It's important for you to understand something, monitors do not have the screen size that is indicated by the monitor size. This is true for CRT's, LCD's, and Wide screen LCD's. If you buy a 19" monitor you'll get something like 17" of viewable screen. It's because the industry measures from corner to corner of the monitor itself. But what the 2005FPW does do is it gives you 20" of viewable space because of the width of the monitor.

Doing a vertical and horizontal measurement the screen on the 2005FPW is 12x17" or thereabouts, giving you the same feel as those wide screen tv's, you know the ones that look like a squished regular tv. Well this also gives you a full 20" measurement going from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. This works out to a lot more viewing space.

The "wierd" measurements also means the aspect ratio is 16:9, the same for the widescreen version of movies, coincidence? No I don't think so. This monitor is perfect for watching movies.

Colors
Well a good test of a monitor is how well it puts out colors. For a real crisp "look" of a monitor you want a color ratio of at least 400:1, anything less and the colors will not look vibrant, won't pop, and won't even look real life. I'm happy to report that with the 2005FPW you'll get a very good ratio of 600:1, which makes this monitor great for games, video editing, photo editing, pretty much anything you need a high color ratio for. Is it the industry leader? No, Dell puts out a monitor that has 800:1 but with less features, which means the combination of the features the 2005FPW has it does make it a sweet monitor.

Refresh Rate
This is really important to two groups of computer users, anyone using this monitor to play games, and anything wanting to watch videos on it.

The tested refresh rate is 12ms, my understanding is that the ideal refresh rate is 8ms, that means every 8 miliseconds it will refresh the screen. So you get a monitor that has a pretty decent refresh rate, not perfect but far from bad.

Here's why you need a good refresh rate, in two words Ghosting and Streaking. Ok I guess that was three words but who's counting.

Ghosting is when the image you are looking at suddenly looks like there is a ghost image right next to it, this will happen with monitors with a refresh rate of about 20ms or more on some FPS computer games and movies with a lot of action.

Streaking is the same same affect that you see if you hold a glow light and spin it around, the light blends in on itself and it makes it look like a long continuous string. Again with monitors with a slower refresh rate you will see this happening too on games and movies.

Is 12ms perfect? No as I said 8ms is ideal, and there are some monitors with as high a refresh rate as 6ms but for the most part you will not see any ghosting or streaking with this monitor.

Extras
Extras you say? What extras could come with a monitor? Well for one this monitor has both digital and analog ports on the back, also it has S-Video and composite video ports on it. You can buy a sound bar that fits on the bottom of the monitor but this really isn't a con that it doesn't come with it, most people that buy it for movies or games already have speakers.

Another cool "extra" is that you have the ability to download some software that will let you turn the screen vertically and have an extra tall screen instead of a wide screen. Very cool.
Cost
Ok so your saying "how the heck did this jamack come up with the cost of $390? I only see it for about 680-700 price range. Well here's how, go to slickdeals.net and go to forums, then go to coupons forum and then to the dell.com coupons thread, you will see a 35% off coupon offered for dell.com home and you will see misc. other coupons that you can stack, such as the $60 off items $500 or more, which this is.

Example:
Dell 2005FPW = $699

1st coupon: 7Q4PQ9S860ZDLX = 35% off = $454.00
2nd coupon: ?S8Z?$8RH8DCWX = $60 off = $394.00

Grand total = $390.00 because on the day I got it there was an additional couple bucks off, plus $2.00 shipping.

Conclusion
This screen is great, the resolution is great, the price is excellent, and it works fine as a gaming monitor. The only downside for me is that the wide screen aspect is not supported by some games, but if you go to www.widescreengamingforum.com you can get a hack that will force a particular game to support the wide screen aspect. They are mostly very easy to install and work well.

I highly recommend this screen.