- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 4 reviews Back to product review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Sexy/Spendy/Hard to adjust"
Pros: Sexy Appearance/Integrated Speakers
Cons: Absurd Price/Difficult Connectivity/limited adjustments
Summary: This monitor sits in a very public place in our home and it gets lots of compliments for it appearance.
The design is really attractive and that is the primary reason to buy this monitor.
The image quality is rock solid, but I only use it for basic internet and office applications and some video in a window playback. I can't comment on game performance.
While it doesn't have raise lower capability, it does have a tilt, but changing the tilt is awkward.
There where many configuration problems that were hard to diagnose in the initial set up. One of them turned out to be a driver problem in that my display adpater was driving component output and the Crystal needed RGB output. This forced the monitor to magnify the display area 10%and drive me bonkers until I could solve the problem with the help of Dell support.
(It was not a problem with Dell Crystal, but with the way the ATI adpater arrived configured with my new Dell machine.)
The control and menu buttons on the LCD are odd from an ergonomic perspective. Some of them adjust from the front of the glass always and others adjust from the back of the glass sometimes and the front sometimes. (Volume always from the front, but menu selection and exit buttons only from the front when inside one of the settings menus. (I guess this is to prevent inadvertent switches to the settings, but it was NOT documented.)
On the connectivity side, the speakers are driven through the attached USB connector, this means that many of your PC or keyboard controls of volume won't work properly since they change settings from the audio out ports on your sound adapter.
If there were a sexy decent performing monitor with integrated speakers to minimize the clutter on the desktop that sits in our public space, I would have much preferred to buy it instead. (I tried the decent looking HP 2207, but those speakers were rotten and weak.)
I would buy this monitor again only if there are no better choices or if I had very specific design requirements. But I'm betting there will be a moderately priced better alternative on the market sometime in the next 6 months.
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