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Can't decide between Dell 2408WFP and HP LP2475w

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I'm looking to buy a new 24" monitor. My Soyo Topaz S that I purchased on sale for $299 in 2007 died recently and luckily, I bought a square trade warranty, which refunded me $318(purchase price plus tax). My Topaz S was one of the VA panel versions and I never had any problems with it until it died one day due to a dead power supply. I wasn't disappointed with its image quality or response time either.

Other than the typical web surfing, email, and word and excel documents for school, I'll be using the monitor mostly for games and watching movies. I do minimal photo editing in photoshop.

The Dell 2408WFP is currently $519 and I don't think Dell will apply my EPP 7% to its already discounted price. However, I'll have to double check.

The HP LP2475w is a little more money at about $600 from various retailers. The HP looks like its the lowest cost IPS panel monitor available form a reputable retailer.

I've read great reviews on both and it seems that Dell fixed the lag issues in the latest revision of the 2408WFP. Since the Dell costs less, I could get the Dell with a 5 year extended warranty for less than the price of the HP. I also like Dell's bright pixel replacement policy.

I'm basically wondering what would be the better monitor for me based on my intended use and if there are any other good quality 24" VA panels monitors that I'm leaving out. I'd prefer not to get a TN panel monitor even though it could save me money. I've had the opportunity to compare a calibrated Samsung TN panel monitor next to calibrated VA panel monitors and I could tell the difference.
 
Uh, tough call ( I was in a similar situation as you ).Depends what your priority is. If viewing angle is your priority ( as in my case - I do some photo editing and I also regularly have 3 friends in my room watching movie and it'd be annoying if there's any horizontal or vertical contrast shift) , I'd go for the HP ( IIRC VA panels do suffer from some horizontal contrast shift, not as bad as TN though). If you prefer good contrast for your movies, go for the Dell. The Dell's input lag, though fixed, is still quite high I think ( VA panels are quite lag). HP on the other hand have the colour uniformity issue, and you need to do some adjustments to the brightness and contrast as the default brightness is wayyyy too high.

I'd post this in the LCD thread and see what xtknight has to say, but TBH you can't go wrong with either.
 
If you didn't mind your MVA soyo you should grab the Dell. If you hate it, you bought it from dell so you have a good return policy. It's also cheaper, that's another reason to try it first.

The other 24" VAs have mostly dropped out of the market by now. Samsung's 245B, LG's 246WP, and even the Planar/Doublesights are all gone except for a few possibly shady dealers. The only one left is the refurbished BenQ FP241VW for ~$300, which they obviously don't want you to buy as they say up front There is no refund or return of refurbished products. All refurbished sales are final. Yuck.
 
I just made a choice in this comparison -- I chose the Dell. Hopefully, some day, somebody at Dell might even get off their dead rear ends and pull one off a shelf and ship it to me -- it appears that it'll take them four week days and two weekend days to get around to that.

And never even mind how I missed the good price -- I ordered it for full price just a few hours before it changed. "Dell doesn't offer price protection." So, do I cancel and start another week of waiting, and then maybe wind up with the original one shipping to me, two charges on my credit card, and all that kind of mess? Dell's "Storm Room" forum is full of nightmares like that. Anyway, all I can tell you is that I'm not impressed one bit with Dell -- this will be my first and last purchase from them -- again, given that they actually decide to ship me something some day.

All that said, the HP color uniformity issue has me scared to death -- I've just seen too many reports about it. Waaay too many in comparison to any "no problem" reports.

I'm replacing a Gateway 21-inch FPD2185W, which is an S-PVA panel, like the Dell is. I'm just abundantly happy with the Gateway -- I just want a bigger monitor with higher resolution. So, I'm hoping that the Dell will be "more of the same."

The HP's H-IPS screen might have less lag, but that's not important to me whatsoever -- color uniformity is. Other things that led me towards Dell is how the TFT Central reviews showed the Dell's "sRGB simulation mode" to be quite a bit more effective than the HP's, and I'm really not going to be using much in the way of high-gamut software. Finally, the HP lacks an analog VGA port, and I can't help but think back to when I got my Gateway FPD2185W -- which most people, including myself, just couldn't get to work with DVI. I've also tried a few TN panels, where I sure liked the VGA input better than the DVI. I just want to have that option, and the Dell has it, but the HP doesn't.

So, I have ordered the Dell. Four days ago. I guess it's a long forklift trip to get one back in the warehouse -- I've still got at least a couple of days of waiting before they could possibly find one and get it to a UPS truck. Oh, and it took two full days for them to get back to me with their simple "no customer service" boilerplate reply -- I guess I've been spoiled by Amazon.com and other companies that can actually move things within a day or two, and get back to you quickly in response to your questions.

Dell sounds like they've got a good return policy and a good warranty -- but at the glacial pace they move, I'm not so sure that these will turn out to be worth anything in the end. At this point, all I can hope is that they ship me something some day, and hopefully that "estimated delivery date" won't start stretching into months down the road.
 
@squirrel9: If it hasn't shipped yet, I'd say hell yes cancel that sucker and buy it at the reduced price. If you wait till it's shipped or you've received it, you'll be subject to a 15% restocking fee unless you can come up with some way to claim the monitor is defective.

@OP: I am staring at two 2408WFPs right now, and my *only* complaint is how much I spent (I got them for ~$500 each). These are beautiful monitors. I thought hard about getting a couple HP's, but the higher price tag was the deal killer. I don't regret that decision at all. I *do* wish I'd gotten two 2209WAs, and used the difference in price for something else, but ce la vie, the 2408 is a very nice monitor.
 
Originally posted by: LokutusofBorg
@squirrel9: If it hasn't shipped yet, I'd say hell yes cancel that sucker and buy it at the reduced price. If you wait till it's shipped or you've received it, you'll be subject to a 15% restocking fee unless you can come up with some way to claim the monitor is defective.
Click to expand...

No worries about that -- the "we'll ship it in a week" simply meant that the monitor wasn't in stock. It wasn't in stock when I ordered it, it wasn't in stock when Dell reduced the price, and it wasn't in stock when they needed to ship it to meet the "estimated delivery date" -- they just bumped that back another week.

To heck with that -- I won't put up with being strung along for weeks, or what could be months. If they can't be honest enough to say that the product simply isn't in stock, then I simply won't do business with them.

I cancelled the order, and ordered the HP LP2475W from Amazon.com -- it was in stock, and shipped the same day, and it'll be here tomorrow. And Dell has lost my business, forever.

I've got more info about this in the sticky LCD thread, if you'd like to read more gory Dell details.
 
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