NEC 20WMGX2 vs Dell 2407WFP

[Atty]

Now I've read the reviews in the LCD Buyers Guide and it looks promising but I'd like a few user opinions.

Has anyone had any problems with the NEC or the Dell? Has anyone hooked a 360 up to eithers component ins and used it as a 720p(for the NEC) or 1080i(p with tomorrows 360 update ) HD monitor? Any opinions on using either in HD?

 

[hans007]

havent tried the xbox thing with it yet.

dasfox said he had some wierd problem with his brand new one but nec took care of it.

mine has 1 dead pixel. thats about the only thing wrong with it , and 1 pixel is not much to care about on a monitor this big. its basically the best monitor i've ever owned. my last monitor was the 17" 1st generation GX series.

and i've had quite a few lcd monitors. the nec GX series is just bar none better looking to stare at all day than anything else.

 

[nycxandy]

I switched from a Samsung 900NF CRT and am loving it so far. The glossy screen shouldn't bother you unless you're really nitpicking. The picture quality is awesome.

I also have my Xbox 360 hooked up to it via component doing 720p. It looks good, but I don't have anything else to compare it to (HD-wise).

 

[gorka]

I'm anxiously awaiting what improvements the Pro version has....if its any better...I'm jumping on that for X-mas.

I've been mulling over this monitor for a couple of months already, and the consensus seems to be...this is as good as it gets for a 20.1" at this time.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: gorka
I'm anxiously awaiting what improvements the Pro version has....if its any better...I'm jumping on that for X-mas.

I've been mulling over this monitor for a couple of months already, and the consensus seems to be...this is as good as it gets for a 20.1" at this time.

the specs say theres no improvements.


i think the main reason they call it the pro is just to keep it in line with the 17 and 19 inch versions that got a real improvment (4ms drops down to 2ms on those for gtog time)

 

[Atty]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm currently between this and the Dell 2407WFP. I can't decide which I want to get.

 

[hennethannun]

that was exactly the choice I had to make last month.

I settled on the Dell in the end.

The NEC is a great looking monitor. It is basically a CRT monitor with an LCD footprint. the Opticlear finish gives it a distinct edge in terms of crispness and clarity. But it does create a LOT of glare. I was expected some glare and thought i was prepared for it, but there was WAY more than i expected. Even in my office with no light sources behind the screen. Basically, day or night, ANY light in the room will reflect off of you and onto the screen, especially when displaying a dark image.

the glare is by no means a deal breaker on this screen, but it did surprise me.

As for other performance, I managed to get both monitors side by side showing cloned desktops (ie both screen showing the same thing). And the Dell is definitely brighter (again, I describe the NEC as looking like a CRT because it is both sharper and dimmer than most LCDs). Color reproduction was decent with both, altough the NEC made things MUCH easier to adjust, with different presets for color temp etc AND manual adjustments. The Dells has a few very poor preset options, but does allow a small amount of manual tweaking. But i found the Dell much hard to adjust to my liking.

Component video performance was definitely better on the NEC. the default settings on the Dell are just horrible: wildly oversaturated. But with some RGB and saturation adjustments, I was able to get an image that I happy with on the dell.

Scaling options were definitely better on the Dell. NEC offers no scaling whatsoever, and seemed to make things difficult for my videocard, since even the video driver scaling settings didn't always work on the NEC.

NEC's TV performance was pretty good. definitely adequate for a secondary set, but too small for primary use as a tv.

Dell had much better stand, with height, pivot, pitch and tilt adjustments. NEC can be adjusted only in pitch.

In the end, I took the Dell because I liked the extra real-estate and was able to tweak the colour settings (both for DVI and component) to where i was happy with them. the cost difference was less than $80 after tax and I preferred the adjustability of the Dell AND the lack of glare. But it was a VERY close decision.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

I have the 20wmgx2. Excellent monitor. It's not as big as the WFP but it has more accurate color and faster response. What good is a large blue-ish tint screen?

 

[Atty]

Originally posted by: hennethannun
Component video performance was definitely better on the NEC. the default settings on the Dell are just horrible: wildly oversaturated. But with some RGB and saturation adjustments, I was able to get an image that I happy with on the dell.

How bad were they? I would use my current monitor with my 360 (if it was not dead) via the VGA input but my current monitor (a 6 year old MAG 17in 1280x1024) has terrible colors, I coulnd't see in a semi dark room, and everything was dull. The only reason for me going with the dell, besides I get 4inches and a higher resolution for basiclly the same price shipped, is that I can use it as a HDTV monitor in 1080p (which with tomorrow's 360 update is now supported.) If the monitor can't produce a decent image with the component in then I might re-consider it getting the Dell and go with the Nec.

 

[hennethannun]

Well, as i said, the default settings are unusuable. But I did keep the dell in the end. by keeping the saturation settings somewhat high, and dropping down the intensity of the individual RGB channels I was able to get something that was still vibrantly colored, but not so much that is loses detail.

1080i performnace is very bad on dell and not possible with the NEC, but that doesn' matter with the new system update (can't wait to try 1080p tomorrow), if anything, this is now an advantage for the Dell.

VGA is also an option for x360 (it supports up to 13*7) but the colors look very washed out on VGA (at least, they do on the 2407WFP). I was VERY frustrated at first when i realized that i had a choice between washed out dull colors and over-saturated ugly colors. But as i said, the problem with the dell isn't so much the color reproduction, it's just that the default settings are bad and need to be tweaked to look good. Yes, the dell isn't quite as good (in terms of color) as the NEC, but if you know what you are doing and have some patience, you can definitely get a very decent picture out of the 2407...

 

[Atty]

Well once you try the 360's 1080p on the 2407WFP would you mind comming back and telling me how it turns out? I don't plan on buying until the end of the week, possibly early next week, if you can come back and tell me how it turns out that would be great.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

1080i performance is very bad on dell and not possible with the NEC

The NEC has an 'optimized' 1080i. It will do interlaced or progressive.

 

[Atty]

How could it do 1080i? Its a 1680x1050 monitor.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: iAtticus
Thanks for the input guys. I'm currently between this and the Dell 2407WFP. I can't decide which I want to get.

i have an acer al2416w for abouta day and sold it to get the nec.


the acer has i believe the same panel as the 2407 . and well... yeah it is still a night and day difference in quality.

the problem with the 24" ones is they use the samsung pva panels now. the 2007 or 2005 dell monitors used an older version of the nec's panel from lg/philips (s-ips on the dell, that nec is as-ips 3rd gen).


and yeah the colors are different, and the whites are different etc. i cant say i've actually used a 2407. though i've viewed plenty of 2405s at my old job. and its not as good.

 

[hennethannun]

Originally posted by: gersson

1080i performance is very bad on dell and not possible with the NEC

The NEC has an 'optimized' 1080i. It will do interlaced or progressive.

hmm, I don't have any 1080p devices at home so I just assumed that the NEC only went up to 1080i because that was all they advertised. good to know that it can do 1080p

as for 1080p on the 2407, I will definitely be trying that as soon as I get home from work today

 

[gorka]

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: gorka
I'm anxiously awaiting what improvements the Pro version has....if its any better...I'm jumping on that for X-mas.

I've been mulling over this monitor for a couple of months already, and the consensus seems to be...this is as good as it gets for a 20.1" at this time.

the specs say theres no improvements.


i think the main reason they call it the pro is just to keep it in line with the 17 and 19 inch versions that got a real improvment (4ms drops down to 2ms on those for gtog time)

i thought resoinse time was going to go down on the new 20.1" pro models as well.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: gorka

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: gorka
I'm anxiously awaiting what improvements the Pro version has....if its any better...I'm jumping on that for X-mas.

I've been mulling over this monitor for a couple of months already, and the consensus seems to be...this is as good as it gets for a 20.1" at this time.

the specs say theres no improvements.


i think the main reason they call it the pro is just to keep it in line with the 17 and 19 inch versions that got a real improvment (4ms drops down to 2ms on those for gtog time)

i thought resoinse time was going to go down on the new 20.1" pro models as well.

nah its still 6ms. the specs were the same 700:1 400 nits brightness and 6ms. i bet they will charge more too, as itll be "new". you can get a normal non"pro" 20wmgx2 for under $550 already.

 

[josh6079]

Scaling options were definitely better on the Dell. NEC offers no scaling whatsoever...

Yes it does.

 

[hennethannun]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Scaling options were definitely better on the Dell. NEC offers no scaling whatsoever...

Yes it does.

where on the OSD is scaling an option on the 20wmGX2? You can usually scale with video card driver settings (although they strangely didn't always work for me with this monitor), but i couldn't find any built-in scaling options for this monitor.


in any event, I have been able to try 1080p on my 2407wfp with the new 60 update. and the results so far have been: underwhelming.

the 2407 cannot handle 1080p via component. you just get an 'out of signal range' message. this isn't too surprising (1080p was really still on the horizon when the monitor was released and even the HDCP support is only up to 720p).

So you are stuck with VGA, which means you are back to washed out colours, fuzzy text and no scaling options (for some reason the OSD scaling settings are inaccessible with VGA for me). You can get decent color if you pump up the RGB channels AND brightness (no saturation control with VGA or DVI) BUT the VGA and DVI settings are linked, so whatever you use for VGA is kept for DVI, meaning you have to manually adjust everytime you switch back and forth (the DVI/VGA settings are seperate from the component/composite settings) and Picture in Picture doesn't work between DVI and VGA.

But in terms of picture quality, the 1080p VGA seemed pretty good. I don't have any native 1080p content to view so far, but the upconverted 720p looks pretty good, although text seems to be ghosting on the left hand side of the screen right now. I will have to run some more tests to see if this is really a persistent problem.

So overall, I was a bit disappointed with the 2407 and 1080p support, but it DOES work with VGA, and when native content starts to come out, my opinion may change...

 

[josh6079]

where on the OSD is scaling an option on the 20wmGX2? You can usually scale with video card driver settings (although they strangely didn't always work for me with this monitor), but i couldn't find any built-in scaling options for this monitor.

I'm sorry. I thought you were saying that the NEC monitor couldn't scale at all, through the OSD or drivers.

You're correct in that the OSD doesn't offer scaling options. When I do it, it's through a software application or driver setting.

 

[Atty]

I think I'm going to get the NEC 20WMGX2. Its the same price for four less inches but from what I've heard its worth it. If the dell supported 1080p I'd get it straight away, but since it doesn't I'm probably going to get the NEC.

 

[xtknight]

There are a million other reasons to get the NEC too, like:

-Smaller dot pitch
-No banding
-Much better uniformity
-More vibrant colors due to glossy coating
-TV tuner
-Much less input lag, lower response time

Probably some other things I'm forgetting.