Dell 1800FP Review

On Screen Display

The on screen display was very easy to use.  In it you will find standard functions such as color, contrast, brightness, language and whatnot.  I didn't find any really special features in the menu, but when I received the monitor it was set to the lower color temperature (5600k I believe), and once set at 9300k it was absolutely beautiful!  The buttons were easy to use as well.  The buttons included recall, exit, contrast up down, brightness left right and enter.  Unlike some monitors which are extremely hard to navigate I found navigation to be extremely easy.  The menu also did not go away quickly, like if you were trying to decide what you wanted it set at and it just shuts off.

Features and Display Quality

The 1800FP is set to 1280x1024 @ 60hz, but I found that it would actually go to 75hz.  Naturally I enabled this.  It did seem to make fonts on the screen look slightly better.  I don't know if this was just me or if it actually does that but I think it improved image clarity.  During my use I noticed absolutely no flicker.  I did notice though that the pixels are semi-large.  The reason for this I think is because I'm used to my laptop LCD which is 1600x1200 @ 15.1".  The pixels are so incredibly small on it that you need a magnifying glass to see them.  

I really stress tested this LCD with every fast program, video, or animation that I could find and I saw basically no ghosting.  I watched multiple fast scene DVDs such as the lobby scene in The Matrix, and a few scenes from LOTR.  I also did other things like watch some DiVX videos and played some UT2K3, CS, DOD, Q3 and BF1942.  All of these games looked great on the LCD except one.  I'm not sure if it was my fault, or if it was the LCDs fault but Q3 seemed to be darker where normally it should be semi-dark.  Instead now it was real dark.  The parts that were lighted nicely looked great, but that was kind of odd.  The other games all were fine in that aspect, so I'm guessing it was something to do with my Q3 settings.

I honestly can't say anything bad about this LCD.  I mean, it's got a great big 18" display, equal to a 19" CRT (I can verify this as I held it up next to my KDS 19" :P ).  The only "problem" I have was that I didn't have 2 more for some triple LCDage. :D

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