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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The DELL SP2309W Monitor


While it is truly unfortunate if you missed last week's Dell Deal of the Day on this beauty, the value may still be there for this ultra-high-resolution monitor (was $270, now $420). The resolution for this 23" monitor is 2048x1152, nearly 4 times the resolution of the Acer Aspire One I tried it on.

There is absolutely no lack of features here, aside from the unbeatable quality of the image (IMHO), the ports and connectivity are ideal for those who appreciate a few cables to disconnect when taking the laptop and running. The drivers for the rather odd resolution are on the CD, as are the drivers for the WebCam, which I have yet to set up.

First Up... video in! HDMI, DVI and VGA are all options and they recommend HDMI at least for good cause. I could consider the merit of connecting my HD DVI cable box from Rogers to this wonder, but that's not my priority. It would be happy to oblige me in connecting to my XBOX360 with HDMI too, but let's not get gaming into this. I want to cover the rest of the ports first. Audio In (it has speakers), Line Out (it has two microphones), it has USB, but this is to not only facilitate the WebCam, but provide 4 powered USB ports (two on the back, to on the left side). A word of warning about those ports... consider that the power goes away when you turn off the monitor, if your hard drive is connected to one of those, you've just dropped it like a hot rock. You'll need to think about what connects to where. I have my drive connected (sub-optimally) through my Logitech AudioBox and this unit stays on so I can safely turn off the monitor now.

The onscreen display is very user friendly and is a soft-touch on the lower-right of the screen. The monitor is comfortably balanced on a turntable stand with enough flexibility that the screen actually comes 100% assembled. height should not be an issue and positioned behind my Logitech 2.1 laptop sound system there's no interference of vision.

Overall I cannot help but gush. It's wonderful and was delivered on short order from Dell Canada, placing the order last Wednesday, it arrived today (no one was home yesterday to receive it). A pleasant experience.

My verdict, whether for the gamer or the executive, this is a great display and worth every penny at the sale price. At full pop it's very nice, and the extra real-estate is very welcomed over the 1920x1200 competitors.

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