I'll start by saying I would give this monitor 4.5 stars if possible due to excessive backlight bleed with the first monitor I received.
Also, note that this monitor is currently available for significantly less than on Amazon, selling for $550 from Dell and $500 from Microcenter (as of late Aug 2017).
I've had the monitor for a few weeks now and use it primarily as an external display for a 2017 Macbook Pro but also with a PS4 Pro and with a secondary PC.
Pros:
--Works well out of the box with my 2017 Macbook pro using a USB-C to DisplayPort cable. HiDPI scaling in OSX works well and offers a noticeable improvement in sharpness/ picture quality over my previous Dell 1440p monitor.
--The U2718Q is one of the first "affordable" monitors to offer HDR10 support. HDR automatically kicks in when connected to a PS4 Pro and offers a very noticeable improvement in both color depth as well as contrast. The monitor also displayed HDR from my Samsung 4K Bluray player without any issues.
--Every monitor is factory color calibrated. The U2718Q supports 99.9% sRGB coverage making it a great choice for photo/ video editing.
--The monitor offers many connectivity options including: HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2, mini DisplayPort, 4 x USB 3.0 ports and an audio out.
--The stand is height, tilt, swivel, and pivot adjustable
--The monitor is really beautifully designed with ultra thin bezels and a premium fit/ finish
--Comes with a 3 year warranty/ advance exchange service/ premium panel guarantee (substantially better than most other manufacturers at this price point)
Cons:
--Quality control issues. My first monitor had some of the worst back light bleed that I've ever seen. My second monitor is substantially better, although still has a bit of bleed along the bottom of the panel. This is not really noticeable unless viewing dark material at night.
--Many people would not call this a "true" HDR monitor as the panel tops out at around 350 nits of brightness (reference HDR requires around 1000 nits). Truth be told, I'm still really impressed with the HDR performance of the U2718Q connected to a PS4 Pro: Uncharted Lost Legacy looks absolutely spectacular in 4K HDR on this monitor.
--Lack of support of full DCI-P3 wide color gamut for Apple users or professionals. Can't really hold that against the monitor given its price point. The only monitors that I'm aware currently supporting it cost well over $1,000.
--Lack of support for Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync.
In summary, I'm really pleased with the monitor so far. At the $500-600 price range, I feel that it represents an exceptional value and is a great choice for photo/ video editing, mac users, and people looking for a 4K HDR monitor for a PS4 Pro or other 4K content.
first attached picture shows 4K HDR material from a PS4 Pro
Fantastic Monitor. Was really plug and play, with 4k supported natively by Windows 10 and the older graphics card I'm still using via displayport (GTX660...a GTX 1070 is on its way, though). I am a wedding photographer and filmmaker and upgraded from a 22" 1080p monitor for two main reasons:
1. More real estate (especially for Adobe Premiere & Photoshop)
2. For a color-calibrated and accurate screen to work off.
Sure, there are more accurate monitors out there, but for a hefty premium with diminishing returns. I am okay with 99% sRGB (what I work in. I wouldn't even bother with Adobe RGB for many reasons) and the colors on this screen look very nice. 4k Resolution has made working in Adobe programs so much easier. What surprised me most was how good my 1080p content looks on this screen. The up-scaling is fantastic. Overall the screen is incredibly crisp with accurate colors & contrast - just what I wanted.
Things of possible importance:
The "Smart HDR" feature is greyed out in the menu if you don't connect via HDMI. I'm curious to see how that is/looks, considering this does not meet the specs to be considered a true HDR monitor.
- I have windows scaling set to 125%. Windows does recommend 150%, which honestly did look better at first, but it didn't take me longer to get use to the 125% - after all, I upgraded because I wanted more real estate.
- Windows 10 scaling is fantastic. No issues with it
- I'll still scale up Chrome for some of the website I commonly visit, e.g. Facebook, gmail, etc.
- Stand and build quality is really great. Super easy to adjust. Screen didn't have a single dead pixel or issue.
I'd highly recommend this for any working professional!
After spending about a month with this monitor I can say that I absolutely love it. This monitor is 100% used for console gaming so if you're here for work, school or anything else, I can't help you. I'm sure it makes PowerPoint look great though.
Anyway, I bought this monitor after returning a Samsung 4k display for a few reasons.
1) It's the only (affordable) monitor with HDR support. It's not full HDR10 which you can read about but it's also not $1,600 like Dell's super ultrasharp HDR10 monitor. Since I have a PS4 pro and Xbox One X on the way, I wanted to achieve some level of HDR gaming BUT it's very hard to find monitors right now with HDR. At the time of purchase, it was really the only other option.
2) It's got a 5ms response time in gaming mode. This is crucial for competitive games. While many 4k TVs come HDR ready, if you dig deep and look at response times, you'll find that a lot are in the 30-40ms range. I opted for a monitor over a TV for this reason. That and many full HDR10 TVs are in the $1,000+ range and HDR only seems to come on displays 45" and up.
3) HDCP 2.2: what the heck is that? yeah that's what I originally said. HDCP in the easiest sense is the license to display 4k content. The original Samsung 4k monitor I bought was only HDCP1.4 (not HDCP 2.2) and that means that in the future, it may not have the license to display all 4k content. This causes a black screen and effectively breaks your expensive tv or monitor. Mostly an issue with streaming content like Netflix and Amazon but it's possible it makes its way into video games.
4) IPS panel. IPS panels display much nicer than older TN style panels BUT at the cost of speed. Many TN panels feature 1ms response times but IPS delivers better color and allows for a wider viewing angle before distorting the image. Since 5ms was enough for me, and I was purchasing a monitor for 4k and HDR, I opted for the IPS panel.
Overall, I'm extremely happy with this monitor. I would have loved for it to come fully HDR10 ready with super high brightness and contrast ratios but I understand that functionality is not achievable at this price point. To me, I feel that this monitor is the best balance between speed, quality and price and haven't found something to replace it with.
For those wondering, it's a 60hz display but unless you're running dual GTX 1080s and pumping out 4k@120, you won't need anything faster for a long time.
I bought this as an external monitor for my MacBook because I can’t stand Mac OS’s font rendering on lower resolution screens. Dell’s U2718Q fit my needs perfectly.
Initially I hooked this monitor up to my MacBook Pro 2015 and enjoyed the retina fonts, but I soon noticed something was amiss: the greens were way too limey. It turns out that the DisplayPort and mini-DisplayPort connections default to having HDR enabled even when receiving an SDR signal. This causes a mismapping of colors. Thankfully, Dell has recently released a firmware that corrects this issue, version M2B102. You will need a Windows PC to install the fix, so hopefully you have a buddy or a separate machine lying around.
I also encountered another issue with Mac OS: my laptop didn’t like to wake from sleep after I locked it and left it alone for a few minutes (OS is El Capitan). My machine required a reboot every time this happened. I disabled the power save option that puts the Mac to sleep when the monitor goes to sleep and the problem disappeared, so no biggy.
Overall I’m really satisfied with this purchase. I couldn’t find any dead pixels, and there’s only minor backlight bleed along the bottom, left, and right edges (for thin monitors like this one, a little bleeding is pretty much unavoidable). After I did the firmware update, the colors seem great and are very pleasing to my programmer eyes.
Pros:
+Very thin profile
+Adjust height, tilt, and rotation
+Excellent cable management
+Crisp text
+Pleasing colors
+Partial HDR support
Cons:
-Needs firmware update to look good over DisplayPort connections
-Said firmware update requires a PC (or virtual machine) to install
-Peak brightness means the HDR support is half-baked
To enable HDR10 you need to use the Display Port instead of HDMI. There is a known issue with the brightest green/ cyan colours which cannot be properly distinguished when using DP with RGB. The fix is to select YCbCr444 as output format. Once properly set up, image is crystal sharp and the colour is vibrant and accurate
Feature Product
- Exceptional details, ultimate efficiency - a 27" 4K screen with incredibly thin bezels - ideal for multiple monitor setup
- Hone in on every task with a multi-monitor setup and experience a virtually seamless view thanks to ultrathin bezels
- Dell HDR combines greater depth of colors, remarkable clarity and a high contrast range of shades to create strikingly realistic images
- Connect up to six compatible RF devices or Bluetooth 4.0 through Dell Universal Pairing. Dell Display Manager Compatibility. Operating system supported-Windows 10, 8.1. 7. Tackle multiple tasks at once and stay organized thanks to Easy Arrange, a feature that lets you tile and view applications side by side
- From the #1 monitor Brand worldwide for four consecutive years*. Brightness 350 cd/m²
Description
The expansive 27” screen features InfinityEdge, a virtually borderless display on all four sides that lets you see more of your work.
This review is from the perspective of a software engineer and programmer in hope that it may help others coming from a similar position. For perspective, I was previously using two 1080p TN panel displays at 27 inches each (one landscape and one in portrait).
This monitor is a dramatic improvement for me in multiple aspects:
1.) First and most obvious is the upgrade in resolution from 1080p to 4k. The text/image clarity is amazing compared to 1080p! It's a night and day difference...especially when I still have 1 of my old 27 inch 1080p panels in portrait right next to this 4k monitor. All of the code in my IDEs look beautiful and crisp with perfect clarify. I'm on Windows 10 and applied 175% scaling. While 1080p is perfectly acceptable at 27 inches, the 4k display is a very noticeable difference and has made my coding experience more enjoyable.
2.) Next was the transition from a TN panel to an IPS panel. This is also a major difference in the colors displayed. Since I use most of my IDEs in a dark theme I can really see the difference comparing to my old TN panel where the darker colors seemed washed out and on the IPS panel they seem more "true" to what you'd think it would be. However, it's not just the darker colors, all the colors are much better. There's a clear improvement on the IPS panel.
3.) Lastly, the physical design of this monitor is nice. This has very sleek bezels and while this is subjective I think the monitor has a beautiful style that is clean and professional. The stand is also very sturdy. The monitor allows for tilt and swivel to find your desired angle and position. Eventually I might vesa mount it and it is compatible.
My concerns prior to buying:
Some people complained about backlight bleed on this monitor. Although I'm still using the default color configuration and settings from the factory (had no reason to change it) I don't notice any backlight bleed during regular use at all. The only time when it's slightly noticeable is when the monitor is going to sleep after I turn off my PC, basically when the entire screen is black, I can see a little light from the corners. That's literally the only time I've noticed it. As I mentioned above, I run almost all my IDEs in dark theme. I don't notice any backlight bleed against my dark background environments at all.
Some people also mentioned problems with green colors on this display when using display port. This was apparently an issue earlier in the monitors life which has been resolved by a firmware update. The firmware on my monitor is M2B103, which I haven't yet verified is the very newest, but I have absolutely no problems with any weird colors using display port for my connection.
Other thoughts:
While this monitor has an anti-reflective coating I do notice a little light glare when there's a lot of bright light coming from a window. I believe compared to many other monitors I've used in the past this one seems to glare a bit more, but this is not a problem for me. I definitely wouldn't remove a star for it. But this may be something to keep in mind if you plan to use this around of ton of windows during the day.
Lastly, a small side note about gaming. Although I bought this for work purposes I have gamed on it a bit. It looks great but of course you'll need a beefy graphics card to run games at 4k. I have needed to bump a few games down to 1440p to run smoothly on this display and they still looked good. This monitor is only 60hz but for a little casual gaming it's pretty good. I'd definitely recommend turning on the "fast" response time which I do believe made a difference for me.
Conclusion:
For programming I think this is a great monitor. Coming from a 1080p TN panel display, the image clarity and colors displayed on this 4k IPS panel are truly a night and day difference. After using this monitor side by side with one of my old 1080p displays for about a week now I'm convinced I'll eventually need to purchase a second one as my 1080p display is so lacking next to this one. Overall, this has made my programming experience much more enjoyable which makes it a winner in my book.
Wow! the only way to describe this monitor. For the price point, there truly is no better 4K monitor out there. You can spend thousands more, but when compared to this one, there will be very little difference. I bought this for my office, but decided to bring it home first to compare to my much more expensive 4K monitor. In all honesty, they were so close, there was no justification in paying $2,500 more than this for the same quality and features. Dell has always built outstanding products, but when I bought this on a tight budget, I never thought that the quality would be so good. Everything looks spectacular. I use my home monitor for video and photo editing, so I bought a very nice monitor a few years ago. This new Dell looks equal to it in every way. For the money, you cannot go wrong with this monitor.
The good:
Excellent 4K monitor in a 27" panel size... for certain setups.
Text can be a bit small, but that's ok; you know what you're buying into. No really obvious defects in pixels. It's a few dim ones here and there but there are so many other pixels, the bad ones blend in.
Contrast is noticeably better than my 1000:1 AUO IPS panel and a good bit better than the U2313HM as long as full RGB range is selected. Limited range mode will lead to the 600:1 ratio that some sites measured.
Colors are great when using custom RGB mode at 100/100/100. Not I'm a a stickler on colors so don't hold me to an artists's standard.
Minor bleeding from the edges of the display, but otherwise good black uniformity. See photo.
The mediocre and bad:
At oblique angles, IPS glow is visible on the corners when the screen is dark as is expected of IPS panels. No points off since this is to be expected of all IPS panels.
HOWEVER, DisplayPort colors are messed up on the green channel, and it's not an individual monitor issue. Not sure how Dell missed this defect when qualifying this monitor.
If you want to use this panel, you need to use HDMI 2.0 at 8bpc and full color range. Not sure if a DP1.2 -> HDMI2.0 adapter will work. Theoretically it should, but I have not tried it.
Since I have a free HDMI2.0 port, I did not take any stars off, but for anyone that cannot, this monitor is a nonstarter.
Others:
The design looks like the panel was just slid into an open frame. Pressing gently on the edges will change the amount of backlight bleeding as there's no hard bezel from the front. Not a detraction, just an interesting observation.
This monitor is one of, if not the best professional 4K IPS monitor available right now. It has 100% sRGB, HDR support, and comes factory color calibrated so it looks fantastic out of the box. No dead pixels, extremely thin bezels. The stand is very stable, and has height, tilt, and rotation (you can use this is portrait or landscape mode). It's an amazing difference in color, resolution, and size compared to my old U2415 1200p monitor.
Monitor is great for photo and video editing, 4k gaming, and software development. It will have a slightly slower response time than a TN monitor, but it's definitely worth getting IPS for the deep blacks and accurate colors.
The monitor comes with a displayport to mini displayport cable, and a USB 3.0 cable (it has 2 USB ports built in on the side, and 2 on the bottom).
Finally, this Ultrasharp comes with a 3-year warranty with a fast replacement, which is great if you happen to get a dead pixel or something like that.
I couldn't recommend this monitor enough, it's worth every penny.
When I first received this product, I thought "DAMN THIS IS HUGE!" When opening up the box I kept saying to myself "damn, Dell doesn't screw around at all" over and over due to how well the monitor was packaged. I have never seen how well a monitor has been sealed up and placed in a box before. When I was taking the monitor out, it had a shielded cover. I didn't think much until I pulled it out and noticed there was another cover covering the screen. I, again was saying "damn Dell doesn't screw around at ALL!"
So once setting it up I was stunned by how large these monitors are. One major feature I bought these monitors was the small bezels. They are INCREDIBLY SMALL! I'm literally stunned at how well this monitor is well made and how well thought out the design is. The buttons in the bottom right corner are really small, but a plus for me but not sure about others. The options it gives for custom screen settings is awesome. You get Standard, Comfort View, Movie, Game, Color Temp., and Custom Color. I prefer Comfort View due to it having a yellowish color and easy on the eyes at night. I also had to disable to "monitor auto sleep" within the settings. But other than that this monitor is just absolutely amazing.
In short, if anyone is looking for a 4K monitor with small bezels that offers many options, this monitor is for you. The item is pricey, I know and I too was a bit hesitant for I've never spent $500 on a monitor before. But trust me, this monitor will put a smile on your face the moment it's at your door.
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