Im conflicted on this one, but after trying it out here are my opinions, in my typical Pro/Con format.
PROS:
240hz - BZZZIIINGGGAAAA - 240 hz is the fastest refresh rate on the market. Are you a 30 fps console peasant? You dont need this. Are you a "cinematic" PC gamer at 60hz? You dont need this. Are you a E-SPORT PRO or Wannabe pro? YOU NEED THIS! There are other models hitting the ground out there, Asus, Acer, Benq, most having a freesync/gsync version. Also keep in mind, 240hz is very high and if you are going to reach 240fps on a game, you're going to need a powerful gpu. I wouldn't run this monitor on anything less than a GTX 1080. For the freesync variant, probably a Vega 64, but the jury is still out on AMD gpu's in my book. You can probably get by with a 1070 but you're going to have to reduce settings to reach high FPS. Remember, super high crazy FPS like this is primarily going to be suited for E-Sport, shooters, like overwatch/CSGO.
Alienware Design. Alienware gets a lot of hate out there for various reasons, but I dont think anyone can really dispute the fact that Alienware makes beautifully designed cases and other products. There is no exception here. It's a work of art, and the lighting on the monitor is Sweet! I love the design.
Gsync. Gysnc is the bomb and my normal disclaimer -> Gsync is only for people with NVIDIA GRAPHICS CARDS! If you have an AMD CARD you want the freesync version of this monitor. Unfortunately, gsync costs a bit more - but that's across the board on all monitors with the technology.
Nuetral:
25 inch. For 550+$$ I honestly expect 27 inches. I suspect it has to be this size at this refresh rate but still. I see a Acer Predator 240hz 27inc for $550 right now online. (i think it's on sale) I also suspect some E-sport enthusiasts prefer this size of screen, so I put this in the neutral category.
1080p. I cant fault someone for technology or hardware that doesnt even exist yet. To my knowledge no monitor exists (consumer grade) at this refresh rate at higher than 1080p. I suspect that if it did, you would have to be running quad gtx titans in SLI or something to power it.
Conclusion: You buy this monitor for a few reasons, you want the highest frames per second (FPS) on the market and are willing to pay for it, you like Alienware design, and you are probably playing E-sport titles that really take advantage of high refresh rate monitors like this. Outside of that, I cant recommend it to "normal" users at this price range. If you are the designated audience, then I do recommend this monitor but keep in mind you are paying a bit more for the Alienware design, which in my opinion after being up close and personal with it, is worth it.
We got 4 of these for Christmas this year. One for myself, my wife, and 2 boys to use on our gaming rigs. All 4 are running our games as smooth as butter! I was very impressed at the difference in the smooth picture, compared to our old monitors, especially in First Person Shooter's. The packaging is well designed to protect these monitors for their journey to your house. The picture quality is very good, especially for a TN panel. Our games look better and no doubt run much smoother. 4 out of 4 have great picture quality and appear to be defect free.
honestly this monitor is pretty damn good. if you can get the frames for it you'll notice a difference in how even more smooth gameplay is when you consistently get more then 144 frames. such as 200 or so. i play competitive rainbow six siege and i can say this helps compete at a higher level.
first day playing, no dead pixels, or shitty color noticed. im pretty happy with this monitor overall and i recommend it highly.
Arrived a day early, packaging was the actual product box which is terrible to be left on a porch, the box itself seemed to have a lot of wear and tear which had me worried at the start. Where it get's a 5 star rating is this: the monitor was perfect. No damage, no BLB, no dead pixels, and to top it off the product itself was sublime. Very easy to install, visually stunning, and graphically it was bar none. With that being said let me heed some advice for any of you perspective buyers.
This is a highly niche monitor for those looking to get the most performance out of a GPU that can put it out. Do not buy this if you have a mid-tier graphics card that won't be capable of making the most out of those 240hz. Also, i got lucky with my delivery. The damage to the packageing was superficial so it's nothing to complain about, some packages may be mishandled, some packages might just be DoA or have dead pixels by just factory defect. That is the risk you run when you have a 3rd party seller providing you tech. Amazon does it's best to prevent these issues, but sometimes you are just unlucky. It is by no fault of the product itself. So if you see these 1-2 star ratings and get worried if this monitor is worth it, let me lay it out for you, YES* If you are a part of the the very small niche of computer owners that not only have a machine capable of using this monitor to it's full potential, but also are purchasing with the intention of using it to it's full capacity. Save yourself some money and a get 144 hz monitor that will do just fine otherwise. For those still on board with purchasing, you just gotta hope you're one of the lucky ones and it arrives in one piece. If it doesn't, you can just return it and get a new one or go to a computer store and pay full price and personally ensure it gets home safe. I hope this has been helpful.
The stand was not well thought out as in order to have this monitor an appropriate distance away from your eyes it causes the feet to invade space that would be occupied by your mouse. Most monitors use a stand that supports the monitor in the front and causes you to have less space directly in front of the monitor. This is usually fine because the keyboard doesn't require motion and a static position resting in front is fine. This monitor stand sticks out into your mouse zone and not only that the monitor's behavior with the stand on mouse wire even when using a mouse bungee is terrible. Its sharp so should having to aim down very fast and extending the bungee the mouse will catch on the edge of the foot. This monitor would be perfect if the stand wasnt so intrusive. Very Very Very amazing quality though. If the stand was redesigned or they had a different stand option they sold then this would easily be 5/5 stars. I just find that the intrusiveness of the stand causes me to be battling with the monitor a large portion of time during competitive games.
Feature Product
- Designed for the enthusiast, the AW2518H delivers a futuristic style and precise form with solid stability. The contrast ratio is 1000:1 and it has 16.7 million colors of color support
- See gaming differently with NVIDIA G-SYNC. This breakthrough display technology eliminates screen tearing and minimizes display stutter and input lag
- Lightning-fast 240Hz native refresh rate combined with 1ms response time delivers buttery-smooth gameplay with virtually no input lag
- Compatibility- All Operating System. Specific gaming OSD (onscreen display) design keeps your user experience in the gaming theme
- Game comfortably in your zone with a height adjustable stand, tilt, swivel and pivot features
Description
Alienware' S new 25-inch gaming monitor packs premium gaming performance features into a captivating display. Featuring iconic Alienware design, custom AlienFX lighting, 240Hz refresh rate with 1ms response time, and NVIDIA G-SYNC technology with Ultra low motion blur technology for smooth responsive gameplay.
I got a new Alienware R7 Desktop with Nvidia 1080 graphics card. I was torn on what kind of monitor I wanted since I do a lot of gaming. So I decided to give the Alienware AW2518H a try. The monitor stand its really nice and its fully adjustable. Setup was snap and it came with all the cables I need to get it working. The back panel that removes to access cable storage is bit tricky to get back on and that would really be my only negative. The screen looks beautiful and it quickly linked with G Sync on my computer. I wish the monitor has a way to access the menus from the computer instead of the actual monitor and the same with Alienware FX as well. I am getting great FPS for game play, and so far I have been very happy. I will update this review as time goes on. Also it looks very cool on my desk, and the back fo the monitor has LEDs that light up. For the price point(I got on sale) I am very happy with my purchase. I didnt want a huge monitor for gaming, and this was a perfect fit.
I picked up two of these to finally make the jump to higher refresh rates in gaming. I've long had the hardware for it but couldn't bring myself to pay the high prices for the upper scale of gaming monitors. I should have bit the bullet years ago however, as these monitors are amazing. Everything is crisp and clean, the colors and deep and vivid and the image moves on the screen with perfect consistency. The only thing that will hold these monitors back is the GPU you're running.
If you are picking these up, be sure to pick the appropriate frame sync model, GSync for Nvidia and Freesync for AMD. It is also worth noting that not all DP cables will do the full 240hz. I had an older one that would not push the monitor above 120 but when switching to the packaged DP cable it went to 240hz flawlessly.
I've only had this monitor for a few days now, but so far it has been amazing. I do have a good old list of pro's and con's so far though, and here are my thoughts:
Pro's:
-240Hz!!!!!!!!!!! (You knew this had to be here.)
-G-sync is amazing, and paired with the 240Hz it's so smooth I have trouble leaving my wife alone in the room with it.
-The bezel is thinner than my wallet after buying this thing.
-The panel is great. For a TN panel it has good colors and view angles, but of course it will never compete with a VA or IPS panel in these departments. I won the lottery and had not a single dead pixel on arrival, looks great!
-Aesthetics are always going to be subjective, but I like the AW features on this monitor, it stands out, there's no doubt of it's AW heritage, but it isn't slapping me in the face with it and looks clean (looking at you Asus ROG and Acer Predator).
-Build quality is tops. None of the plastics feel cheap and all the metal construction adds to the premium feel.
Neutral:
-The build quality comes at a cost...weight and bulk. This thing is fairly hefty and I'm certain I would have thrown a tantrum trying to wire and mount this baby if it weren't for the 90° rotation on the stand (and bear in mind this is only a 25" monitor).
-It's expensive. This is not a negative though in my humble opinion. G-Sync modules are a premium that makes the cost of a monitor shoot through the roof. This is not Dell/AW's fault, merely a fact of life (currently) and if you want absolute top end and flawless performance, you need to get an Nvidia GPU and a G-Sync monitor. This monitor is priced right along with others in it's class and quality (Acer Predator has a TN panel, 1440p, 144Hz that is similar in price, and Asus has at least one monitor that also has the same feature set as the AW2518H for around the same price). So again, not a negative point to me, given the state of things, but worth talking about.
-The OSD and other menu features are great, they work, are self-explanatory, and do what they need to do. I would have greatly preferred some kind of multi-directional switch similar to other monitors in this class and price-point though.
-240Hz is amazing, as I've said. But, to run this monitor at it's full potential you need a top end GPU to take advantage of those delicious frames (think at a minimum a GTX 1080 and preferably a 1080Ti or RTX 2080). That's not to say that this can't be run on a lesser card, My wife's system (which currently runs a GTX 1070) still works well with it, thanks to G-Sync. Whether she is in the mid double-digit frames per second or blazing at a little over 200, it's always smooth as butter. So TL;DR: don't expect the 240Hz to be fully realized without a top end GPU.
Con's:
-Can we all take a moment to give the design team a round of applause for the top-notch build quality? I know I've mentioned it in all three categories now, but seriously this thing is a tank. However, you guys seriously over did the stand. It's massive. Don't get me wrong, I can shake the desk like it owes me money and that monitor doesn't move a millimeter. It has a nice layer of a type of silicone rubber under the stand that sticks to my tempered glass desktop like glue. But it also covers a serious amount of real estate. We're talking enough to land a SpaceX rocket on. I replaced my wife's old 24" Asus monitor with this, and within 20 or 30 minutes of gameplay after tweaking the settings and getting the colors and stuff where she liked it we had to completely reorganize her desk to accommodate this behemoth of a stand because she kept banging her mouse on it.
To be fair to Alienware/Dell, this monitor is a 5-star that only loses it's perfection status to it's overly bulky stand. I'm sure that the shape could be changed to make it more desktop-friendly without sacrificing stability.
Otherwise you folks made an amazing monitor.
The 240 refresh rate is mind blowing. This is by far the best monitor I've ever bought. Its more adjustable than the rest. It has a love/love relationship with my 1080ti (MSI build) and brought my gaming to a new level. Great product for a decent price.
This monitor is the beez kneez of gaming monitors. I have the dell 1440p 165hz gsync monitor as well and I like this monitor better for competitive games. There's nothing that can come close to the butter smooth feeling of a 240hz monitor, it's almost a bad thing because nothing else compares!
I don't feel like I should add this but make sure your processor and GPU can handle this! And I say processor first for a reason; If you're running a gtx 1070 and above, 1080p high refresh rate is VERY CPU intensive, and for this reason it needs to be a very FAST CPU to take advantage of 240hz at times other than just staring at a wall. I've had both an AMD r7 2700x and Intel I7-9700k processor with this monitor and Intel takes the clear advantage when it comes to 1080p 240hz goals, almost a 30-40% advantage in some games (in 1440p both processors are almost identical).
I currently run a I7-9700k processor and I still turn the majority of my graphics on low in games so I can get close to the high FPS.
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