The Dell U2414H is a popular IPS monitor with an excellent imaging output and a wide array of functionalities suitable for various requirements.

The screen’s output is accurate and sufficiently vibrant, although photo editors might have to look to the newer models for better gamut representation. The highest deviation from the brightest point occurred at ‘quadrant 7’ and ‘quadrant 8’, a 9% deviation (165. Perform monitor self-test feature check to determine if the intermittent problem occurs in self-test mode. Some fairly minor detail such as creasing on clothing in dark scenes could be made out, despite lacking the distinctness and bold look that they have on a good high-contrast VA panel.They didn’t have the same ‘pop’ as you’d see on a decent glossy monitor in particular but were quite lively.

This is visible from a normal viewing position and people often mistake this for backlight bleed – it actually entirely masked the backlight bleed on our unit from a normal viewing position. This is indicative of a gamma curve with low dependency on viewing angle and therefore strong viewing angle performance.The remaining presets had a slightly more pronounced effect on contrast but it still remained around 1000:1, dropping to 968:1 at lowest using the very poorly balanced ‘Movie’ preset.

The white point was configured particularly nicely in some of the presets, including the default ‘Standard’ preset and the ‘Color Temperature’ preset set to ‘6500K’. The U2414H does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to moderate backlight brightness and instead uses DC (Direct Current) modulation. The U2414H’s bezel measures 6mm thick along its vertical edges, 6mm on its top horizontal edge and 16mm on its bottom edge.The IPS panel is evenly lit, too: we measured no more than a 10% variation in brightness across the whole panel. By default these are set to ‘Preset’ and ‘Brightness’, whilst the third button is ‘Menu’ and the fourth is ‘Exit’. Similar to ‘Standard’, very close to target white point (6500K) but slight green channel weakness remains. It was interesting to discover that this model actually uses a slightly different panel, albeit a similar one of the same size and panel type (AH-IPS). The ‘sRGB’ preset uses the factory calibration – the preset which is used to create the ‘PremierColor Color Calibration Factory Report’ individually for each unit.

Elements within the environments, such as vegetation and buildings, also showed pleasing variety and saturation. The U2414H looks different to Dell’s previous monitors, thanks to a pleasingly dainty, curved profile. The monitor provides a self-test feature that allows you to check whether your monitor is functioning properly.The first two blocks blended in quite well with the background, but poor visibility of these blocks is the usual behaviour for an LCD unless the gamma curve is skewed at the low end. One key consideration for people interested in gaming on such a monitor, in particular, is of course responsiveness. The Dell U2414H ships factory-calibrated, so out of the box users can expect excellent imaging capabilities as soon as you plug this monitor in.