Displays certified for the AMD FreeSyncTMPremium Pro tier include highly accurate luminance and wide color gamut testing to enable an exceptional HDR visual gaming experience. Any game titles that use the previous FreeSync 2 HDR branding, are supported by FreeSync Premium Pro displays.Going forward, new games that support FreeSync Premium Pro technology will use the new branding. The Alienware AW2521HFL has a distinct design that reflects its branding, but what further emphasizes that is its AlienFX RGB lighting. The full span of the stand’s pillar has an LED ring that glows in any color or preset you like from the OSD or from the AlienFX app. It’s bright enough to cast a bias lighting glow if the monitor sits close to a wall, but what we didn’t like it cannot sync with other RGB ecosystems.

Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor (AW2521HFL) - PCMag UK Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor (AW2521HFL) - PCMag UK

Calibrating the monitor will yield a very low deltaE average of only 0.54 which is very close to the result found on the Alienware AW2521HF. However, not all have access to a colorimeter, so we recommend using the custom color preset and tweaking the screen to your liking instead. The added cost of the gadget will make the total cost of your upgrade even higher, so it’s not worth it. It's definitely better than trying to fiddle with its Custom Colour preset, if only because each of its three Gamer profiles give you exactly the same level of control over its dozens of colour options. They're not particularly user-friendly, all told, and Alienware could probably do with chopping a lot of them to make the onboard menu settings easier to understand. Whereas most gaming monitors just give you easy RGB bars to adjust up and down, the AW2521HFL splits them into Gain, Offset, Hue and Saturation, and it's not immediately obvious which settings do what if you don't already know what those individual terms actually mean. Then again, my attempts at calibrating the Gamer preset to try and improve things further didn't actually yield the results I wanted (everything actually got a little worse), so they're probably best left alone anyway. The Alienware AW2521HFL has three main display outputs: two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2 output. Dell claims the Alienware 25 can hit up to 99% of the sRGB color space. It comes close in our tests, but in Standard mode, the monitor only reaches 96.8% of the gamut, as shown in the sRGB color-space diagram below...

Best Displays Ideal for Triple Monitor Surround Setups – Buying Guide Triple Monitor setups became popular in the early 2010’s when Nvidia released its Surround Technology that spans your computer’s output… The AW2521HFL has one key advantage over the AOC, and that's the size of its panel. Both monitors have a resolution of 1920x1080, but the Alienware's smaller 25in screen means it looks much sharper than its 27in rival. I've always said that 1920x1080 stretched across a 27in screen isn't ideal, as while it's fine for games, it's just not quite good enough for everyday desktop tasks such as browsing the web or typing up documents. Text looks distinctly hazy and pixellated on a 27in 1920x1080 display, and I always feel like my eyes are having to work harder when I do anything other than playing games on these screens. The Alienware AW2521HFL offers 99% sRGB and around 82% DCI-P3 coverage so the screen is pleasantly vibrant with a balanced level of saturation. Its measured accuracy has a 1.56 delta average which is excellent for a gaming monitor and considerably better than the AW2521HF’s result. Do take note that color accuracy scores always vary between every unit due to manufacturing tolerances, explaining the massive difference between the two identical models.

Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell Support for Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell

It's not just colour settings you get on the AW2521HFL, though. There are also specific Sharpness, Response Time and Dark Stabilizer settings, the latter of which artificially brightens the screen to help you spot things in the shadows. It's a feature often touted as a 'must-have' for competitive multiplayer games to give you that extra 'edge' online - especially when said games are often the ones that can make the most of the AW2521HFL's 240Hz refresh rate. However, I found that the screen's regular peak brightness and accompanying contrast ratio from the Gamer preset was more than enough to help me see everything that I needed to in-game. The Alienware AW2521HFL is a FreeSync Premium gaming monitor, but its also compatible with Nvidia’s G-Sync Compatible mode. Its certification is delayed at this time, but it is pretty much guaranteed since the Alienware AW2521HF is already listed by Nvidia. Input lag sits at 3ms, so there is no need to worry about delays or de-synced instances. Thoughts on the Alienware AW2521HFL Is the difference between these two monitors only in color? Why if compared the HF model is IPS while the HFL is Fast IPS? Is it just an error in writing the description or is there a difference?It can also only reach 81.1% of the cinema-focused DCI-P3 color space. This isn't particularly high, and can result in dull colors when watching movies. Input lag is where the Alienware 25 really shines, as it should in a gaming monitor. Using an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix, we measured a 4.1-millisecond input lag on a 60Hz signal, which means an input lag of just over 1ms at 240Hz. That makes the Alienware 25 the fastest gaming monitor we’ve tested to date. Gamer Network Limited, Gateway House, 28 The Quadrant, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1DN, United Kingdom, registered under company number 03882481. The L standards for Premium. So the "HFL" is the Freesync Premium version. The "HF" is the standard Freesync.

Support for Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFLA - Dell

Extras: AMD Freesync Premium, Nvidia G-Sync Compatible, height-adjustable stand, 4x USB3 ports (one with power charging), RGB lighting The Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition graphical benchmark looks very nice on the Alienware 25, with natural-looking colors in the green fields and blue skies. The colors could be a bit more vibrant, though, and while the picture is quite bright, fine details in shadows and dark objects occasionally appear a little muddy. The action is nice and smooth, with no noticeable motion artifacts. More importantly, though, the colour accuracy of AW2521HFL's IPS panel also leaves a lot to be desired compared to its AOC rival. Whereas my X-Rite DisplayPro i1 colour calibrator showed the AOC C27G2ZU was already showing a near perfect 99% of the sRGB colour gamut straight out of the box on maximum brightness, the AW2521HFL only returned a rather sub-par coverage score of 90.9% when I tested it on its default Standard preset. I'd normally expect an IPS panel to hit around 96% of the sRGB colour gamut, but this was more in line with what I'd expect from a good TN panel.

The best thing about the Alienware AW2521HFL is its strong performance in motion handling. The monitor offers excellent control over blurring and ghosting which makes it great for fast-paced competitive titles. This model also has three overdrive settings to further clean up its image output, but we recommend staying with the Fast level. The modest color space coverage of the Alienware 25 comes through in our 4K Costa Rica test video. The greens of plants and frogs look natural and reasonably well-saturated, but they could have appeared a bit more vivid. Details are sharp, and action is smooth, but colors aren’t quite as rich or as vibrant as they could have been with proper HDR processing, or simply a wider color gamut (like on the also-HDR-less Alienware 34). The Alienware AW2521HFL is an excellent monitor overall with better imaging results over the dark gray-colored Alienware AW2521HF. It fares considerably better in color accuracy and brightness with minimal tweaking, but the calibrated results are identical. The monitor’s agile pixel response time and FreeSync/G-Sync compatibility make it a compelling choice for competitive gamers.