Intended as a Low Blue Light (LBL) setting, but very ineffective. The colour temperature is warmer by default but the blue channel remained strong on our unit and green channel very strong. This gave an unbalanced image with clear green tint, without achieving its key goal. Moving on, the Dell AW2521HF has a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, which results in a decent pixel density on its 24.5″ viewable screen. You get 90 pixels per inch, which makes for sharp details and a good amount of screen space. All in all, both monitors look great and can be used in any setting – whether it be a bedroom or an office. In some rare cases, dark pixels may not quite change into brighter shades in time with the refresh rate, which can result in visible ghosting behind fast-moving objects when dark pixels are predominant in the picture (dark scenes). The image below is a macro photograph taken on Notepad with ClearType disabled. The letters ‘PCM’ are typed out to help highlight any potential text rendering issues related to unusual subpixel structure, whilst the white space more clearly shows the actual subpixel layout alongside a rough indication of screen surface. This model uses a ‘regular’ (medium) matte anti-glare surface. Strong glare-handling is provided due to significant diffusion of ambient light. This diffusion also affects light emitted from the monitor, with a negative impact on the clarity and vibrancy potential of the screen. The screen surface has a bit of graininess to it when observing lighter shades, a very slightly ‘sandy’ look to it, if you like. It doesn’t show strong graininess or a heavily smeared appearance, however. The surface texture is quite similar if not a touch lighter than the surface texture used on most high refresh rate ~24” Full HD TN models.

The Super Fast and Extreme modes are too aggressive; they push the pixel response time too much, which results in inverse ghosting or pixel overshoot.

The only minor issue is that there’s no support for HDR. This is not yet a must-have feature for gaming monitors but it will be soon and it’s something to bear in mind if you’re considering spending this much on a 24.5in screen. When responding to an input, the AW2518HF was measured (by Tom’s Hardware) to have an absolute (end-to-end) input lag of just 19 ms, which is incredibly low. Similarly low were the tests carried out for the AW2521HF (by Rtings.com) that was found to have 2.7 ms of input lag (not absolute) at its native resolution and refresh rate, increasing to 3.1 ms with VRR enabled, 9.7 ms at 60 Hz, and 12.7 ms at 60 Hz with VRR enabled. We also observed various episodes of the animated TV series Futurama. This further reinforces the idea of strong colour consistency, with large areas of individual shade. The monitor performed well here, without clear shifts in saturation or colour tone. Slight changes could be observed at the very edges for some shades, such as the purple of Leela’s hair gaining a bit of an extra red vs. blue hue to the purple – more pronounced if sitting close to the screen. Most shades appeared very consistent indeed, with any slight deviation due more to uniformity than any viewing angle related weakness. This contrasted starkly with competing TN models that would show an obvious ‘gradient’ of saturation vertically and VA models which show shifts from centre to bottom and sides. For a wide range of shades. The pastel shades of this movie were suitably varied and muted, whilst vibrant shades such as neon reds and greens appeared fairly eye-catching. Not to the extent seen on models with a more generous colour gamut, but enough to stand out and have the intended look overall. As shown in the image above, the monitor uses the usual RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixel layout. This is the default expected by modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS. As a Windows user you don’t need to run through the ClearType wizard, although you may still wish to adjust this according to your preferences. As a Mac user there’s no need to worry about text fringing from non-standard subpixel layouts. The subpixel layout and arrangement is normal and we had no subpixel-related concerns related to sharpness or text clarity on this model.

The monitor produced most shades here quite faithfully, accounting for the natural differences related to emissive vs. non-emissive objects noted above. Some shades appear a touch oversaturated due primarily to the slight extension in the gamut, the most noticeable being dark lime green (18) which appeared a touch more ‘neon’. On models with a significantly wider gamut, this shade and candy apple red (14), to name but a few, tend to look significantly more ‘neon’ than they appear here. Candy apple red appeared with a bit of an orange-red tone due to extension in the red to green edge of the gamut. Some shades, such as cerulean (2) and lilac (8), appear somewhat undersaturated. Gamboge (23) verged too much on a mustard yellow without a suitably warm golden hue, too. Medium orange (3), Persian pink (6) and looked slightly undersaturated in person, but they appear much less saturated and overly bright in the image compared to how they actually looked on the monitor. The consistency is also very good in most cases, superior to VA models and far superior to TN models (references here). Aquamarine (4) is particularly good at highlighting this relative strength. Medium chocolate brown (24) is also good for highlighting colour consistency, which like Aquamarine is positioned at the extremities of the screen. Medium chocolate brown and some neighbouring shades appear a touch more saturated and warmer in tone on the AW2521HF when displayed at the bottom vs. top of the screen. But this is due more to uniformity on our sample than viewing angle behaviour. Although this won’t correct uniformity issues, profiling the monitor with your own colorimeter or spectrophotometer is always advised for best results if the strongest colour accuracy is desired.Where the TN panel shines, is its low response times and input lag. However, in this case (surprisingly enough), the IPS panel of the AW2521HF actually performs on an almost equal level to the TN panel of the AW2518HF. With a gaming monitor there are two key strands to image quality. Overall picture quality, which takes into account such elements as colour accuracy, contrast ratio, brightness and so on; and responsiveness, which is the chief concern of gamers. 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).

That said, when compared with a good 144Hz display, the AW2521H is a minor upgrade designed for a very specific type of player: seriously competitive esports enthusiasts. The 360Hz motion is a noticeable jump from 144Hz and 240Hz, however slight – I ran an ABX test myself – but for most people, it's not worth the few hundred extra dollars it currently costs. I've bought the monitor couple of days ago and so far I am enjoying it. I've tried finding the best OSD/calibration settings online but pretty much everywhere I see information about the older TN version of the monitor. I am hoping that other users that have the IPS AW2521HF will share some opinions about the best settings that work for them.However, since you’d need a wider color gamut and a much higher contrast ratio and brightness for a noteworthy HDR picture quality (none of which is offered by the other 1080p 240Hz IPS models), you’re not losing anything important here. I’ve been PCMag’s home entertainment expert for over 10 years, covering both TVs and everything you might want to connect to them. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand different consumer electronics products including headphones, speakers, TVs, and every major game system and VR headset of the last decade. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and a THX-certified home theater professional, and I’m here to help you understand 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and even 8K (and to reassure you that you don’t need to worry about 8K at all for at least a few more years). Finally, the screen has a 25% low-haze matte anti-glare coating, which eliminates reflections without making the picture appear too grainy. A sensitive camera and a utility called SMTT 2.0 was used assess the latency of the Dell Alienware AW2521HF. Over 30 repeat readings were taken to help maximise accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 2.63ms (under 2/3rds of a frame at 240Hz) of input lag. At 60Hz we measured a slightly higher but still reasonable 6.47ms. This figure is influenced both by the element of input lag you ‘see’ (pixel responsiveness) and the element you ‘feel’ (signal delay). It indicates a very low signal delay at 240Hz which even sensitive users shouldn’t find bothersome. Note that we have no way to accurately measure input lag with Adaptive-Sync active in a variable refresh rate and frame rate environment.

The Alienware AW2521HF has an exceptionally low input lag of only ~2ms, which guarantees that you won’t be able to notice or feel any delays between your actions and the result on the screen. Full HD resolution is quite limiting in some respects, stand reasonably deep which could be an issue if you have a shallow desk (VESA mounting is an option) After messing with the color calibration and the built in settings I finally found settings that seriously bring out some serious clarity for the AW2521hf monitor. I've had this monitor for about 6 months now and honestly I feel as if I just discovered a new one. I used the built in settings and also used the nvidia control panel color settings for this so I apologize to anyone with an AMD card.So, if you’re wondering whether you should save your money and get the Dell AW2521HF or invest in one of the more expensive models, this review will cover everything you need to know! Image Quality