Last week my home office’s monitor, a three-year-old 19″ non-wide-screen LCD, died. Since I originally bought it, LCD prices have come down a lot, so I was happy for the excuse to replace it with something bigger. Because of the space limitations imposed by my computer hutch, I quickly settled on a 24″ widescreen as the desired size for the replacement, and then spent a lot of time looking at the various brands and options. My old LCD was a ViewSonic; did I want to stick with them? I’ve been reasonably happy with the 22″ Dell monitor at work, so perhaps I should go with Dell? Or perhaps a different brand such as Samsung or Gateway? After wading through many sites and forums full of reviews I settled on the Dell 2408WFP.

I chose the 2408WFP for serveral reasons. On paper, the specs look really great. 2 DVI inputs, HDMI, DisplayPort, height-adjustable stand, and many other goodies. Also, at least one reviewer tested its color reproduction accuracy and found it to be very good, and since I do a lot of photo editing, color accuracy is very important to me. While the 2408WFP was fairly expensive compared to other 24″ widescreens, the additional features it had compared to other monitors and the 25% off coupon I found made it seem worth the price.

Today the new monitor arrived, and I immediately set it up to see what it was like. On the forums some people complained about a red tint, uneven lighting, and other issues; I must have gotten lucky because the one I received doesn’t have any of these issues. It did over-saturate colors by default, but that was easily fixed by switching the display mode to sRGB and installing the color profile on the included CD. I then compared the display to a printed version of the SmugMug Calibration Print, and found that the monitor was pretty much dead-on, color-wise. I was also happy that its stand required less depth than the 19″ ViewSonic stand, allowing me to set the monitor further back on the table.

After using this monitor for a few hours, I’m very happy with it. The monitor is bright and sharp, color reproduction is great, and it’s the perfect size for my work area. The only negative I’ve noticed is that it puts out a lot more heat than my old 19″, probably due to its larger size. The last thing my home office needed is another heat source, but at least I don’t have to worry about being cold this winter.