NOTE: This is the original review. An update is included below.
I've had the U2715H for a few days, and it's great except for two issues. The luminance (screen brightness) is very uneven. This problem was noted in an in-depth review of the monitor on TFTCentral where it was rated poor in this regard, and I was hoping I'd have better luck. The luminance on the left side of the screen is much lower than the right side of the screen. I've measured it with an accurate light meter, and the luminance on the left is 35 percent lower than the right. This is very noticeable on an image with a solid light colored background. I've seen other comments about this, including on the Dell forums. I'm going to try another sample to see if I have better luck, but one poster on the Dell forums experienced uneven luminance on six samples of the U2715H. Not a good sign.
Dell's policy regarding backlight uniformity is as follows (from the Dell monitor forum FAQs): "Dell monitors do not have 100% backlight uniformity specification. As long as the center 4" circle (7" circle for 27" and larger monitors) meets our manufacturer specifications, it is acceptable." I don't know if this is common in the industry, but this allows for quite non-uniform luminance on the sides of the screen.
The second issue with my monitor may not be the fault of the monitor, but I have seen a few other comments about this. I'm including this in case anyone else has experienced it. The monitor comes with a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable. When I connected the mini DP end to the monitor and the DP end to my graphics card (an ASUS GTX 970 Strix), the monitor at first wouldn't recognize the presence of a signal. This happened with several attempts at reconnecting the cable and rebooting. When I connected the monitor with an HDMI cable, everything worked fine. I reconnected the DP cable and the monitor eventually recognized it. (You need to manually select the correct input in the monitor's on-screen settings, and it stores settings separately for each input.) It worked fine for awhile, but occasionally the monitor wouldn't sense a video signal on system boot requiring several attempts to connect. This only occurred at boot, and if the video signal was recognized it remained connected for the duration of the session.
I've ordered a new DisplayPort cable to see if the included cable is bad. In the meantime, I'm using HDMI which still allows the display of the monitor's full 2560 x 1440 native resolution.
In all other respects, the monitor is quite good. The pixel density is perfect for a 27-inch monitor. Type is very crisp and not too small. The monitor is nice looking with a solid stand. The touch sensitive buttons are a bit of a pain to operate at first until you get the hang of it. The IPS glow is very present, as it is with most IPS monitors. I don't find this to be an issue for most images, but you can clearly see it if you're watching anything in letterbox format, for example.
The poor luminance uniformity, however, has made me deduct two stars from my review. This is a big issue if you work with image editing. It might not be important to you if you use the monitor for gaming. (I do both.) If a replacement monitor is better, I'll follow up with a revised review.
UPDATE March 5, 2015
I received a replacement monitor yesterday and I've added back two stars to the review. The luminance uniformity is much better on this one. It still has lower luminance on the left side of the display, but it's less than a 10 percent difference. It's only detectable using a light meter and isn't noticeable in use. Good enough for me.
The only downside is that the maximum luminance on this panel (at 100 percent brightness) is about 250 cd/m^2. This is less than the specification for this monitor which Dell lists as 350 cd/m^2 (typical) and 280 cd/m^2 (minimum). I'm not too concerned about this since I've set the monitor to 35 percent brightness and I'm getting about 125 cd/m^2 which is plenty bright for my normal usage.
I haven't had the intermittent connectivity for the DisplayPort mentioned in my review of the first monitor, but it's only been two days. I bought a second DisplayPort cable to try out if it happens with the replacement monitor.
Thanks to Amazon for overnighting the replacement monitor. I've been a customer of Amazon since they just sold books because of their great customer service.
UPDATE March 20, 2015
The replacement monitor eventually succumbed to the black screen on boot problem (no signal detected) when connected using DisplayPort. However, it may not be the fault of the monitor. There are lots of posts on the Nvidia forum about the same problem when using other monitors. It may be a handshake issue with the DisplayPort interface, and the GTX 970 and 980 graphics cards seem to be particularly affected. I've read that Nvidia claims to have released an upated BIOS for these cards to address the problem but is leaving it up to each card manufacturer to distribute it. So far, ASUS hasn't provided an updated BIOS but people have reported that EVGA has. For now, I'm back to using HDMI.
| Standing screen display size | 27 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560x1440 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1440 Pixels |
