Dell UltraSharp U3011 30" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Just a quick note to share my experience with this monitor. First of all, the image quality is excellent. There are some minor inconsistencies in the backlight, but with that said, I believe that it is better that any other sub-$2000.00 monitor. If you have never used a monitor this large, it may be worth mentioning that a monitor of this size takes some getting used to. It takes a physical turn of the head to see the full extent of the screen. this is not a problem with the U3011 in particular, but with any monitor this large.

On the plus side, I found that the extra screen real estate was liberating. Not only could I get two full-blown applications up on the screen side by side, but I also gained a lot of vertical space. Compared to a 1280x1024 or even 1920x1080 monitor, the U3011's 1600 vertical pixels really do reveal a lot more content. For example, when viewing a PDF, the displayed image is actually somewhat larger than real life, so one can easily see and read a full page...or two full pages for that matter. Web pages take on a whole new dimension and vertical scrolling is greatly reduced. There is so mush information of the screen that it can actually be distracting at times.

I came from a dual monitor setup, so I was used to having a lot of pixels, but with dual monitors, one can configure the screens so that they are more on-axis. With a 30-inch monitor, significant portions of the screen are always off-axis.

Because of the off-axis issue, certain area of the screen will appear brighter than others and colors will tend to shift slightly. The U3011 uses IPS technology, so off-axis performance is better than any monitor that uses TN technology (which the vast majority of LCD monitors use), but even so, you might want to think about it.

One peculiar problem that I noticed was that the screen throws off so much light that it actually created a glare on my keyboard, to the point that the keys could not be seen. I am a touch typist, but even so, not being able to see the keys at all was uncomfortable for me. I found myself using a an extra lamp to put some light on the keyboard, which of course washed out the monitors to some extent. I even bought a back-lit keyboard, but it was not bright enough to overcome the glare from the monitor. Be aware too that the U3011's CF backlight generates considerable heat.

For me, it was a love/hate situation. I argued with myself right up to the end of my 30-day return window. In the end, what sealed the fate of the monitor was that it made a noise that bothered me. I went to a lot of trouble to build a very quiet PC for myself, so the monitor was the loudest thing in the room. At first I thought it had a fan because there was a mechanical character to the noise, but after searching around on the, I finally came to realize that the noise was only present when the monitor's brightness was set to less than 90 percent.

For those who have very bright rooms, maybe this would not be an issue, but my office has more subdued lighting, so I simply had to turn it down. If you calibrate the monitor (as I did), you will find that it calibrates best down around the minimum brightness setting.

For what it's worth, I went back to a dual monitor setup, using two 24" 1920x1200 monitors mounted on the Ergotron stand that I used with my previous setup. There are trade-offs, but I have more pixels, I am more on-axis, there is less glare, less heat, and for me, a better experience.