Dell up2516d review for photo edit

A KM CS-200 was used to measure the luminance of white and black using a range of monitor settings, including those discussed in the calibration section. From these values, static contrast ratios were calculated. These are shown in the table below. Values for the highest white luminance, lowest black luminance and peak contrast ratio recorded highlighted in blue. Results under our ‘Test Settings’ are highlighted in black. With the exception of our ‘Test Settings’, where various adjustments were made, assume any setting not mentioned was left at default.

The UP2716D yielded an average static contrast of 792:1 with only brightness adjusted. This was reduced due to the fact that ‘Uniformity Compensation’ (UC) was set to ‘Calibrated’ (enabled). With this disabled, as per all of the other settings we tested, the contrast was higher. In ‘Standard’ with UC disabled the contrast rose to a strong 1257:1 with the maximum value recorded using ‘Color Space = REC709’ (1263:1). These are strong values for an IPS panel. The adjustments we made for our ‘Test Settings’ (specifically to the colour channel ‘Gain’ control) reduced the contrast to a still respectable 1053:1. The maximum white luminance recorded on this table was 289 cd/m² with the minimum a very low 21 cd/m². This provided a luminance adjustment range of 268 cd/m² with plenty of useable values. Interestingly the brightness was ‘capped’ at 189 cd/m² with UC enabled and reached this even at the default brightness of ‘75’. Increasing the brightness to ‘100’ had no effect whatsoever on either the black or white luminance. Without UC enabled the monitor responded as you’d expect as you increase brightness beyond ‘75’ – although this is not documented on the table, it was tested.

The monitor has a ‘Dynamic Contrast’ feature which can be activated in the ‘Game’ or ‘Movie’ presets. This locks off manual control of the brightness and allows the backlight to automatically adjust according to the level of ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ on the screen. As with all current LCD monitors, the backlight is controlled as a single unit (BLU) – it therefore can’t reduce the brightness for some sections of the screen whilst increasing it for others. This implementation reacted at a moderate pace to changes in the makeup of the image, but tended towards being rather bright during mixed images with plenty of dark areas. As usual we preferred to have this feature disabled and maintain control over the backlight brightness ourselves, adjusting according to preferences and lighting as is the preferred way of doing things.

PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

The UP2716D does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) at any brightness level. Instead, DC (Direct Current) dimming is used throughout its adjustment range. The backlight is therefore considered ‘flicker-free’, which will come as welcome news to those sensitive to flickering or other side-effects of PWM usage such as PWM artifacts.

Luminance uniformity

Whilst observing a black screen in a dark room, using our test settings, we could see some backlight bleed, particularly towards the bottom left and top right corners of the screen. You can hopefully see on the image below that this was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Note that the photograph was taken a few metres back from the monitor to eliminate ‘IPS glow’ and that individual units can vary when it comes to backlight bleed. ‘IPS glow’ is something that is characteristic of the panel type and does not vary between units of the same model. From a normal viewing position, you can see a slightly red or silvery-blue tint towards the bottom corners of the screen in particular. The colour depends on the viewing angle, with the ‘red’ tint seeming a bit more intense than usual on this model due to the backlight used. This blooms out more noticeably if you move ‘off angle’, as shown in the viewing angles video later on in the review.

We also assessed the uniformity of lighter colours using the Spyder5ELITE to analyse 9 equally spaced quadrants running from the top left to the bottom right of the screen. The tables below shows the percentage deviation between a given quadrant and the brightest quadrant measured. The top table shows the results using our ‘Test Settings’, whereas the bottom table shows the factory defaults (including ‘Uniformity Compensation’ being set to ‘Calibrated’). We’ve introduced the ‘Uniformity Compensation’ (UC) previously. What this does is to digitally alter brightness levels at various points of the screen to make the brightness more uniform. As we’ve explored already, this comes with a bit of a hit in contrast and maximum brightness potential. You also can’t have it enabled in certain presets or when certain adjustments are made. It’s designed to be used at the default brightness setting of ‘75’, specifically. Having said that, you should still expect it to work fairly well at lower brightness settings as well, at least when it comes to luminance uniformity. Although not documented in the table, the ‘Color Space’ settings such as ‘Adobe RGB’ offered uniformity more comparable to our ‘Test Settings’ than with UC enabled.

Under our ‘Test Settings’ the luminance uniformity of the screen was fair. The brightest point recorded was ‘quadrant 5’ in the centre of the screen (156.8 cd/m²). The greatest deviation occurred at ‘quadrant 7’ towards the bottom left of the screen (128.9 cd/m² which is 18% dimmer than the centre). Elsewhere deviation from the centre was 8- 14%. The luminance uniformity with UC activated was excellent. The brightest point recorded was ‘quadrant 1’ towards the top left of the screen (193.6 cd/m²). The greatest deviation from this occurred at ‘quadrant 8’ below the centre of the screen (184.8 cd/m² which is just 5% dimmer). Note that individual units will vary when it comes to uniformity and there can be variation beyond the measured points. The UC setting does seem to be effective, though, and Dell calibrates each individual unit in this fashion using 25 quadrants for high levels of consistency right across the screen.

Below there are contour maps to represent the deviations graphically. The top map shows the results under our ‘Test Settings’ and the bottom with the UC mode enabled (factory defaults). Here darker greys represent lower luminance than lighter greys. The percentage deviation between each quadrant and the brightest recorded quadrant is also given.

The Spyder5ELITE was also used to analyse deviations in colour temperature (white point), using the same white quadrants analysed above. The following contour maps show deviations between each quadrant and that closest to 6500K (the D65 daylight white point target). Deviations here are assigned DeltaE values, with higher values representing greater deviations. A Delta E <3 is considered deviation that most users would not readily notice by eye. Darker colours on these graphics represent higher deviation from 6500K than lighter colours. The top graphic is again for our ‘Test Settings’ and the bottom with UC enabled.

Under our test settings results are already strong, with no significant deviations between each quadrant and the point closest to 6500K. The highest deviation was recorded towards the top left, with a DeltaE of 2.7. The UC feature does yield improvements, dropping the maximum deviation down to a DeltaE of 1.7 (again at the top left). Again, individual units can vary in this regard and you can expect deviation beyond the points measured. Regardless of this, it seems the UC feature (which is specifically calibrated for each unit) does exactly what it set out to do. Note as well that deviations in ‘colour temperature’ on wide gamut models like this can manifest with various ‘green’ or ‘pink’ hues as demonstrated in the Lagom text test later on.

Contrast in games and movies

On Star Wars Battlefront the contrast performance was good overall. The shadowy regions of the ‘Endor’ forest regions and dark interiors highlighted this nicely. Here bright elements such as gunfire, sparks and explosions stood out nicely against darker backgrounds. The level of detail was also pleasing in these dark areas towards the centre of the screen, but detail was lost peripherally due to the aforementioned ‘IPS glow’. Bright elements had a rather smooth (non-grainy) look to them thanks to the smooth and light matte screen surface.

On Dirt Rally the contrast performance was also respectable overall. This was particularly noticeable whilst driving at night, where bright shades such as car headlights stood out nicely in the surrounding darkness. Under such conditions ‘IPS glow’ was also particularly noticeable peripherally, particularly towards the bottom two corners of the screen. This ate away at detail in dark areas and made them appear somewhat flooded in the regions that it affected. Elsewhere detail levels in dark areas was good, for wrinkles of leather inside the car and tire tread patterns on the outside. Bright shades appeared quite smooth without obvious graininess, too.

The contrast was decent overall in the Blu-ray of Skyfall. The thick black borders at the top and bottom from the ‘16:9 letterbox’ format of the screen absorbed much of the IPS glow. Bright elements stood out nicely in dark surroundings, whilst the level of detail in dark scenes was much as it should be really.

Lagom contrast tests

Lagom’s tests for contrast were used to help analyse specific weaknesses in contrast performance which may not be readily apparent during other testing. We observed the following.

• Performance on the contrast gradients was strong. Every block appeared with distinct brightness compared to the last. The final blue block was a bit less distinct than it ideally would be, but was still visible.
• Performance on the black level test was pretty much spot on. Every block showed a distinct step up in brightness, with the first two block blending into the background quite readily (as expected from the ‘2.2’ standard gamma curve). There was no obvious dithering, either, and the white block at the end looked relatively ‘pure’ thanks to the fairly smooth screen surface.
• Performance on the white saturation test was good. All of the checkerboard patterns appeared distinct from the background, except the final pattern which was barely visible. The greys on the checkerboard patterns were nice and neutral as well without any obvious green or warm tint or anything like that.
• The greyscale gradient was exceptionally smooth with no observable banding and no obvious dithering. You could see some very fine temporal dithering if you looked closely and knew what you’re looking for, but that’s expected given the panel specifications and is as unobtrusive as we’ve seen from a dithering algorithm.

Colour reproduction

Colour gamut

The UP2716D’s colour gamut (red triangle) was compared to the sRGB (green triangle) and Adobe RGB (purple triangle, where applicable) colour spaces using a range of settings. The Spyder5ELITE was used to analyse this. The monitor includes various colour space emulation modes and was also modified quite heavily for our ‘Test Settings’. The images show the colour gamut in the following settings, respectively; ‘Standard’, ‘Adobe RGB’, ‘sRGB’, ‘REC709’ and ‘DCI-P3’.

The native colour gamut of the monitor (‘Standard’ – top image) comprehensively covers both the sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces. There is extension beyond the Adobe RGB colour space, even, particularly in the red region of this representation. Note that the Adobe RGB colour space actually coincides with sRGB in this ‘corner’ of this representation. The ‘Adobe RGB’ emulation mode cuts this down effectively so that it fully covers the Adobe RGB colour space without much over-extension at all. The ‘sRGB’ emulation mode does this same with the sRGB colour space, with just a smidge of under-coverage but nothing to write home about. The ‘REC709’ emulation mode is largely the same with a bit of extension beyond in places, whilst ‘DCI-P3’ does an excellent job of emulating the ‘DCI-P3’ colour space (not shown in this diagram – but essentially coinciding with the monitor’s gamut here). The image below shows the gamut under our ‘Test Settings’, which is broader overall than ‘Adobe RGB’ but cut down a bit compared to the native gamut. Indeed, the representation of colours is quite different regardless of the gamut, with the saturation of reds and greens in particular being less intense than either of the other modes.

Colour in games and movies

On Star Wars Battlefront the monitor presented colours in a vibrant but varied way. Unlike on a normal monitor with saturation bumped up, an excellent range of distinct shades was maintained. On a normal monitor, if you increase saturation by using Digital Vibrance, saturation controls or certain presets with increased saturation etc. you compress the shade range. Shades are simply pulled towards the edge of the gamut whilst the gamut itself remains the same. Here shades are again pulled closer to the edge of the gamut, but there is also a corresponding extension to the gamut itself (i.e. this is a wide gamut monitor). There were some beautifully lush dark greens on the forests of Endor, with a good range of more muted shades. But there were certainly some shades that appeared more saturated than they should, for example some of the lighter greens for vegetation stood out a bit better than was intended and appeared too intense. Another example of this is fires, as they appeared a rich mixture of red and orange, but some of these oranges appeared a bit too close to ‘red’ whilst yellow elements had a bit of an orange tint. This was less extensive than the oversaturation caused by the monitors native gamut, though, and was worlds away from increasing vibrancy on a normal monitor where fires might just encompass a few shades of almost cartoon-like red or yellow and little else. Overall shades appeared rich with strong but not extreme levels of saturation on this title.

On Dirt Rally there was again a dazzling range of shades with strong vibrancy. Again, this was not as extreme as with the native gamut or indeed some of the other presets on this monitor (including ‘Adobe RGB’). The most noticeable oversaturation again applied to some of the green shades, which meant some areas of vegetation stood out by looking brighter and quite a bit less muted than it should. Minty greens looked overly deep, too. Intertwined with this were some incredibly lush deep greens and rather fetching golden-green shades as well. The dusty Khaki colours on some of the tracks still looked appropriately muted overall, with good neutral greys and browns. There wasn’t the sort of red push you see if using the native gamut of the monitor, for example, which could upset balance here. It must be noted that the strongly saturated shades worked very nicely when it came to car liveries and colourful advertising around the track. There were some incredibly vivid cyans, bright yellows, electric blues and neon greens (amongst others) that stood out with impressive intensity.

The Blu-ray of Skyfall appeared largely as it should, with a bit of oversaturation in places. This oversaturation was far less extreme than you’d see from an untamed wide gamut monitor, however. Some skin tones appeared to have a slight additional ‘rosiness’ to them, but this was not enough to give them a sunburnt look or make them otherwise look inhuman. The distinction between individual character skin tones also remained strong. There were good neutral greys and browns and some good deep greens, helping natural environments and buildings within them appear quite natural. There were some lighter greens that stood out a bit more than they should, however. Fire appeared natural if a bit too rich, but it maintained a good variety of shades within (yellows, oranges and reds primarily). The red dress worn by Miss Moneypenny in some of the scenes and the cyan neon lights in some of the Shanghai night scenes were quite electrifying in their vibrancy.

We also tested the Blu-ray of Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder. This showcased some dazzling colours, with some rather arresting vibrancy in places. This was the case right from the get go, with truly dazzling neon green cosmic radiation and some extremely violet-looking planets unlike anything most monitors could display. Deep royal blues, deep yellows and bright oranges were also good, although some darker oranges were too heavily tinted with red. The pastel shades, such as those used on the skins of characters, showed pleasing variety and subtle variation. The consistency of a given shade at various points of the screen was very good, in other words. The saturation levels of such pastel shades was too deep, though. The skin of characters of some of the main characters had a certain red hue to them rather than looking a pale peach. And the red lobster-like space monster called Dr. Zoidberg appeared a more striking red than he should. So again, the representation of what is intended to be sRGB content on a monitor with a much broader colour gamut than that is something of a mixed blessing. It provides an aesthetic that some users will actually like, but that detracts from the intended aesthetic of the content.

Viewing angles

We used Lagom’s tests for viewing angle to further explore colour consistency and the viewing angle performance of the monitor. The following observations were made from a normal viewing position, around 70cm from the screen.

• The purple block appeared a rather striking lilac with something of a pink hue to it, consistently so throughout the screen.
• The red block appeared a remarkably rich red throughout the screen.
• The green block appeared a fairly deep lime green throughout with less of a yellow tinge than you’d usually see. There was just a little bit of extra yellowing towards the top left corner.
• The blue block appeared royal blue throughout.
• The changes we made to saturation levels affected the representation of the Lagom text by giving the text itself a green hue. This was consistent throughout the screen and wasn’t observed elsewhere, including on the grey background of this test. Using one of the presets, for example ‘Adobe RGB’, gave it more of a blended grey look. There was a bit of a cool-green tint to the grey of the text towards the left (particularly top left) and a warmer tint elsewhere. However; it was free from the sort of obvious green and red hints and flashes that are observed on monitors with weaker viewing angle performance. This indicates that the gamma curve of the monitor has a low viewing angle dependency, as you’d expect from an IPS panel. The image below shows how this text test appeared under ‘Adobe RGB’ (which is quite typical of its appearance in other presets as well).

The video below shows the results of the Lagom text test as well as a mixed and dark desktop background from a range of viewing angles. For the lighter content you can see that the monitor maintains a good level of contrast and displays shades well from a range of viewing angles. In the final section of the video, with the dark desktop background, you can see the aforementioned ‘AHVA glow’.

Responsiveness

Input lag

A sensitive camera and small utility called SMTT 2.0 was used to calculate input lag on the UP2716D by comparing to a range of monitors of known latency. Over 30 repeat readings were taken to enhance accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 5.13ms (just over 1/3 of a frame) of input lag. This value is influenced by both the pixel responsiveness (element you see) and signal delay (element you feel). It indicates a very low signal delay which shouldn’t prove problematic to even sensitive users. Note that the ‘Game’ mode has no bearing on this value or indeed response times and is simply a preset with modified image quality characteristics.

Perceived blur (pursuit photography)

In our responsiveness article we explore the concept of perceived blur and how this is influenced not just by the pixel responses of the monitor but, more importantly, the movement of our own eyes. We also introduce a technique called ‘pursuit photography’ which can capture motion on a monitor in a way that reflects not only what the monitor is doing but also the blur caused by eye movement. This technique uses a moving camera to simulate eye movement but also highlights trailing from slower than optimal pixel response times and overshoot (inverse ghosting) from excessive levels of pixel overdrive (grey to grey acceleration.

Pursuit photographs were taken with a sensitive camera using the UFO Motion Test for ghosting. The test was set to run at 960 pixels per second – a practical speed for such photographs and one which allows weaknesses to be highlighted. The middle row of the test (light cyan background) was used with both ‘Response Time’ settings tested; ‘Normal’ and ‘Fast’. The image below shows these results alongside a ‘Fast 60Hz reference’. This is a Samsung S27A750D set to full brightness (avoids PWM), running at 60Hz with its optimal response time setting. This reference shows how things should look where it’s only motion blur due to eye (camera) movement that is a noticeable limiting factor.

Using the ‘Normal’ response time setting gave just a little bit of extra trailing on top of the perceived blur from eye movement (i.e. fast 60Hz reference) but was really very close overall. The ‘Fast’ setting, on the other hand, introduces extremely obvious overshoot (inverse ghosting) that makes the setting pretty much unusable. It is clear from this analysis that the ‘Normal’ setting is optimal. In our game testing below we look at a much broader range of pixel transitions. Here there are some weaknesses in places that aren’t highlighted in this test and indeed weren’t highlighted properly using the top (dark cyan) or bottom (light cyan) row of the test either.

Responsiveness in games and movies

On Battlefield 4 (BF4) there was a moderate degree of blur, largely attributable to eye movement and as you would expect to see on even the fastest 60Hz LCDs. Where various medium-dark shades moved against one another (for example, moving through shaded patches of vegetation) there was a little bit of extra trailing on top of this, but nothing substantial. The vast majority of transitions occurred fast enough for optimal 60Hz performance. There was also a bit of overshoot in places, but this was quite light and only affected a slim minority of transitions. It’s not something that we feel even users sensitive to overshoot should worry about.

On Dirt Rally there was moderate blur even during gentle cornering, but quite a similar level to what you’d expect to see on even the fastest 60Hz LCDs overall. Again, there was a little bit of additional trailing on top of this for some transitions between dark and medium shades in particular, but this was really quite a minor addition to the overall perceived blur. There were also some traces of overshoot here and there, but nothing that stood out in an obvious way.

We also tested out a few Blu-ray movie titles and can confirm that no specific weaknesses attributable to pixel responsiveness could be observed. There was no noticeable overshoot nor any trailing observed from slower than optimal pixel responses. The fluidity of this content was limited by the 24fps or so frame rate at which it ran, however.

Interpolation and upscaling

If a user doesn’t have the graphical grunt to run the native 2560 x 1440 resolution on all applications (for example, certain games) then it may be tempting to consider switching to a lower resolution such as 1920 x 1080 (Full HD or ‘1080p’). This may also be required if you wish to connect up an alternative device such as a games console to the monitor. Running the monitor at a lower resolution makes use of an interpolation (scaling) process. For AMD GPU users this is automatically handled by the monitor when gaming, by default. Nvidia users should open the Nvidia Control Panel and navigate to ‘Display – Adjust desktop size and position’. They should ensure that ‘No Scaling’ is selected and ‘Perform scaling on:’ is set to ‘Display’ as shown below.

The interpolation process used by the monitor is surprisingly good. Running the monitor at 1920 x 1080 does give a softer look to the image than running 1920 x 1080 natively on a monitor of similar size. The softening is far less pronounced than on many monitors running the resolution interpolated in this way, though, and is vastly superior to the alternative GPU scaling. It does not look like you’re observing the game world through a soft-focus lens and a decent degree of the native sharpness and texture detail is retained. 1920 x 1080 is therefore quite useable on this monitor, despite the somewhat softer look than a native 27” 1920 x 1080 display. As noted in the OSD video earlier, there is also a ‘1:1’ pixel mapping feature if you prefer a completely undistorted/unscaled picture in the centre of the screen. If you’re viewing movies using software on the PC and keep the monitor at 2560 x 1440, the GPU or movie software will use an upscaling process. This leads to slight softening of the image compared to running the movie on a Full HD display, quite comparable to the softening from the monitor’s interpolated 1920 x 1080 resolution really.

Conclusion

For users looking for a screen of modest size that will offer a good amount of ‘desktop real-estate’ without scaling becoming an absolute must, the 27” WQHD (2560 x 1440) models are quite attractive. They also offer a decent pixel density for gaming. Most are restricted to displaying colours within the sRGB colour space. The Dell UP2716D, on the other hand, offers far greater ‘colour capacity’. The screen was very nicely calibrated ‘out of the box’ with respect to a number of different colour spaces – going beyond just sRGB and Adobe RGB and offering good emulation for work or viewing within DCI-P3 and Rec. 709. The screen also offered excellent flexibility in its ‘Custom Color’ mode, allowing for a nice balance to be struck for vibrant but not completely overblown colour representation for ~sRGB content – according to user taste rather than stringent standards. With this, colours showed exceptional variety and looked vibrant but generally well-represented. It wasn’t possible to get the image presented quite as it would be on enhanced phosphor standard gamut WLED models (like the Dell U2715H) due to a bit of underlying extra saturation.

The contrast performance was also pleasing overall, save for the usual ‘IPS glow’ eating away at peripheral detail. The screen surface was very smooth and light whilst static contrast was as good as we’ve seen from an IPS panel. This allowed bright elements to stand out well in surrounding darkness and appear smooth (free from obvious graininess). For users who value strong uniformity for lighter shades, the ‘Uniformity Compensation’ feature (available with certain restrictions) worked very well to help enhance both luminance and colour temperature uniformity.

In terms of responsiveness, this monitor was no slouch either. This would perhaps surprise some given that this certainly isn’t designed as a ‘gaming monitor’ or anything of that ilk. There was very little input lag to speak of and the grey to grey acceleration using the default ‘Normal’ response time setting provided quite a good balance overall. There was minimal trailing and overshoot, with motion blur levels that are pretty much as low as you can expect from a 60Hz LCD. The design and port selection of the monitor, plus the brand reputation of Dell, make this monitor quite an attractive package all around. We wouldn’t say it’s worth paying extra for over something like the U2715H, unless you specifically need its enhanced colour capabilities or like a vibrant but varied look when gaming at the expense of accuracy.

The bottom line; a capable all-round performer with excellent colour space flexibility and a welcome addition to the UltraSharp series.

PositivesNegativesPleasing image setup and excellent flexibility under a range of colour spaces – the choice of vibrant but varied colour output for general purpose or greater workflow specific colour accuracy. Hardware calibration is also supported No support for ‘future’ colour gamuts such as Rec. 2020 and no ability to display colours in quite the same way as a standard gamut enhanced phosphor WLED model Pleasing static contrast performance for the panel type, a very smooth and light matte screen surface and a useful ‘Uniformity Compensation’ (UC) setting The usual ‘IPS glow’ is present and the luminance uniformity of our unit wasn’t great without UC enabled – this comes at the expense of contrast can only be enabled in certain presets without adjustments made beyond brightness, reallyLow levels of input lag and a decent balance to the pixel responsiveness overall, providing perceived blur that’s about as good as you can expect from a 60Hz LCD There was some additional trailing on top of this and also a bit of overshoot in places – plus a limitation of 60Hz for the refresh rate, which won’t be to everyone’s liking A simple modern design with strong ergonomic flexibility, plenty of features and a useful 2560 x 1440 resolution for both work and play. Plus, some of the best interpolation we’ve seen for displaying Full HD on a WQHD model The flexibility and colour performance on offer comes at a price premium and won’t suit everyone’s budget (or indeed needs, which goes without saying really)

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