Dell S2740L review

It’s very easy to get distracted by the Dell S2740L. Not because of its eye-catching frameless 27in IPS display, its 1,920×1,080 resolution or its low-end price point. Instead, all we could think about was just how shiny and glossy it is.

The screen itself is set roughly 3mm away from the edge-to-edge glass. This causes both the display and the 3mm inlay to reflect back on each other, making the screen appear to extend past the edge of the monitor while simultaneously reflecting a thick black line down the edge of the display. It’s very off-putting, and tilting the screen and lowering the brightness and contrast levels did nothing to stop the effect.

It’s a shame, really, because that extra glossy display really makes colours look fantastic, and our solid colour tests produced some of the brightest and most vivid reds, blues and greens we’ve ever seen. Blacks were truly black and our solid white images made our AOC i2352Vh reference screen look positively grey in comparison.

The S2740L’s wide viewing angles were equally stunning, although these were marred by reflections in either direction. This made viewing our high contrast images almost impossible in our brightly lit office, as the reflections completely obliterated all level of detail in the darker areas of each picture. Dark scenes in games and films were similarly frustrating to view. In darkness, its contrast levels are excellent, although we still had a few issues with reflections, even in near total darkness.

It fared reasonably well in our image tests, and our colour calibrator revealed it was displaying 96.3 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut straight out of the box. This figure is considerably higher than Dell’s own estimate of 84 per cent, but this score is still less than we expect from an IPS panel. We’ve seen cheaper TN panels score higher than this, and IPS panels are traditionally meant to have more accurate colour coverage. We weren’t able to increase this figure after calibration, which leaves the S2740L as a good but distinctly average IPS monitor.

The S2740L has a good range of inputs, including a VGA input for older PCs, HDMI, and a DVI-D input that supports HDCP. There’s also a 3.5mm audio output for headphones or external speakers, and two USB ports. These are particularly handy for connecting your mouse and keyboard if you keep your PC on the floor and don’t want to crawl under your desk to attach things.

Unfortunately, the S2740L’s design makes accessing these ports another rather tedious exercise, as they’re concealed under a plastic lip on the back of the monitor and half obscured by its large, fixed stand as well. The stand’s 215mm square base will also take up a sizeable portion of your desk.

The S2740L makes a poor everyday monitor, but use it in a dark room where there’s no risk of reflection and images truly come alive. Sadly, it’s just not enough to outweigh its severe reflection problem, and there other 27in monitors out there like the award winning AOC e2752Vq that are both better and cheaper than the S2740L. The AOC may not have the Dell’s stylish design, but we’d swap it for the S2740L any day.