When comparing BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 vs Dell Ultrasharp U2415, the Slant community recommends Dell Ultrasharp U2415 for most people. In the question“What are the best monitors?” Dell Ultrasharp U2415 is ranked 4th while BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Dell Ultrasharp U2415 is:
The Dell U2415 is an excellent solution for those who use display daisy chaining since it has a dedicated DisplayPort Out.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Intuitive OSD
The most in-depth settings of the monitor are usually just 5-10 clicks away.
Pro Flicker-free
The backlight of this monitor does not cause flickering. Instead of using the conventional PWM backlight dimming technique, this monitor dims its backlight by the aid of DC voltage, which eliminates the unwanted effect of flickering. Monitor flickering is one of the primary sources of fatigue and eye strain and should be taken very seriously, especially by those who spend a lot of time in front of a monitor.
Pro Can fight glare
The panel of the ZOWIE XL241 has enough brightness to fight glare, making it an excellent monitor for bright rooms.
Pro High refresh rate
You'll receive faster picture updates than your rivals who play on slower panels because of the monitor's native refresh rate of 144 Hz, which is among the highest in this price range.
The monitor's native refresh rate tells how much frames its panel can show each second while working at the native resolution. The faster is the panel, the more frames it can process and display.
Pro Well-handled motion
The ZOWIE XL2411 can reproduce clear motion, free of artificial motion blur and ghosting effects as each pixel of the monitor can change its color within only one millisecond. It is on par with what the best monitors in this price range offer.
Note that the overdrive feature is used to achieve such fast pixel response. In some cases, pixel overdrive makes the pixels overshoot their target values which causes artificial effects. Nonetheless, this can be avoided by not setting the overdrive setting to its maximum.
Pro Lag-free
This monitor offers a responsive and lag-free gaming experience because of its fantastically low input lag of only 3.2 ms. In terms of input lag, the XL2411 outperforms every single competitor in its price range.
The monitor's input lag corresponds to the delay between a video card producing a frame and the frame being processed by a monitor. Lowe input lag means controls feel more responsive onscreen when gaming.
Pro Good picture quality
When it comes to picture quality, the BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 does have a lot to offer as the monitor's contrast ratio, peak brightness, and color accuracy are on par with what the best gaming monitors in this price range offer.
This gaming monitor can display eye-catching dark and bright scenes, full of luminous, and accurate colors. Dark scenes look good because of the monitor's native contrast ratio of 1090:1, which is high enough to make blacks appear truly deep. Bright scenes look genuinely luminous because of the monitor's high peak brightness of 350 nits, which combined with the panel's excellent color accuracy reproduce vivid and life-like colors.
Pro Good for gaming
The BenQ ZOWIE XL2411 has enough juice to be one of the best gaming monitors in its price range. It combines low input lag, fast pixel response time, and high native refresh rate with excellent overall picture quality.
Pro Supports daisy chaining
The Dell U2415 is an excellent solution for those who use display daisy chaining since it has a dedicated DisplayPort Out.
Pro Has a USB hub
The monitor’s integrated USB hub consists of four downstream USB 3.0 ports that you can use to charge peripheral USB devices or connect them to your computer. The single upstream port offers high data transfer rate typical of USB 3.0.
Pro Looks good
While other gaming monitors tend to look overly aggressive, the Dell U2415 looks somewhat professional because of its clean and simple design that allows the monitor to blend in almost any working environment.
Pro No signs of image retention
The Dell U2415 was tested to be free of image burn-in problems that are common among monitors in this price range.
Pro Can be used in portrait mode
The Dell U2415 does an excellent job even when used in portrait mode because of its superb vertical viewing angles that are superior to what the overwhelming majority of competitors in this price range offer. When used in portrait mode, the monitor’s colors and shadows start to shift only when the viewing angle becomes greater than 25 degrees.
Pro Adjustable
Setting the monitor according to your workspace needs is simple because the stand supports all the key ergonomic adjustments, including height, tilt, pivot, and swivel.
Additionally, you can mount the Dell U2415 on a VESA 100x100 compliant monitor stand.
Pro Factory calibrated
Out of the box, the Dell U2415 displays 99% of the sRGB colors, which is an extremely rare feature for a monitor in this price range.
Pro Flicker-free
The Dell U2415 doesn’t put additional strain on your eyes since its backlight doesn’t flicker. Monitor flickering can cause severe eye fatigue over extensive use.
Pro Good for occasional gaming
The Dell U2415 is an excellent companion for those enjoying a casual round of CS: GO or LOL in between working hours because the monitor offers reasonably high responsiveness and well-handled motion.
It's works good even while playing fast FPS games as the monitor’s input lag of 9.1 ms is barely noticeable by most players.
Furthermore, the Dell U2415 makes motion appear free from artificial motion blur thanks to its full pixel response time of 6 milliseconds which allows each pixel of the Dell U2415 to change their color within only six milliseconds.
Pro Good for bright rooms
The Dell U2415 does a great job in bright rooms, where its 275 nits of peak brightness and light matte screen finish diffuse reflections and fights glare efficiently.
Pro Suitable for professional photo editing
The Dell U2415 is an excellent tool for the photography professionals who work in the sRGB color space. Not only does it support the entire palette of sRGB colors, it also can display those colors with high accuracy since it’s average color error dE is measured at only 0.45. Even the highest-class media professionals will not be capable of perceiving such minor color error.
Pro Decent picture quality
The Dell U2415 is among the best monitors in the sub-$200 range since its native contrast ratio, peak brightness, gamma and color accuracy are on par with what the best monitors in this price range offer.
It displays beautiful images with rich and well-balanced blacks, accurate colors, and realistic intermediate tones that gives the picture some extra intensity. Dark scenes look deep as the monitor’s high-quality IPS panel offers a native contrast ratio of 1064:1, which combined with the monitor's overall color uniformity gives its blacks a good push towards high-intensity levels. Colors pop and look beautiful thanks to the monitor’s high peak brightness of 275 nits, which combined with the panel’s low average color inaccuracy allows the Dell U2415 to display crisp and life-like colors. The monitor’s mid-tones look realistic as its gamma response is only 1% away from its perfect value.
Moreover, the monitor’s average color inaccuracy dE of 0.45 ensures that only professional photosensors can spot its color inconsistencies as those are very minor.
Pro Good for mixed-use
The Dell U2415 offers exceptional color accuracy, high adjustability, decent responsiveness, and high resolution which, combined with its good overall picture quality makes it one of the best monitors in this price range.
Pro Higher resolution than FHD
The Dell U2415 has 11% more pixels than a regular FHD monitor which will come in handy when working with large, high-resolution photos.
Cons
Con Lacks adaptive syncing
This monitor is not compatible with neither AMD’s Free-Sync nor Nvidia's G-Sync, which might be a deal breaker for newer systems.
Con Default settings are useless
To get the most out of monitor's picture quality, you'll need to spend some time adjusting its settings. Luckily, all the key setting values are available on the Internet.
The monitor's default color profile, FPS1, is useless as it degrades colors.
Con Lacks connectivity
Connectivity-wise, the BenQ ZOWIE XL241 offers only the bare minimum. You won't get anything apart from a humble HDMI 1.4 port, DVI-DL port, D-Sub port, and a 3.5mm headphone port.
Con Requires calibration
To get the most out of the monitor’s performance, you need to calibrate it. The procedure will take you 5-10 minutes as the monitor’s optimized ICC profile is available on the Internet.
Con Lacks speakers
Not a huge dealbreaker, but it's something to consider.
Con Not suitable for Adobe RGB content
This monitor is not the right tool for those who work with Adobe RGB as it supports only 70% of the Adobe RGB colors.
Con Doesn’t look good in a dark room
In a dark room, you can notice some minor backlight bleeding that occurs towards the lower part of the screen. Backlight bleeding appears when the panel can’t absorb the 100% of the monitor’s backlight and limits the monitor’s use in a dark environment.
However, this is a widespread issue for the IPS panels in this price range.
