Dell’s UltraSharp monitors have long been considered to be some of the best, and with some fresh updates, the company is hoping to keep that public opinion alive and well. With its U3014, U2713H and U2413, Dell has infused ‘PremierColor’, a fancy marketing term that’s equal to “unbelievable color accuracy”. PremierColor goes beyond a simple gamut rating, however, as Dell itself calibrates each monitor in-house to assure that it arrives at your door living up to its quoted standards.
PremierColor isn’t new to Dell’s fleet, but the company has improved upon what we’ve seen before. Factory calibration will result in a display that covers 99% of the AdobeRGB color palette and 100% of the sRGB one, and Dell touts an impressive maximum deltaE of “less than two”. The deltaE figure represents the number of steps on the color palette required to be made in order to display the closest thing to the requested color – if it’s unable to be displayed. With the 12-bit processors these monitors ship with being able to render 1.07 billion colors, we feel safe in jumping to conclusions that color accuracy will never be a problem with these UltraSharps.
Interestingly, Dell recommends using X-Rite’s i1Display Pro colorimeter to generate your own color profiles, should the need arise. It’s not often we see major companies recommending products from others, so this mention stood out.
The flagship of the new PremierColor monitors is the $1499 U3014, a 30-inch display that delivers a 2560×1600 resolution. The others include the $999 27-inch U2713H and $599 24-inch U2413.
The incredible color accuracy on the above monitors is impressive, but the one product to stand out the most in Dell’s latest press release has got to be the ultra-wide U2913WM. “WM” stands for “wide-monitor”, so there’s little doubt what it’s all about. While the ratio for the above 30-inch monitor is 16:10, this ultra-wide U2913WM is spec’d at 21:9, resulting in a resolution of 2560×1080. It’s strange, yes, but it’s a design that seems to be catching on.
With a monitor this wide, it’d almost replace the need for two side-by-side, or on the opposite side of the token, it’d offer an extremely wide resolution if you were to go with a 3×1 configuration. I have a feeling that such resolutions would feel unusual at first, but I admit I’m intrigued. Unfortunately, Dell has yet to release a price on this particular model.
In addition to these monitors, Dell also announced its “Single Monitor Arm” and “Dual Monitor Stand” which replaces the stand that comes with any of these announced monitors to offer the greatest range of motion with ease. The former will retail for $149 while the latter modestly bumps the price up to $169.