Author: Adam Simmons

Date published: January 17th 2017



When it comes to gaming monitors, the combination of styling, responsiveness, G-SYNC capability and resolution of the Dell S2716DG wins many fans over. With the Dell S2417DG, these attributes have been carried over onto a smaller monitor with lower price tag (region dependent) and superior pixel density. In addition to this, the refresh rate has been boosted slightly, from 144Hz to 165Hz. Although monitor size is very much a personal preference, there are some users who much prefer gaming on ~24” screens to anything larger. This is certainly a compelling gaming monitor on paper, but how does it perform in practice? This is what we shall find out.





The monitor uses a 23.8” TN (Twisted Nematic) panel from AU Optronics with support for a refresh rate of up to 165Hz and 8-bit colour support. A 1ms grey to grey response time is specified, which should of course never be taken at face value. Key talking points of the specification have been highlighted in blue below.





Screen size: 23.8 inches

Panel type: AU Optronics M238DTN01.2 (Twisted Nematic) LCD

Native resolution: 2560 x 1440

Typical maximum brightness: 350 cd/m²

Colour support: 16.7 million (8-bits per subpixel)

Response time (G2G): 1ms

Refresh rate: 165Hz (variable, with G-SYNC)

Weight: 5.77kg

Contrast ratio: 1,000:1

Viewing angle: 170º horizontal, 160º vertical

Power consumption: 33W

Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)

Typical RRP as reviewed: £450 ($450 USD)

The monitor shares the understated aesthetics of its predecessor, distancing itself from many far more ostentatious gaming offerings. The front features slender ‘dual-stage’ bezels, with a very slim hard outer component and slender panel border visible at the top and sides (and just a sliver at the bottom). The total bezel width, including both components, is ~6.5mm (~0.26 inches) at the top and sides, slightly slimmer than the already svelte bezels of the 27” model. At the front of the monitor the bottom the bezels are ~17.5mm (~0.69 inches) including a sliver of panel border, sloping diagonally downwards and backwards slightly. The stand base is matte silver plastic, with black plastic used on the neck and semi-matte plastic used for the bottom bezel. The screen surface is light matte anti-glare, as explored later.





Towards the right of the bottom bezel, facing downwards, are the pressable buttons which control the OSD (On Screen Display) and power state of the monitor. The power LED is found on the power button, a slit running from the centre to front of the button. This glows a cool white when the monitor is on and flashes when it is on standby. Or more specifically when it is in an ‘active-off’ state, which occurs if the signal to the computer is lost with the monitor on and the power button isn’t pressed. If the power button is pressed to turn the monitor ‘off’ then the power LED goes out. The following video gives a run-through of the OSD.





The monitor appears quite slender from the side, coming in at around 20mm (0.79 inches) at thinnest point and lumping out more centrally. At the left side of the screen there are 2 USB 3.0 ports (bottom one supports fast-charging) and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The included stand offers good adjustability; tilt (5° forwards, 21° backwards), swivel (45° left, 45° right), height (130mm or 5.12 inches) and pivot (90° clockwise rotation into portrait). The total depth of the monitor including its stand is ~180mm (7.09 inches), which gives it a shallow footprint and allows it to be pushed quite far back even if your desk isn’t particularly deep. The screen itself is just a little bit back from the front stand edge, perhaps 20mm (0.79 inches) or so. The width of the stand base is also far from excessive and again highlights that the design is quite minimalistic for a gaming monitor; ~244mm (~9.61 inches) wide. With the screen at lowest height the bottom of the screen clears the desk by ~49mm (~1.93 inches) with the top of the screen ~365mm (14.37 inches) above the desk.





At the rear, black glossy plastic is used throughout, with the exception of the port area where matte black plastic is found and the stand which includes matte black and silver plastic elements. The stand neck also has a loop towards the bottom which can be used as a cable-tidy. A quick-release bracket mechanism is used for stand attachment, allowing the stand to be easily removed. 100 x 100mm VESA holes are found beneath for alternative mounting. There is a Kensington Lock slot towards the left side of the screen, at the rear, whilst the ports found here face downwards. They are, from left to right; AC power input (internal power converter), 3.5mm audio output, DP 1.2a (supports G-SYNC), HDMI 1.4, USB 3.0 upstream and 2 further USB 3.0 downstream ports (4 total).





DisplayPort must be used to unleash the full potential of the monitor, including 2560 x 1440 @ 165Hz and G-SYNC functionality. HDMI supports up to 2560 x 1440 @ 60Hz only and is really there for compatibility with alternative systems such as games consoles. AMD GPUs can run the monitor at 165Hz using DP as well, but will not have access to Nvidia-specific features such as G-SYNC. A USB 3.0 cable and DP cable is included in the box.





The monitor uses a light matte anti-glare screen surface with a relatively smooth surface texture. This is similar to the surface used on newer revisions of the S2716DG and provides superior clarity and vibrancy potential compared to stronger matte screen surfaces, such as that used on earlier S2716DG revisions and various other 144Hz+ monitors. The screen is free from obvious graininess, even when observing the brightest shades, whilst quite effective glare-handling characteristics are maintained.







The usual RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixel layout is used, which is the default layout for modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS. Mac users therefore don’t need to worry about text fringing from non-standard subpixel layouts and Windows users don’t need to run ClearType. They may still wish to run through the ClearType wizard and adjust according to preferences, however.





The monitor offers ‘Preset Modes’; ‘Standard’, ‘FPS Game’, ‘RTS Game’, ‘RPG Game’, ‘Warm’, ‘Cool’ and ‘Custom Colour’. The ‘Custom Color’ preset is particularly useful as it allows you to manually adjust the red, green and blue colour channels. The ‘Game’ presets are a new addition that weren’t found on the S2716DG, but they’re of limited use really as all they seem to do is upset the image by causing varying degrees of oversaturation, crushing shade variety at the high-end. We will not be wasting time looking at these in detail, but will be focusing on some of the other ‘Preset Modes’ which we feel do have good utility. The table below shows key readings (central gamma and white point) taken using a Datacolor Spyder5ELITE colorimeter and also general observations using a range of settings.

The monitor was left to run for over 2 hours before these readings were taken and observations made, with the monitor in its ‘Plug and Play’ state. No additional drivers or ICC profiles were loaded, except where explicitly mentioned. An Nvidia GTX 1070 was used with Windows 10 installed on the system. Unless otherwise stated, assume default settings were used with the exceptions being the ‘Optimal OSD settings’, ‘Test Settings’ and ‘Relaxing evening settings’ where various adjustments were made. The monitor was set to 165Hz, although this did not have a significant impact on the observations made here. Where ULMB was tested (at 85Hz, 100Hz and 120Hz), brightness was set to ‘100’.

Straight from the box the monitor was fairly bright, although not overwhelmingly so. Some shades appeared a bit lighter than they should due to the average gamma, but appeared quite rich overall. Vastly superior to many 144Hz+ models and a fair bit richer than the S2716DG appeared out of the box, too. Following tweaking in the OSD which we deemed optimal (‘Optimal OSD settings’) the gamma handling remained very similar – the gamma curve is shown in the top image. To help improve the saturation levels and lift some of the shades up a bit, an ICC profile was applied on top of these ‘Optimal OSD Settings’ to form our ‘Test Settings’. The bottom image shows this, with gamma now conforming very closely to the ‘2.2’ curve.



Gamma 'Optimal OSD settings' Gamma 'Test Settings' Although the monitor included a ‘Warm’ preset, which lowered the white point a bit and provided a slightly warmer-looking image, this didn’t really take things far enough to be considered a ‘Low Blue Light’ (LBL) setting. We therefore created an alternative ICC profile which applies all relevant corrections but targets a white point of ~4000K rather than ~6500K. This significantly reduces the strength of the blue colour channel and reduces blue light output from the monitor, making it suitable for relaxing evening viewing; hence we refer to these are ‘Relaxing evening viewing’ settings.



Optimal OSD settings There are no gamma settings in the OSD and no real way to adjust the gamma curve of the monitor without significantly upsetting the image in other ways. It was therefore not possible to get any closer than ‘2.1’ on average for the gamma, which isn’t bad really but also not quite where you’d ideally want to be. The brightness was reduced to more comfortable levels for our preferences and lighting environment and some changes made to colour channels in the ‘Custom Color’ preset, to achieve close to the 6500K target. Note that individual units vary and these should only be used as a guide and may not necessarily be optimal for all units. Any setting not mentioned here, including contrast, was left at default. We’ve included the ‘Response Time’ setting and refresh rate used in Windows as well, just for reference.



Brightness= 58 (according to preferences and lighting) Brightness= 58 (according to preferences and lighting) Response Time= Normal Preset Mode= Custom Color R= 100 G= 93 B= 93 Refresh rate= 165Hz

Test Settings (ICC profile) We created an ICC profile with a Spyder5ELITE colorimeter, using the ‘Optimal OSD settings’ above as a base. The gamma adjustment is really the key change made here, to help slightly improve the richness of some shades. The ICC profile is specific to our unit, but the gamma behaviour of these monitors is generally quite predictable so it should at least improve that aspect quite reliably. It can also be combined with whatever brightness or colour channel adjustments you require – as long as they aren’t too extreme, the improvement to gamma should remain. To make use of our profile do the following:

1) Download the ICC profile.



2) Set the monitor up according to the ‘Optimal ‘OSD settings’, although further adjustments can be made if desired. Using a brightness of ‘58’ provided 160 cd/m² on our unit with the ICC profile applied.



3) This article provides instructions on activating the profile as well as some limitations to be aware of when gaming in particular. Games do generally respond to the profile or at least apply the gamma correction – plus the image is fairly rich even without the profile active.



Relaxing evening viewing (ICC profile) As noted above we created an additional ICC profile that acts as a ‘Low Blue Light’ (LBL) mode whilst also applying further corrections, including to gamma. Simply follow the instructions above, but instead apply our LBL profile. This is again designed to be used in conjunction with the ‘Optimal OSD settings’, although further adjustments can be made if desired. We would recommend making use of the ‘Display Profile’ utility mentioned at the bottom of our ICC article as well as it makes it a lot easier to quickly activate and de-active this profile.



Contrast and brightness Contrast ratios White and black luminance levels using a range of settings on the monitor were accurately measured using a BasICColor SQUID 3 (X-Rite i1DisplayPro). The table below shows this data, with blue highlights indicating results under the ‘Optimal OSD settings’, ‘Test Settings’ and ‘Relaxing evening viewing’ settings. Black highlights indicate the highest white luminance, lowest black luminance and maximum contrast ratio recorded. Assume that any setting not mentioned here was left at default, with exceptions mentioned in the calibration section. Monitor Settings White luminance (cd/m²) Black luminance (cd/m²) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness 398 0.49 813 80% brightness (Factory Defaults) 248 0.31 800 60% brightness 176 0.21 838 40% brightness 130 0.16 813 20% brightness 83 0.10 830 0% brightness 35 0.04 875 Standard (Factory Defaults) 209 0.25 836 Warm 228 0.25 836 Custom Color 235 0.25 940 ULMB @ 120Hz 149 0.20 745 ULMB @ 100Hz 158 0.21 752 ULMB @ 85Hz 186 0.25 744 Optimal OSD settings 169 0.20 845 Test Settings (ICC profile) 170 0.20 850 Relaxing evening viewing (ICC profile) 120 0.20 600

The average static contrast was 821:1, with only brightness adjusted. This falls a little short of the specified 1000:1, but the difference in perceived contrast is hardly profound. The maximum contrast was obtained in ‘Custom Color’ with all colour channels in their neutral position of ‘100’ – at 940:1, it’s fairly close to the specified 1000:1. With the adjustments made to our ‘Optimal OSD settings’ and for our ‘Test Settings’ (ICC profile applied on top) static contrast was 850:1 which is reasonable. This dropped to 600:1 following application of our ‘Relaxing evening viewing’ profile, which made significant colour channel adjustments. The contrast dropped a little with ULMB active as well, although a more modest drop to around 750:1. The highest luminance recorded on this table was a bright 398 cd/² and the lowest white luminance a rather dim 35 cd/m². This yielded an impressive luminance adjustment range of 363 cd/m².





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

The monitor does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) and instead uses DC (Direct Current) dimming at all brightness settings. This means the backlight is classed as ‘flicker-free’, which will come as welcome news to those sensitive to flickering or other side-effects from PWM usage. The monitor is not ‘flicker-free’ when ULMB is active, as the whole operating principle of strobe backlight solutions such as this involves flickering. The nature of this flickering is different to that induced by PWM, though, so sensitivity to PWM flickering doesn’t necessarily mean ULMB will be considered problematic.





Luminance uniformity