Author: Adam Simmons

Date published: March 22nd 2015



When it comes to immersion when gaming and watching films, the 34” ‘UltraWide’ 21:9 models with 3440 x 1440 resolutions really come into their own. These panoramic screens also provide a good amount of workspace, lending themselves particularly well to multi-tasking. The Dell U3415W not only features a 34” 21:9 screen with aforementioned resolution – it also provides gentle curve. The manufacturers suggest that this curve can increase viewing comfort when using the screen and help draw you into your content a bit more. In this review we see how this screen performs in a range of ‘real world tests’ and see what the curve brings to the table as well.





This monitor uses a features a 60Hz AH-IPS (Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching) panel. This has a gentle curve applied rather than being entirely flat. A 5ms grey to grey response time is specified in the ‘Fast’ mode, with 8ms specified in ‘Normal’ mode – note that Dell are generally more realistic with their figures quoted here than most other manufactures. The viewing angles reflect this desire for realistic rather than impressive but misleading figures as well, with an unusual 172°/178° horizontal/vertical viewing angles. This presumably takes the curve of the screen into account. We have highlighted key talking points of the specification in blue, below, for your reading convenience.

Screen size: 34 inches

Panel type: LG Display LM340UW2-SSA1 AH-IPS (In-Plane Switching) LCD

Native resolution: 3440 x 1440

Typical maximum brightness: 300 cd/m²

Colour support: 1.074 billion (8-bits per subpixel plus ditherng)

Response time (G2G): 5ms

Refresh rate: 60Hz

Weight: 11.25kg (including stand and cables)

Contrast ratio: 1,000:1 (2m:1 Dynamic Contrast)

Viewing angle: 172º horizontal, 178º vertical

Power consumption: 55W typical

Backlight: WLED (White Light Emitting Diode)

Typical price as reviewed: £720 ($1080)

From the front the monitor shares a similar aesthetic to many modern Dell monitors. At the top and sides the bezels are comprised of an extremely thin outer component, which is space grey in colour, and a thicker black panel border. The panel border is only really visible once the monitor is switched on. Together these give the monitor a total bezel thickness of ~17mm (0.67 inches) at the top and ~18mm (0.71 inches) at each side. The bottom has a thick black matte plastic bezel and a sliver of panel border, pretty much exactly 1 inch (25.4mm) thick together. A key feature of the monitor, of course, is the gently curved screen. This has a very light matte (semi-glossy) surface to preserve a good amount of clarity and vibrancy whilst maintaining decent glare-handling characteristics. We explore both the curve and screen surface in more detail later.





Also at the front you will find touch-sensitive controls for the monitor’s OSD (On Screen Display) and power state. These buttons are; ‘Shortcut Key 1 (Volume by default / Up’, ‘Shortcut Key 2 (Input Source by default) / Down’, ‘Menu / Enter’, ‘Exit / Back’ and ‘Power’. A small rectangular power LED is found at the bottom of the front bezel, facing slightly forwards. This glows white when the monitor is on and blinks when the monitor is on standby. You can ensure the LED remains off when the monitor is on, if you prefer. A run-through of the OSD is given in the video below.









From the side the monitor again shares some characteristics of many modern Dell monitors. There is a robust and highly adjustable stand, allowing you to; tilt the screen (5° forwards / 21° backwards), adjust height by 115mm (4.53 inches) or swivel the screen approximately 45° left or right. At lowest height the bottom of the screen clears the desk by around 40mm (1.57 inches) with the top of the screen around 410mm (16.14 inches) above the desk. The top of the screen is always above the top of the stand neck. The screen is around 21mm (0.83 inches) thick at thinnest point but lumps out to around 51mm (2.01 inches) centrally, excluding the stand.







The rear of the monitor is again quite standard for a modern Dell, being fairly minimalist with plenty of matte black plastic. The stand attaches centrally using a quick-release proprietary bracket mechanism. You can detach the screen from the stand using the button below the attachment point and cam access 100 x 100mm VESA holes for an alternative stand or mount, if desired. At the right side of the screen, near the bottom, is a USB 3.0 downstream port with fast charging capability. There is a central port area. In the image below the port cover is attached, concealing the down-firing ports of the monitor. This clip-on cover is designed to neaten things up and help you route cables through the ‘cable tidy loop’ near the bottom of the stand neck. To the immediate left of the port area is a K-Slot.







The ports and stand attachment point can be seen in the image below. The ports include; AC power input (internal power converter), MHL 2.0, HDMI 2.0, DP 1.2 input, mDP 1.2 input, DP output (for MST Daisy-Chaining), 3.5mm audio output, 2 USB 3.0 upstream ports (allowing USB peripherals from 2 separate systems to be used) and 3 further USB 3.0 downstream ports (4 in total). An HDMI cable, DP-Mini DP cable and USB 3.0 upstream cable is included in the box.







There are also down-firing 9W stereo speakers hidden underneath the monitor. These integrated speakers produce a clean sound with crisp treble and distinct mid-tones. The base is generally lacking a bit compared to more powerful standalone speakers and some integrated speakers, but the sound has a lot more punch than is usual for integrated monitor speakers. The sound wasn’t tinny or distorted even at fairly high volumes. We feel these are useful additions to the monitor for those who like everything integrated into one package, but separate speakers or headphones can still provide a richer and fuller sound.





The U3415W employs a very light matte anti-glare screen surface that some users might consider to be ‘semi-glossy’. The glare handling is good under a range of lighting conditions, whilst the ‘lightness’ of the matte surface helps preserve clarity and vibrancy. This is something it does very well and in fact is one of the smoothest matte surfaces we’ve seen – a far cry from some of the grainy alternatives out there.







An RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixel layout is used by the monitor. The layout is fairly standard and shouldn’t pose problems on any modern Operating Systems. Windows users may wish to make use of ‘ClearType’ to alter the appearance of Windows-based text to their liking, but the defaults should work nicely on this model.





This monitor has a number of ‘Preset Modes’, some of which allow further preset-specific ‘tweaks’ to be made to the image. The following table includes key readings taken using a Spyder4Elite colorimeter, observations taken by eye and preset-specific features using a range of settings. We didn’t test all of the ‘Preset Modes’ on the monitor as some give obviously poor image quality and are of no interest to us as reviewers and shouldn’t be of interest to users who want to get the most out of the monitor. Out test system used an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 connected via DP 1.2. The monitor was kept in its ‘Plug and Play’ state without any additional drivers or ICC profiles applied. Unless otherwise stated assume all settings are kept at default. The exception to this was in ‘Game’ mode where ‘Dynamic Contrast’ was disabled, and of course our ‘Test Settings’ where a few changes were made.

We tested the monitor over HDMI 2.0 and found that it behaved much the same as over DP 1.2, supporting the native 60Hz refresh rate at 3440 x 1440 correctly. Over HDMI 1.4 the monitor is limited to 50Hz by default. Interestingly, when we disabled DP 1.2 in the OSD and enabled DP 1.1a we experienced significant flickering as showcased in the OSD video. The image quality when using DP 1.2 or HDMI on a modern AMD GPU that we tested was very similar, so the observations below are applicable for both AMD and Nvidia GPU users.

The monitor comes factory calibrated in its ‘Standard’ mode, which the monitor is set to by default. A factory calibration report is included in the box and is individual for each unit. An image of the report for our unit is included below.







The readings we made echoed Dell’s readings. It seems that they didn’t aim for a 6500K central white point but rather one closer to 6000K. Our readings were some way between these values. There is of course nothing wrong with targeting a white point <6500K as the desirable value is highly dependent on ambient light. Things appeared nicely balanced as we’ve said, without unwanted tints or weaknesses in any particular shade. Although not included in our discussion here, we also analysed the colour accuracy using our Spyder4Elite and have no reason to doubt the reported values. The calibration report promises an average DeltaE of <3 and on our report most seemed to be comfortably below a DeltaE of 2 as well – reflected by our readings.

Because the ‘Standard’ mode was so well balanced, we adopted it for our ‘Test Settings’ by simply reducing the brightness. The ‘Custom Color’ preset, which gave the greatest image fine-tuning capabilities, was not quite as well balanced. In particular the gamma tracking was a bit off, which had some undesirable consequences. Under our ‘Test Settings’ the gamma tracking was rather pleasing as demonstrated in the graph below. It follows the 2.2 curve very closely on this representation.



Gamma test settings We tested a few settings on the monitor which acted as ‘Low Blue Light’ modes, for relaxing evening viewing. The ‘Paper’ setting did what it said on the tin, although unfortunately the white balance made it look like an old treasure map that a dog had urinated on. We found entering the ‘Color Temp.’ setting and selecting ‘5000K’ preferable – just as effective, without the green tint.



Test Settings As noted previously we found the factory calibration very pleasing on our unit. Given the inter-unit variation, using somebody else’s ICC profile is likely to be counter-productive. For that reason we will not be providing any for this monitor. We simply reduced the brightness as below. Any setting from the OSD not mentioned here was left at default. We’ve also included the ‘Response Time’ setting used for our review, just for reference.





Preset Mode= Standard Preset Mode= Standard Brightness= 36 (according to preferences and lighting) Response Time= Normal



Contrast and brightness Contrast ratios We used a Konica Minolta CS-200 light meter to measure the luminance of black and white on the monitor and calculate static contrast ratios based on that. The following table shows this data, with the monitor set to a number of settings including those detailed in the ‘Calibration’ section. If a setting isn’t explicitly mentioned in the table, assume it was left at default. The exception to this is our ‘Test Settings’ where specific adjustments, detailed previously, were made. Blue highlights on the table indicate the results using these settings whereas black highlights indicate the peak white luminance, lowest black luminance and highest contrast ratio recorded. Monitor Profile White luminance (cd/m²) Black luminance (cd/m²) Contrast ratio (x:1) 100% brightness 319 0.27 1181 80% brightness 306 0.26 1177 60% brightness 250 0.21 1190 40% brightness 176 0.15 1173 20% brightness 99 0.08 1238 0% brightness 20 <0.02 >1000 Factory Defaults (75% brightness, Standard) 301 0.25 1144 Game 286 0.25 1144 Paper 144 0.15 960 Color Temp. (6500K) 285 0.24 1188 Color Temp. (5000K) 272 0.25 1088 Custom Color 254 0.20 1270 Custom Color (Uniformity Compensation Calibrated) 175 0.27 648 Test Settings 164 0.14 1171

An average contrast ratio of 1192:1 was recorded with brightness only adjusted, which is very good for an IPS panel. This excludes the reading for ‘0% brightness’, which lacks sufficient accuracy. Our ‘Test Settings’ only involved changes to brightness, so unsurprisingly contrast remained strong at 1171:1. The peak contrast was measured with the loose calibration provided in the ‘Custom Color’ preset, at 1270:1. The ‘Low Blue Light’ type settings knocked the contrast down a little to a still respectable 1088:1 and 960:1 for ‘Color Temp. (5000K)’ and ‘Paper’, respectively. Enabling the ‘Uniformity Compensation’ mode knocked down contrast significantly to 648:1. This mode can be enabled in either ‘Custom Color’ or ‘Standard’ mode but has a similar effect on contrast with each mode. The peak luminance recorded in this table was a good bright 319 cd/m² whilst the dimmest white luminance was a very dim 20 cd/m². That provides a strong luminance adjustment range of 299 cd/m², with an excellent range of useful values.

There is a ‘Dynamic Contrast’ mode that can activated in either the ‘Game’ or ‘Movie’ image modes. This allows the backlight to adjust its intensity based on the balance of ‘light’ vs ‘dark’ shades on the displayed image. The backlight reacts as one unit and therefore can’t account for intricate combinations of light and dark on the screen – that is the case with all current LCD monitors, however. This mode reacted at a moderate pace to changes in the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ makeup of the image, but tended to provide uncomfortably high brightness even during mixed images. In predominantly dark scenes the backlight stayed a bit brighter than it should, although it did seem dim relative to the intense brightness employed for brighter content. The backlight also did dim effectively for very dark content. This isn’t a mode we’re even fans of really, but the mode does ‘work’ on this monitor even if it’s not the best implementation we’ve seen even from Dell themselves.





PWM (Pulse Width Modulation)

The U3415W does not use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to regulate the backlight at any brightness level. It uses DC (Direct Current) modulation throughout its brightness adjustment range, so the backlight is considered ‘flicker-free’. This will be welcomed by users who are sensitive to flickering, dislike PWM motion artifacts or wish to reduce eye fatigue.





Luminance uniformity

Whilst using our test settings and observing a black screen in a dark room we could see moderate backlight bleed at the top left corner in particular. This was visible as a sort of gold-tinted ‘spotlighting’ effect when viewing dark content in a moderately dim to dark room. Note that these sort of uniformity issues can vary from unit to unit. The picture below shows the uniformity of our sample in a dark room, displaying black, using our test settings.







You can see the aforementioned backlight bleed, particularly the ‘spotlight’ at the upper left corner. The picture was taken a few metres back from a central position to eliminate ‘IPS glow’. The phenomenon of ‘IPS glow’ is something that applies equally to all units of this model and is very widespread amongst IPS panels in general. Due to the subtle curve and reduced angle between your eyes and the screen edges, it is reduced just slightly compared to a flat 34″ model. When viewing dark content in a dim to moderately dim room this glow manifests itself as a golden-grey or blue sheen towards the corners in particular. It blooms out quite noticeably if you change your viewing position relative to the monitor, as demonstrated in a video further on in the review. The curve did seem to reduce the extent of this from a normal viewing position, which is nice, but it’s still something that affects the monitor.