Dell UltraSharp U3011

Bottom Line

Reviewers praise the 30-inch Dell UltraSharp U3011. Picture performance is excellent, and the array of features is rarely matched. Whether all of that justifies its price is another matter, however.

Performance

Flagship-tier performance. The Dell UltraSharp U3011 offers exceptional performance overall -- just as you would expect from a display with 2,560-by-1,600-pixel native resolution. Thanks to its Horizontal IPS (H-IPS) panel, colors are rich and accurate, and viewing angles are wide; PCMag.com reports that they are unable to detect any color shifting or darkening, even from extreme angles. The monitor features a wide color range and handles different color spaces well, says AnandTech.com. Movies show deep blacks, vibrant colors and good contrast, and games look great, too. The Dell U3011 offers great grayscale performance, reviewers agree, though PCMag.com says that the monitor can't distinguish between the two darkest shades.

The monitor has a 7ms response time; though that doesn't come close to that of typical gaming monitors, like the Asus VH236H (*Est. $175) , it's still fast enough to provide solid motion performance. CNET says "it's the best 30-inch we've seen yet." Its CCFL backlight, however, is inefficient compared to an LED one.

Features

Fully loaded. The Dell UltraSharp U3011 offers an extensive -- and perhaps excessive -- feature set. Your basic adjustments -- like brightness and contrast -- are all here; custom color controls allow for gain and offset tweaking; hue and saturation controls include not only RGB value adjustments, but they also include cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). Main presets include Standard, Multimedia, Game, Movie and Warm, as well as color space-specific modes like AdobeRGB, sRGB and xv Mode. Users can adjust the duration and transparency of the user interface's onscreen display.

Design

Exceptional connectivity. The Dell UltraSharp U3011 follows Dell's typical aesthetic: matte-black chassis with silver styling, resting on a rectangular base -- and overall, it looks pretty good. Ergonomic options include back-tilt, swivel and height adjustment, though there's no pivot function. The onscreen display is simple and intuitive, and it appears whenever any of the vertically aligned buttons are pressed on the lower-right side of the cabinet.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better lineup of connectivity options. Located on the backside of the panel are 2 HDMI inputs, 2 DVI ports, a DisplayPort, a set of component inputs, a VGA port, 4 USB downstream ports, 1 USB upstream port and an SD card reader.

Value

Bang for the buck could be better. There's no doubt, reviewers agree, that the Dell UltraSharp U3011 offers excellent performance and a plethora of picture and usability options; but for most, that still doesn't justify the cost, which is significantly higher than most 30-inch displays in its class.

Even with all the extras, paying more than a thousand dollars for an LCD monitor is never an easy call. The 27-inch Dell UltraSharp U2713HM (*Est $700) -- which offers great performance and many of the same features for less money -- is a better value overall. High-end photography and video professionals who are looking for something cheaper but still require graphics-oriented performance may want to check out the Asus PA246Q (*Est. $450) instead.