Dell P2719H review – elegant 27-incher showing off thin bezels and a nimble stand at a very appetizing price point

Brace yourselves! As tech geeks, we are always interested in the latest technology on the market. This means that it is only natural if we step away from our comfortable habitat – that of the laptop computers. Today, we are going to give you insight and an in-depth analysis of a monitor (the first of a bunch). It is called the Dell P2719H and as its name suggests it is a 27-inch device, which can be found in the “work” section of the manufacturer’s official web page.

So what exactly does make a monitor – made for work? Well, there is no written bible on this issue, but ultimately, it means that it is no fancy gaming display with ultra-fast refresh rate, a million of unneeded certifications like G-sync and Freesync. Moreover, it is a cost-effective piece of machinery.

While the P2719H is definitely not the cheapest monitor out there, its sub-$300 price tag makes it very appetizing for large companies, buying in bulk, or even a home setup. Thanks to the super-narrow bezels all around you can seamlessly use two of these together, especially given the fact it is very nimble. Yes, this means you can adjust the height, swivel, pivot and rotate the display to whatever position suits you. Additionally, Dell is advertising a 99% sRGB coverage and wide viewing angles thanks to the IPS panel (but more on that later).

You can check the current price of Dell P2719H here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Contents


Unboxing and set up

Typically, one way to cut costs is the packaging. Yes, you won’t receive the P2719H in a fancy box, but after all, its major (if not only) purpose is to house and protect your precious monitor on the road to your home or office.

Now, after opening the box (and you are kindly advised to put the box in a horizontal position), you are going to face the first compartment. It holds the two-part mount, some mandatory paperwork and a couple of cables. We have to note that there is no power adapter, meaning you plug the monitor directly to the wall and all of the voltage regulation is happening inside of it. Apart from the power cable, there is a DisplayPort to DisplayPort one and a USB Type-A to Type-B cable.

Honestly, assembling the stand is made incredibly easy. You just put the pieces together and screw up the knob on the bottom. After that, put the stand towards the monitor (as shown on the image), going with the top first, as the bottom clamps into place by the force of magnets. Then you are free to plug the power cable in, as well as whatever type of connection you like (or have).


Design and construction

In terms of quality of build, Dell didn’t achieve something marvelous here. Everything on the display is made out of plastic. While this is completely normal, when a manufacturer is trying to cut corners, sometimes this results in a flimsy outcome. Similarly to what we see on the P2719H. There are some squeaks here and there when you handle the monitor, but it is also worth reminding, that this device is made to stay in one place.

In terms of measurements, we are talking about a thickness of 10.9mm in its thinnest point and 42.8mm, when measured to the backside of the monitor part. What is more impressive is the size of the bezels – the top and two sides measure at only 6mm, while the bottom is around 20.7mm. As of the weight – the display only weighs 4.35 kg, while the stand adds up for a total of 6.67 kg.

Now, about this stand it has. We are big fans of it as first – it doesn’t add up to the price (unlike Apple which is taxing you a $1000 premium for theirs), and second, it allows you to rotate, twist and turn the monitor as you want. Technically speaking, it features height-adjustment, as well as tilt, pivot and swivel mechanisms. Now, the first of them gives you a 130mm amplitude between the highest and the lowest point. Respectively the lowest stays 220mm from the ground (when measured at the mounting mechanism), while the highest goes up to 350mm.

Then, there is the tilting feature, which has a range of -5 to +21 (compared to flat 90-degrees). Quite frankly this is not a big amount of movement it offers, but the swivel joint can throw some dust in your eyes. It allows for 45-degrees of rotation to both left and right. This is extremely useful when you want to connect a second monitor or you need to show a cute cat video to your colleague.

Now last, but not least, there is the pivot mechanism. We found it to be the best feature for data entry or programming, as it offers an immense amount of vertical height. So, in terms of numbers, you will be able to pivot the display up to 90-degrees in each direction. In theory, this sounds great, however, in practice, there are some gymnastics you need to do before you get to the dead zone. Since there is no enough height headroom, you need to do the following – first, of course, lift the panel as much as it cans so you reach the maximum allowed height by the stand. Then tilt the screen upwards, because otherwise, the respective bottom corner just hits the stand’s foot (and presumably the desk). While it is petty to see that, as it shows a lack of designer thought, it will be probably the least used mode in terms of daily usage, so we’ll give it a pass.

Lastly, we should mention the neat hole in the stand that is made for cable routing purposes. It definitely does the job well, as it is big enough to fit the power cable, a display connection, as well as the USB upstream cable.

Ports

It is clear that Dell was working towards accessibility with wide variations of hardware. Its I/O includes a DisplayPort 1.2, an HDMI connector 1.4, a VGA port, as well as the feeder for its USB hub – a USB Type-B 3.0 upstream port and a total of three USB Type-A downstream ports. One of them (the 2.0) is located on the backside, facing downwards, while the other two (3.0) are placed on the left side of the monitor, for easier access.


OSD menu

Now, there are five buttons on the bottom right portion of the panel. The rightmost of them is the Power On/Off switch, while the other four are the dedicated menu buttons. To activate the OSD, just press one of the four and a bunch of options will appear just above them. From left to right, this includes the Preset modes, the image input source, the general menu, and an exit button. When you access one of the aforementioned menus, the buttons now act as navigation keys.

While the input source is pretty straightforward, let’s take a closer look at the real deal – the general menu. Its design is made as simple as possible, and it features 8 subdivisions that you can see on the images below.


Additionally, the presets include a Standard mode, ComfortView, which cuts down the blue-light levels, and according to Dell gives a flicker-free image; Movie – this makes the image appear bluish and applies a very noticeable sharpening filter; Game, Warm and Cool, as well as a Custom color, which lets you adjust the value of each channel – Red, Green, and Blue. Instead of a number from 0-255, Dell is giving you a percentage figure, which is the more intuitive (but less precise) option.


Display quality

Dell P2719H is equipped with a 60Hz Full HD panel. Its diagonal is 27″ (68.58 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 82 ppi, and a pitch of 0.31 х 0.31 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 105cm (41.3″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels).

It has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

As we mentioned the OSD menu gives you a choice from “Standard”, “Comfort View”, “Movie”, “Game”, “Warm”, “Cool” and “Custom Color”.

We measured a maximum brightness for the “Standard” mode of 293 nits in the middle of the screen and 277 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 11%.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 44% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.135 cd/m2).

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the monitor for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good – 1050:1 (1000:1 after profiling)

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream display.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Dell P2719H’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 95% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976 (it is able to represent almost all of the colors found on the Web).

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode. Additionally, in order to get a more accurate result, we used the Custom Color preset with values of R100, G97, and B95. The comparison below is made with the Standard preset at the same brightness level.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Dell P2719H with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.
In Normal mode, we can also observe an Overshoot.



PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Dell P2719H’s backlight is not PW-modulated at any brightness level. This makes it comfortable for your eyes in this aspect even during long working periods.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for the Dell P2719H.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Verdict

Dell P2719H has an optimal screen size (at the moment), a sufficient amount of ports for its class, wide viewing angles and decent maximum brightness and contrast ratio. Additionally, its backlight is comfortable in terms of PWM and it covers 95% of sRGB. Ultimately, this leads to a punchy image. In our view, it would be extremely useful in office and work environments, for watching movies and even some gaming. Keep in mind that hard-core gamers enjoy faster reaction times and refresh rates.

On the downside, we would start with the slightly outdated Full HD resolution. It is still not obsolete, but as computers are becoming more powerful, it is getting easier to run higher-resolution displays at almost every machine out there. Another thing we have to mention is the insufficient uniformity of the colors in the top right corner of the display, as well as the imperfect (although not bad) color discrepancy with the Web standards. However, the last would be more applicable for Web designers, as well as people, for which color representation in the Web is of critical importance.

In addition to the aforementioned analysis of the image qualities of this panel, we want to add a couple of stuff. First, a 27-inch monitor is probably the perfect size for a regular desktop. It is neither too big nor too small. Indeed, the Full HD resolution has quite a few disadvantages to the Quad HD one, which ultimately leads to less sharpness and easily distinguishable pixels, but on the bright side, it can help you maintain a more comfortable and healthy posture.

Also, we didn’t see any problems with small text or anything like that, simply because of the wide variety of scaling and font size options in the OS. Not on the last place, however, is the price tag – by the time of writing this review, one could find the P2719H for as low as $264.99. Now, if it was only for the monitor – we get it, some unpretentious individuals wouldn’t mind a less formidable display, but how about the stand.

This thing has the ability to swivel, pivot, tilt and adjust its height. Honestly, this is a feature that many people overlook, but as soon as they encounter it, it’s hard to go back. Not that it doesn’t have its imperfections, though. Despite all of that, you need to do some gymnastics in order to get to a full 90-degrees pivot.

Also, don’t expect a pristine build quality – the panel, itself, is plasticky and even flimsy when you try to carry it around. Of course, this is clearly nitpicking, as moving around a monitor is as rare as the perfect tuna steak.

So, should you need a display that offers a decent amount of image customization, can be plugged to virtually any computer released in the 21st century and has a hell of a stand – don’t miss the Dell P2719H.

You can check the current price of Dell P2719H here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Pros

  • Great price (below 300$)
  • Optimal size for desktop computing
  • Well populated OSD menu
  • Adjustable height, tilt, swivel, and pivot
  • Complete sRGB color gamut coverage
  • Good port selection for the price range and class


Cons

  • Full HD seems outdated on a 27-inch display
  • Insufficient uniformity of the colors in the top right corner

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