Dell Alienware AW2721D monitor offers perfection with a price tag

Review

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)Dell Alienware AW2721D monitor offers perfection with a price tag Not for every interior

Written by Roel Stortelder on Sunday 05 December 2021 10:00

Conclusion

The high frequency and a 1440p IPS panel with HDR 600 certificate proves to be a golden combination in practice for anyone who loves games, movies and even graphics . It may even be the best gaming screen we’ve tested so far. The only real caveat is the price, but perfection can come at a cost.

Score

Dell Alienware AW2721D monitor offers perfection with a price tag

240Hz with G-Sync, excellent game modes, huge color gamut, HDR support

No default sRGB profile

Dell Alienware is mainly known for its absurd desktops and laptops, but they also develop surprisingly good gaming monitors. For example, the Alienware AW2721D monitor seems to have it all.

Dell Alienware AW2721D:

27″ 2560×1440 IPS panel

240Hz refresh rate

Nvidia G-Sync Ultimate and AMD FreeSync

HDR 600 certificate

DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.0, 4x USB 3.2 and 3.5mm audio jack

€729,-

With a WQHD resolution, high refresh rate and HDR 600 certification, Dell is setting high expectations. The resolution of 1440p is still the ideal middle ground between 1080p and 4K for high frame rates and sharp images: with modern video cards, 240 fps at this resolution no longer needs to be a challenge, while pixels at 27 inches are small enough to provide razor-sharp images. display. Together with the support for G-Sync and FreeSync, this has the potential to be one of the best gaming screens on the market

Design

When unpacking this Alienware monitor, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not your average open plan monitor. Although the size of the screen and the narrow bezels make the monitor look slim from the front, it’s bulky from the back. The matte white finish helps a bit to hide the size, but the monitor is anything but inconspicuous. This is of course additionally enhanced by the RGB lighting in the logo, under the monitor and on the back of the foot. Even the on/off button has an RGB LED. Fortunately, the back of a monitor usually faces a wall, but there are certainly more elegant models on the market if you put it in the middle of the living room.

Ergonomically, this Alienware has everything you could wish for. The monitor can swivel, tilt, tilt forwards and backwards and can be adjusted in height. In addition, all common connections are present, such as HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, a USB 3.2 hub and a connection for headphones. There are no loudspeakers, but that doesn’t wake anyone up. Especially if you spend more than 700 euros on a monitor, you can probably miss a few tens for a usually much better separate speaker set.

This may even be the best gaming screen we’ve tested yet.

Image Quality

The specifications already give a bit of an indication of what we can expect from the monitor, but as always The specifications of a monitor only tell half the story. That’s why we measured the AW2721D with the DataColor SpyderX Pro and, of course, tested it extensively in practice.

sRGB spectrum (dotted line) and monitor range (colored line).
The color measurements immediately show that we are not dealing with an average game monitor. The color spectrum overlaps with 99.3 percent of the sRGB spectrum and 96.6 percent of the DCI P3 spectrum. Although there is unfortunately no sRGB or DCI P3 profile baked into the monitor, it is therefore possible to display sRGB and DCI P3 excellently with a calibration. The deltaE of just 1.8 completes the picture for anyone serious about color. These are not only graphic designers, but also movie and game enthusiasts who like to see the images the way the director intended. The high peak brightness of no less than 640 nits with HDR content is a delicious icing on the cake. If all this is not enough, it is possible to reduce the deltaE to 0.3 with a software calibration.
Of course it’s nice that the colors are displayed well, but that’s not what this monitor is about. Speed is one of the most important aspects of a gaming monitor and that also applies to the AW2721D. Fortunately, with a refresh rate of 240Hz, support for G-Sync Ultimate and Nvidia Reflex, you are in the right place. Compared to 144Hz, 240Hz doesn’t feel like a big step forward as the step from 60Hz to 144Hz, but against our expectations there is a noticeable difference. This difference is not so clear at first, but it only really becomes visible when you try again on a 144Hz monitor after a week of gaming. Maybe it’s a placebo effect or just pure luck, but especially in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, better results were achieved on the Alienware screen. The various gaming presets also help in making opponents more visible in dark corners, although those presets are not recommended for normal computer use. By boosting certain colors and lightening dark areas, even the Windows Start menu will look ugly.

Looking at blur and input lag, we see again that we are dealing with a topper. Text moving quickly across the screen is clearly legible and very impressive for a test where IPS panels often get very wet. Although we were unfortunately unable to measure the input lag, we did not encounter anything crazy there either. We can therefore assume that it is as low as we expect from today’s game monitors end.

Dell Alienware is mainly known for its absurd desktops and laptops, but they also develop surprisingly good gaming monitors. For example, the Alienware AW2721D monitor seems to have it all.

Dell Alienware AW2721D monitor offers perfection with a price tag

Conclusion

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