Dell UltraSharp 1901FP

Luxury LCD has a wealth of great features--including a reasonable price.

Sean Captain

Dell UltraSharp 1901FP

Editors' note: If you cannot locate this model on Dell's Web site, you can order it by calling the company at 800/915-3355.

Dell pulled out the stops in the design of the 1901FP, part of the company's new line of charcoal-and-silver LCD monitors. The unit is fully adjustable, offering not only tilt and swivel action but also smooth height adjustment and the ability to rotate the screen from landscape to portrait orientation. And by pushing a single button, you can easily take the screen off of its stand and wall-mount the panel. Moving the monitor is easier than before thanks to a button that locks the screen at its lowest height position. (Many height-adjustable monitors don't have this lock-down feature.) In addition, the neck has a ring to hold the power cable and the DVI or analog input cable in place. The unit has four integrated USB 2.0 ports--two on the back of the panel and two located on the right side--which is handy for connecting devices that you frequently unplug, such as a USB flash memory drive, cameras, and music players. We often see such extras on high-cost models, but it's unusual to find them at Dell's moderate price of $769 (at the time of our evaluation). Our 1901FP came with an optional speaker module that pumped out far more powerful and convincing sound than we typically hear from monitor-mounted speakers; it also included two headphone ports. If you don't require this extra feature, you can forgo the module and save $29. Dell's thorough documentation--which comes in printed form and on a CD-ROM--describes the monitor and its on-screen controls in detail. A quick-start card guides you through basic setup, and a brief troubleshooting section at the back of the manual helps you diagnose problems.
Our gripes are minor. The three tiny control buttons on the bottom bezel are difficult to read, and each can serve one of a confusing variety of functions depending on which menu screen you have open.
Though the 1901FP wasn't among the highest-scoring 19-inch LCDs in our image-quality tests, it did score in the top half in a field of high-end monitors, almost all of which have superb image quality. It ranked a bit better in graphics than text, reproducing skin tones especially well in a photograph of children. The 1901FP rendered text best in our Microsoft Word and Excel documents; its text looked somewhat fuzzy on another screen showing various sizes of type. Dell offers the 1901FP with PCs that have ATI- and NVidia-based graphics cards and drivers that can rotate images from landscape to portrait mode. If you purchase the monitor separately and your graphics card driver doesn't have this rotation capability, you will need to spend about $50 on software from a company such as Portrait Displays to take advantage of the portrait-orientation mode. The monitor lacks image- and color-calibrating software for making the fine adjustments that graphics enthusiasts may require. They will be better served by a very high-end model, such as the Eizo Nanao FlexScan L767, also reviewed this month.
Dell's thoughtfully designed 1901FP offers a plethora of useful features and fine image quality to suit nearly any office or home user. A demanding graphics pro, however, can find slightly better image quality and more advanced features in higher-end models.