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>> Mr. Franklin: Hi, everyone. This is
Eric Franklin of cnet.com. Today we're taking
a first look at the dell ST2310. With the ST's
narrow circular foot stand the display wobbles
and slides considerably when knocked but
surprisingly never felt too unstable. The
screen has a slightly frosty matte finish with
an antiglare coating. Unfortunately, the
screen height isn't adjustable and there isn't
a screen rotation or pivot option for portrait
mode. The capability to tilt the screen back
20 degrees is the only ergonomic option
included. Connection options include HDMI,
VGA, and DVI. All connections sit on the back
in the lower right-hand side of the panel and
face downward. Connecting the ports almost
requires that you lay the panel down on its
screen in order to cleanly access them.
The ST uses Dell's very, very user friendly and
intuitive menu system. You'll get the usual
suspects when it comes to options with
brightness, contrast, and various color
options. You'll also get a huge number of
presets from movies to games to sports. We
used the ST2310's movie preset to check out a
few movies on the display. We found that while
the overall color of flesh tones was close to
accurate, details like snow and white
fabric was darker than we wanted and almost
looked gray in comparison to say the Samsung
SyncMaster XL2370. In games we noticed no
signs of input lag or streaking or ghosting
during fast movement. However, games could
have benefited from a brighter image which the
ST2310 couldn't deliver. In power consumption
the Dell will cost you about $6.50 per year to
run compared to say the Asus V236h's $14 per
year to run and the LED based Samsung
SyncMaster XL2370's $10 per year to run. The
Dell ST2310 has a price of $229 but can
currently be found on Dell's site for a low
$180 making it one of the cheapest 23 inchers
we've yet seen. Unfortunately, its relatively
low brightness keeps its performance in movies
and games at bay. And it's lack of ergonomic
options and extras like USB ports and built-in
speakers relegates it to the
good-for-everyday-task category. Once again
this is Eric Franklin. This has been the first
look at the Dell ST2310.
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