Dell U3014 LCD Review

Dell really put a lot into the U3014, with almost every single high-end feature that you might want to have being present. AdobeRGB support, DisplayPort MST for the first time in something I’ve reviewed, uniformity compensation, and calibration software that works directly with the display. On the whole, you can look at the U3014 and think it is an ideal high-end display based off those points. Of course, many of those features have limitations.

The display uniformity works great, but only if you run the monitor in Standard mode and only at the preset 50% brightness level, which means for many people it just won’t work at all. The Dell calibration software is a great idea, and I can’t knock it too much since it is free, but the limitation of meters to a single model, and not even a spectrometer, causes me to suggest it shouldn’t be used for color-critical situations, which is pretty much any time you'd want to calibrate. Finally, the DisplayPort MST works well for video content, but the secondary display had to be power cycled every single time to make it be recognized and audio corruption was present on the secondary display. I also sometimes had issues with the Dell U3014 being detected coming out of sleep and would have to power cycle it as well. Perhaps it just doesn’t like my video card (a GTX 660 Ti model), but it still is a bit annoying.

Dell also made a bit of a mistake by changing the best OSD and interface to one that is now touch sensitive and not as responsive. It looks great on the side of the display, but I’d much rather use the older models with the solid buttons that might not look quite as good but are more usable. That’s a bit of a UI issue, but the main factor to look at with the U3014 is its performance, and there I found very little to complain about. The GB LED array did a very good job of utilizing the AdobeRGB gamut, coming up just slightly short in my measurements but not by much. More importantly, it also managed to keep the sRGB gamut in line when utilizing that mode, as most people will likely use sRGB mode rather than AdobeRGB.

The included software from Dell also lets the monitor automatically adjust calibration modes based on the application you are running. If you do your photo editing in AdobeRGB and everything else in sRGB, then you don’t need to worry about remembering to switch as the display will handle it for you. These usability features, combined with the vast array of inputs and outputs, make the Dell U3014 a monitor that is easy to recommend if price isn’t a consideration. However, price is always a consideration, and in the case of the U3014 it’s a very high $1,500 currently.

There are only a few monitors on the market that are 30” and AdobeRGB gamut, and the Dell U3014 falls at the bottom of the pricing system. The HP ZR30w is cheaper, though it uses a CCFL backlight with fewer inputs, but it also has AdobeRGB coverage. The NEC models that would be comparable are close to $2,000 and up, though they will likely have better uniformity control on a calibrated screen. If you don’t need AdobeRGB coverage, than we’re starting to see cheaper 30” IPS panels hit the market, like an $800 model from Monoprice that's similar to the 27” panels that came to market last year. These are all pretty bare-bones in comparison to something like the U3014, but you can almost get two of them for the same price, so those that are only after the resolution can go for a pair of those instead.

For its target market of graphics professionals, not the casual user or gamer, the U3014 gets a lot right. It is very accurate after calibration, looks wonderful in use, and is absolutely massive on my desk. My reservations on it are that the uniformity correction doesn’t work in every single mode, as I think it should, and the Dell calibration software needs to work with spectrometers as well to be useful to its target market. The last one is easily correctable with a software update and the first issue may be addressable in firmware, but I’m not certain that it will be. Since Dell only releases a 30” display every three years or so, these little flaws are going to be around for a long time, but it also gives Dell a chance to possibly correct them.

If you are after a color critical 30” display and have your own calibration software to use with it, the Dell U3014 will do the job for you, and do it well. It meets all of the specifications that Dell put out there, and it looks fantastic. It’s also priced competitively for what it does even before a discount, which Dell often has. I can’t give the Dell a universal recommendation, as it has a narrow target audience and a couple features that should be better for that audience. Hopefully those can be improved upon, and then the Dell U3014 will be an easy recommendation for those that are in its target audience.