Just got my 2 Dell 2005fpws, lots of pics.

Well, i just got my 2 new 2005fpws from Dell for a meaty €1089 (that's $1320 ).

I kind of cheated because I only need one, I only bought 2 because of Dells "buy 2 and get 50% off 1". So i'm all set to sell the other one, it's on eBay right now, it will bring down the cost of my own one.

Anyways, pics:









Here we see the legendary backlight issue, apologies for the focus. As usual, the darkness makes the problem look greater than it actually is but I think I got off quite lightly, the screen on the right is my one, the one on the left is the one i'm selling.



EDIT: I have had serious trouble with Dell over these 2 screens, the full story is here in my formal complaint to Dell:

To whom it may concern.
Please, please, take the time to read this. It's quite lenghtly, but it truely is an amazing situation.
I have all ready been on to Dell support over this issue and you could suppose it is "resolved" from Dells point of view, but I am very angry over this and I wish to make a formal complaint in writing.


This is concerning two Dell 2005fpw LCD screens I bought from you on the 21st of July 2005. They arrived a week later all boxed and well.
I was using one of them for two weeks until I got around to setting up the other screen. On powering up the screen, I noticed the panel had a backlight issue, in that the screen appeared white in the bottom left corner, a common problem with this screen.

I rang up on the Firday, 19th of August and described the problem to technical support, they were helpful and arranged for my screen to be NEXT DAY REPLACED, as my warranty stated. After days of waiting and no calls or sign of the screen, I made a call on the following Tuesday and was informed of a stock problem. They said the screen would arrive the next day, the Wednesday. Another day passes, no sign of the replacement screen. I rang again, the stock problem was solved but it wouldn't be delivered until the next few days. It finally arrived late on the Friday, problem solved.

But. I brought the faulty screen out to the courier, fully boxed, protected, documented, with cables and CDs.
He took a worn, battered, unmarked box from the van, and took out the screen with the stand attached, wrapped in 1 layer of bubble wrap.
THAT'S ALL. The replacement had NOTHING ELSE WITH IT. I had to keep my own power cable and USB cable because the replacement had nothing with it.
The courier departed and I took the screen inside.

On unwrapping the screen, I noticed SEVERAL problems. The screen was obviously scuffed and scrapped on the casing on the left of the panel. The casing on the top was cracked and creaking when touched, the rear of the screen was scratched ALL OVER the place, and there was a second scratch on the left side of the case.

I could not believe it, this was supposed to be a new screen, I was assured on the phone that it would be a new panel.
I was raging. I rang Dell support that moment on the Friday 26th of August without even turning it on and told support that I was not accepting it.
The assistant agreed that it was not acceptable and said he was sending a "high priority" memo to customer care and they would ring me back that day or the Monday after. Guess what? No-one rang.

I rang up on the Monday and asked why no-one had rung me back on the Friday or Monday. I was informed that Monday was a UK bank holiday and that someone would definitely ring me on the Tuesday.
No-one rang.
I rang up again on the Wednesday and explained for the millionth time what had happened. I got transfered from department to department, each time having to explain what happened.
At this stage all I wanted was a refund for the damaged screen. I did not want to risk getting another screen in the same condition (the replacement screen also had a backlight problem I might add). I did not want to get another screen with the same backlight issue that caused the problem in the first place and I did not want to get another screen that had dead pixels on it.

When I asked for a refund, I was intially denied as it "had been more than 7 days". I then got told I had to be transfered to the "business department" as they deal with refunds. I was on hold for 15 minutes and when I got through I was back in technical support with a woman i could not understand. I asked for a refund and explained what happened and how unhappy I was. She had to go off to her manager to ask about a refund. Her manager returned and said "Sorry for the trouble you're having" and asked what he could do. I asked for a refund and he initially said no (I found it hard to understand him most of the time), he could not do it and did not sound happy at my request. He tried to persuade me several times to accept another replacement screen and I kept saying I only wanted a refund for the damaged one.

I explained that the 3 screens I recieved all had a backlight issue and the issue with the replacement I recieved, and that I did not want another replacement.
He said that he would get customer care to ring back that day or the next.

This is the good bit.
30 minutes later he rang back and said that he could only give a refund if BOTH OF MY SCREENS were returned. He sounded almost angry at this stage, and kept saying "you got 1 screen for free, you bought 2 and got 1 for free". I said I did not, I got 2 screens and 1 with 50% off. He said "no no, you got 1 for free". He really did not want to listen.

So I said to him "So you're telling me that if I want to have just one of these 2005fpw screens, I have to give back BOTH MY SCREENS, you refund my money, and then I have to buy another one from you?" He said "yes, that is what you have to do".
I thought God almighty, what's going on here?
So now, my "refund process" has started since Wednsday the 21st of August, and will take up to 15 WORKING DAYS to complete, plus whenever Dell have to pick up my screens.

NOW I HAVE NOTHING!!!

I was delivered 2 screens, one was faulty, it was replaced, the replacement was late, faulty and damaged. I was kicked around for days with support, then to be told both my screens are being taken away!!

This is absolutely unbelievable. Have you ever heard anything like this?

Well, i don't know what to do now, if i ever get this refund.

And the worst thing off all this, is that NO-ONE APOLOGISED at any stage, apart from the lame 6 word attempt by the manager.
Everyone was acting like it was MY FAULT. There was no "We sincerely apologise for all of this", no reasons given as to why I was treated badly, no reason given as to why the screens were defective, no reasons given as to why I got a damaged replacement etc etc etc.
I am so angry now thinking back on this.
I just thought Dell should know about this issue..
Thanks for taking the time to read my complaint.

Regards, one disgruntled, former, Dell customer.

Stephen Hickey

Here is my screen by itself. The colours are amazing, very crisp and the brightness is wonderful.


The screen i'm selling has 1 stuck pixel, it's stuck on a light red colour. It really isn't noticeable, you'd have to look real hard to see it. The resolution in the picture is 1680x1050, so it really is extremely small.


Here we see the well documented advantage of widescreen LCDs in gaming, the extra field of view at the sides. You loose no height, but gain the extra vision at the sides. This is Half Life 2 at 1680x1050:

4:3:


16:10:


There is absolutely no ghosting with this screen.

All in all, i'm very happy with this LCD. The backlight isssue is a bit annoying when the screen is black, I find myself looking at it all the time, only because I know it's there. Hopefully i'll grow out of that or else I may have it replaced.

Anyways, i'd highly recommend this screen, especially for all you Americans that can get it for the price of a Happy Meal

very nice....you might be able to send back that other LCD for a refund (I know in the US you can, but Ireland may be different, might allow you to get more on ebay)

Ewww...I see a Standard VGA cable in there, along with a stock Dell DVI cable! WTF
Run two high quality DVI cables if you want the best picture...I prefer the Monster DVI400 or M500 DVI cables, but at the very least don't handicap yourself with a crappy connection...
Get a Dual DVI Videocard pronto!

high quality DVI has been shown to do NOTHING (except empy your wallet). It's binary, it's either a 1 or 0....0-2.5 volts is a 0, 2.6-5 is a 1....your not gonna benefit from any special cable using DVI.

VGA...yes you do get a better singal...but even then I'd have my doubts

I officially hate you .

I have a 17" just now which is a 5:4. I got a good deal on it from Ebay though so I decided to spring for it.

Later on I might get a 17" or 19" widescreen and relegate this one to secondary monitor

consumer9000 said:

Ewww...I see a Standard VGA cable in there, along with a stock Dell DVI cable! WTF
Run two high quality DVI cables if you want the best picture...I prefer the Monster DVI400 or M500 DVI cables, but at the very least don't handicap yourself with a crappy connection...
Get a Dual DVI Videocard pronto!

Click to expand...

My x800xt has only one DVI output, that's the connection i'm using right now with my own 2005fpw. I only used the VGA cable on the other one so I could compare the 2 screens side by side, to see which one was better.
The screen includes a DVI cable.

I can of course replace either screen over here If i want, it has the 3 year next day replacement warranty. Just not sure if i'll bother, i'm watching a DVD right now and the backlight is virtually un-noticeable.

thats sweet......now i know what all the fuss is about with the widescreen dell moniters.....

argh!!! I have to wait another 3 weeks until I get my 2005FPW from dell. (they have a crazy backorder)

A very nice Setup, arn't you tempted to keep both?

Nah, I have no use for two screens, not that I could afford to keep the two anyways.
I do the very odd bit off video editing but nowhere near enough to justify €595 i'm selling it for (they're €724 from Dell).

I rang up Dell at the time trying to get money off, the best he could do was offer me increased priority on my order, there was a 12 working day lead time on the 2005fpws. I got mine in 4-5 days depending how you look at it.
Well pleased with Dell's service, abeilt the barely understandable sales rep...

voodoomelon said:

There is absolutely no ghosting with this screen.

Click to expand...

That's all I needed to hear. I'll be getting one of these for the new system then. Cant beat widescreen!

i really wanted one missed out on one during the $357 sale. oh well, there's back to school coming up...

I'd just like to add that the quality of the panel really is not good at any other resolution other than the native 1680x1050.

I'm not sure whether this applies to all LCDs not running at their native resolution (well i know it does, but to what extent), but text quality really isn't good and images etc aren't nearly as crisp. In terms of games and DVDs, well, I haven't really tested them at anything other than 1680x1050, but text in Windows certainly looses quality.

Having said all that, I see no reason to use anything other than the native resolution. I thought that 1680x1050 would be too small, but it really isn't because the panel is so big.

Everything is unbelievablely sharp and crisp at 1680x1050.

It's a joy to use.

Well, just a quick update.

I rang up Dell to report the bad backlight problem on one of the screens (left):



They're replacing it with virtually no questions asked.
They should be here with a new 2005fpw on Tuesday.
When I asked him if the replacement would be a refurbished model, he almost sounded offended, lol.

He said refurbished models are only sold as just that, refurbished, and are never used as replacements if the screen is in warranty like my own.

So that's good to know, maybe they only ship out refurbished models in the US, i don't know.

Well, fingers crossed, the model I receive will have no backlight issues or dead/stuck pixels, or it'll be going right back again...

I just got my 2005FPW a few days ago and I am amazed how good it looks. It was also larger than I imagined, so that was a nice suprise. I wonder if the quality is just as good when using the s-video or composite inputs? I'll have to test that out tonight. I was really lucky to have 0 dead pixels and no backlight bleedthrough problem.

voodoomelon said:

I'd just like to add that the quality of the panel really is not good at any other resolution other than the native 1680x1050.

I'm not sure whether this applies to all LCDs not running at their native resolution (well i know it does, but to what extent), but text quality really isn't good and images etc aren't nearly as crisp. In terms of games and DVDs, well, I haven't really tested them at anything other than 1680x1050, but text in Windows certainly looses quality.

Having said all that, I see no reason to use anything other than the native resolution. I thought that 1680x1050 would be too small, but it really isn't because the panel is so big.

Everything is unbelievablely sharp and crisp at 1680x1050.

It's a joy to use.

Click to expand...

i want to pick one of these up but I dunno if I want to run at that high of a resolution, are you saying the quality is diminshed at lower than the native resolution?

Should I just go with LCD that has a smaller native resolution?

Thnx for the info and the review

Hi there.
Well, of course quality is diminished on any LCD at any resolution other than the native resolution.

You see, I said the same thing, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to run at the high a resolution of 1680x1040, because everything would be super small.
But what you have to remember is that this screen is MASSIVE! Well, it's very big anyway, and 1680x1040 is a VERY usable resolution. Icons and text etc are bigger than you think, because the panel is so large.

In terms of quality with other resolutions, well, I can't really tell you because I haven't used other resolutions for prolonged periods of time, but you definitely loose the crispness and sharpness of text with a resolution other than the native one.

Well, Del didn't arrive today with my new screen.
I rang them up and they said it they had a "stock problem".

But they should be here tomorrow, Wednesday.

Fingers crossed.

the 1680x1050 on the dell 2005 is just like 1280x1024 on a 17" LCD and 1152x9xx on a 16" viewable CRT....in terms of physical size.

Widescreen is simply incredibly and great for everythign from games, to word processing (with word or adobe you can have 2 full pages side by side), to graphic design (with normal 4:3 images you can see the whole image and have toolbars/icons on the sides, to MOVIES!!