Is my UltraSharp UP2414Q alright? -- Colour/brightness uniformity issue

You mentioned refurbished, purchased used from Dell or a reseller? The 20 digit serial number will tell us how old it is but not how many previous owners it may have had. Post pictures of it running the BID (Built-In Diagnostic), page 51. You should open the OSD (On Screen Display) -Color Settings and test the Zonal Color Space settings, page 33. You should consider using the Dell UltraSharp Color Calibration Solution software and the X-Rite i1Display Pro Colorimeter to properly calibrate the monitor.

Hi Chris,
thank you so much for the prompt response.

I bought the monitor through eBay but the seller said it is factory tested and officially refurbished.

Here's the PPID:

Something strange happened as I woke it up from sleep -- first of all, Zonal Color Space was turned on with screen split into two even though the corresponding setting was OFF. Even resetting to factory settings didn't help until I changed it manually. Secondly, the screen brightness/colour became notably more uniform! No matter in which colour space or preset, and in fact I think it's even slightly more solid with Uniformity Compensation set to OFF. It's still not as good as U2412M (and I think the viewing angle is generally worse), but definitely tolerable now.

Regarding the calibration -- isn't it supposed to be factory calibrated, including the refurbished units?

Since previous users may have used it, there is no telling what they changed from our factory calibration. This is why I always buy new directly from Dell and never from a reseller.

CN0-WWRHC-74445-4CI-121L

Manufactured on December 18, 2014. So you have a three 15 month old monitor. That is 15 months of the 3 year warranty that you cannot get back. My advice, return it. Then buy a new one directly from Dell.

Calibration is different from uniformity.
Factory calibration is actally gamut emulation, I do not expect form these dells to have an accurate white point out of the box in sRGB or AdobeRGB modes.

Yumichan,

calibration as a term can be applied to many things, in this case I was worried about both colour tone and uniformity.

I've read in a review that UP2414Q are individually colour calibrated and after their tests they were pretty spot on.

Thanks Chris,

but I thought a user cannot change the factory calibration, can they? Not when I perform a factory defaults reset?

I would definitely prefer buying from Dell directly but from the resellers I can often get the same product quite a lot cheaper, sometimes even half the price.

factory calibration = 50% OSD brightness

Gamut ok, gamma ok, but white point will not be D65... it could be, but is unlekely.

Yumichan:

Dell makes some bold claims about the UP2414Q. Its 1000:1 contrast ratio is nothing special and neither is the 8ms response time, but the 99% Adobe RGB coverage and 100% sRGB caught our attention, as did Dell's claims that the UP2414Q comes factory calibrated to below DeltaE 2.0. Any DeltaE less than two gets close to indistinguishable to the human eye.

Chris,

Manufactured on December 18, 2014. So you have a three month old monitor. That is three months of the 3 year warranty that you cannot get back. My advice, return it. Then buy a new one directly from Dell.

If it's 3 months old, you must have meant 2015? But isn't it discontinued? 3 months of 3 year warranty isn't such a big deal..

BTW, do I have to register it for the warranty?

It's not my fault that trustedreviews guys do not even know the basics about color: correlated color temperature is not a valid measure for "white color" or uniformity. Actually all this review is just rubbish done with i1Profiler/DCCS

It's not my fault that you cannot evaluate if you are reading a good review or this kind of joke review. Colors = coorinates.

BTW: that deltaE is a mean value...at 50% brightness as I said before... and since gamut emulation is more or less acurate...Would you guess where is the error? I wrote it previously...

BTW v2:1000:1 contrast is meant to be native white contrast. As you go to further whites it drops. "Trustedreviews" guys do not know even the basics...

BTW v3: this software is the proper way to do it:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3529/t/19679044
Use RG_phosphor correction for your i1DisplayPro.

Yumichan,

my knowledge is definitely limited in this regard, however having filmmaking background, I do have my understanding of the white balance, and how that affects the colour-cast. I don't do the finishing colour grade but do work on footage correction and it would be nice to have somewhat accurate colour/brightness representation and not having to rely on scopes/histogram exclusively.

I guess I should get someone to help me with the calibration as I don't really have time to learn all this stuff by myself.. But I will still have a closer look at the case you linked -- thanks for your input! :)

If gamut, gamma and grey balance are accurate in factory calibrated modes then it's easy to calibrate these dells to whatever white you want, D65 or a warmer white... but you need an AMD or Quadro and a measurement device.
The most useful factory calibrated modes is sRGB (or DCI-P3 if you need it) because once fixed to your desired white it can be used in applications without color management.