U2410 Green/Pink Failure Analysis

I can understand, for sure. I was in the same place myself ~6 months ago, as I said.

As for why they won't step in and make a statement, my guess is that they simply don't have the testing procedure in place to ensure they don't get too many returns, and can't justify the cost of the testing or the returns, both of which cost money. They likely can't pass the buck to the panel manufacturer -- I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have a contract for the dead pixel policy that allows them to do so, but weren't aware of the tinting issue ahead of time and didn't get that contracted, so now Dell themselves would have to bear that cost.

$600 isn't close to professional monitor pricing -- it's an expensive consumer monitor, but a consumer monitor nonetheless. Pro monitors of this size can easily run into the multiple thousands of dollars.

You get what you pay for. At $600, I've found it to be quite a lot..

I sent back two of these 18 months ago.  The difference between the two sides of the screens was far greater than any changes that could be made to the centre as a result of calibration with a colorimeter.  As I want a monitor that can be calibrated to show me accurately what my prints from calibrated printer/ink/paper combination will look like, this is not much use.  My printers produce even colours across the picture.

Back then, I and others suggested that we would be happy to pay a premium for a screen in which the colour variation was not noticable.  Clearly such screens are aound as many colour critical users attest.  Equally there must be many people out there who either don't notice or don't care about the green pink tint, because while some people have complained about them, many must have accepted them.

The brightness range on my Diamondtron CRT screen which got me out of trouble then has dropped badly, so I am looking for a new monitor again.

So please Dell, pick some good ones off the line, test them right across the screen and put them out as a photographers version at a premium price.  I suspect you could do this for a lot less than the NEC PA241W which is nearly twice the price in UK and is not going to be twice as good as a "good" U2410. 

Does the latest Revision (A04) fix any of the problems mentioned in this thread ?  I planned to purchase this monitor but not if it's still messed up.

I am in the market for three 24" displays.  Over several days of reading reviews on technical sites I hoped that the often mentioned Pink / Green tint problem appeared in early models but would have been corrected by now. As a long time Dell customer, I realize these forums tend to attract people who have problems with a product while thousands are quietly satisfied.  That said, I am disappointed and frankly surprised that Dell has not corrected an obvious quality problem that is frustrating a large number of customers and causing an even larger number of potential buyers to shy away from this product.

I really tried to talk myself into buying three of these but it sounds like a complete crap shoot whether you happen to get lucky.  And if you do have a bad monitor, it's going to cost money to roll the dice again until you either get lucky or give up.  I'll keep looking.

@CherryBark

I've attempted to get in contact with Dell on the 18th (May) through two different email tickets and via this thread and I have yet to receive any e-mails back, nor has a moderator/technician responded in this thread... While that is not extremely terrible it is annoying, especially if you are trying to take advantage of a sale price.

Maybe I will try to make a new thread and hopefully not get banned for it.  I also plan to call directly, but that will have to wait a little while.

I just came up with a curious thing.  Dell say that the U2410 complies with TCO 03. Amongst other things TCO03 specifies

Light levels without color tint - No color tint introduced at lower light levels.

Uniform color over the entire screen - No distortion of colors.

Chris, can you explain how you are able to say that the green /pink tint is within spec. and yet claim compliance with TCO03, please?

Light levels without color tint - No color tint introduced at lower light levels. Uniform color over the entire screen - No distortion of colors.

Just looked up TCO'03 myself, out of curiosity, and it doesn't say any such thing. What it actually says is:

"Δu'v' = 0.01 for the maximum colour deviation between measured active areas on the screen that are intended to maintain the same colour."

"For an FPD in landscape mode, the Δu'v' between areas on the left side and the right sideof the screen when it is positioned at +30° and at -30° horizontally to the screen normal shall be = 0.025."

"The greyscale steps to be used are 255, 225, 195, 165, 135 and 105, and each should be measured in the centre of the screen. The maximum difference in either u'or v' identifies those steps where Δu'v' should be calculated. The Δu'v' shall be = 0.02."

In other words, color variation is allowed, but must be within a certain range, which is greater when viewed off-angle at the screen edges, and allowed to vary still further when luminance varies. Incidentally, the luminance test isn't even performed anywhere except at the center of the display. And to claim compliance, Dell has to have submitted a test report performed by a TCO-authorized testing laboratory. In other words, a test lab somewhere has stated that the display meets this test.

Thanks for that clarification. I think I was looking at a summary of some sort.  Doesn't really solve my problem if I have to keep sending them back to get a good one.  Think I will have to bite the bullet and spend 800 quid (GBP) on something with proper colour control.

Having said that, I note that in your last paragraph you say that a lab has to have tested "the display".  In practice, they will have tested "a display", and we know that many are acceptable to people doing colour critical work.  Do we know that the screens with noticeable green/pink tint are actually within the spec.?

No, but then we don't know that with any brand. It's unlikely there's a procedure in place to prevent cherry picking. We know that Dell says they're within their own spec, though. That is the only thing that matters, to be honest. It's not a problem to them, and at the price they're asking, I'm not surprised in the least. As you note yourself, you have to pay significantly more to get a monitor from a company that provides any guarantee beyond what Dell is providing.

I finally found my password for this site. I kept getting error msgs when attempting to change the lost password - way to go Dell.  

I don't know if this will get deleted or not, but, after a bad experience with my last Dell tower (17" monitor worked well for years), I went with a Digital Storm rig (i7-950 @ 3.9 on air/GTX 480/6g DDR3/Intel SSD/Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1/HAF 932).  I was going to go with the Dell 24" monitor, but, after too much bad press on the tinting and return poilicy issues, I opted for a HP ZR24w.  Nearly a year and no problems with the monitor or the rig.

P.S. - I play a lot of CivV and Battlefield.  

To anyone complaining about pink tinting: Stop complaining, scrap the adobe preset and calibrate yourself. If you don't know how to calibrate, then you shouldn't be worried about it. Also, It is real easy to get outstanding results with this monitor, even without calibration hardware. Just do some searching on Google! I have a U2410 sitting right beside a Lacie at 2x the price and they are nearly identical, except the Dell outperforms in regards to gradient banding.

If anyone here has one of these and are not happy, contact me, I will buy as many as I can get a good deal on!

@owpdesigner

My U2410 is using the custom preset, calibrated with a Spyder device. My color profile is also created with this device. The tint issue has nothing to do with presets/profiles.

All I am saying is that I did notice a pink tint when I got the monitor new, after I adjusted, there is no pink tint. Its not hard to correct, as you probably did.

@OWPDesigner: good for you, must have been lucky and got one with a uniform pink tint, which is easily correctable as you point out. What so many people are complaining about is the green tint on one side and pink on the other, which is NOT correctable. I have just, with great regret, boxed up my new U2410 for return because I have this problem too. Calibration with my Spyder 3 does not and cannot fix a non-uniform tint.