Hello everyone (especially Dell team)!

To summarize, I have bought UP3216Q for ~1000 EUR, warranty November 9, 2020 to November 10, 2025. For me, it turned to be worse in some important (undocumented) aspects, when compared to my 10-year-old, dying 300 EUR monitor.

To give some context for my problem, I need to tell you the full story, so please bear with me.

I'm a visually handicapped 40 years old man. I've been studying and working as a programmer for 20 years already. Because of my vision issues, it has always been difficult to find myself a good LCD monitor. I don't care that much about perfect color quality and dead pixels, but I really need good image brightness uniformity without any haze nor TN-like brightness shifts because I usually use monitors at a closer-than-normal distance and thus I notice all brightness uniformity deficiencies. They can become very distracting and tiring for my peripheral vision.

My first displays were good quality CRTs. When they broke down, I tried to find a TN replacement. I went through 2 exchanges in my local shop to find a model that I could live with and not experience any discomfort. Fortunately, 17" TNs have always been cheap and there were many models to choose from. Of course, it had all the characteristic TN problems, but still, the image was very uniform without any clouding on whites and blacks.

Ten years ago I went for an upgrade and was lucky enough to immediately find a 23" semi-professional (as marketed by the manufacturer) IPS model that felt almost perfect to my eyes. No clouding, no uniformity issues, no haze at sharp angles. It had the infamous IPS glow but it was acceptable. It still had CCFL backlight, not LED. The price was about 300 EUR. I won't mention the name publicly so that it doesn't feel like an advertisement. But I can disclose that the panel used was LG LM230WF2-SLB1. Sometime later this company released an updated LED model with panel LG LM230WF3-SLB1, but people who tested both of them told that the old one with LM230WF2-SLB1 had much better uniformity and angular brightness stability. So, could it be that the haze is created by something specific to LED backlight polarizing layer? If only I knew an LCD engineer...

From reputable testing websites that display did not get particularly high scores for color accuracy but for my eyes it was the best I've seen just because reading it felt very much like reading a sheet of paper - no tired eyes, no distracting shadows. It did not have a flicker-free backlight; however, I did not feel any discomfort.

Last month my trusty old monitor started showing signs of death. Now it needs almost an hour to fully turn on. Very characteristic sign for burnt CCFLs and/or leaking capacitors.

So, I wanted to get a replacement ASAP, and also I wanted to have an upgrade to 32". I scouted my local shops for something semi-professional with the hope that it should be at least as good as my old one. I live in a small town and local shops don't have such expensive models immediately available. Dell UP3216Q was the only one 32" semi-professional display they could deliver from their warehouse. The price was 1140 EUR. For that price, I expected an upgrade in every way possible over my 10-year-old 300 EUR worth display.

I got my new display and put it side by side with my old one. And I was so disappointed about some things:

1) IPS glow was much more noticeable even when I adjusted the display to minimal brightness. Maybe the old one has lower minimum brightness setting and that's why I cannot turn the brightness as low as to match the old display (see the attached image at the end of the post, marked both displays with red, you barely can see the old one). In real-world, the difference is not that large, but it is still noticeable. Ok, I can live with that IPS glow, although still disappointing.

2) backlight uniformity on white is not good at all. There's some weird greyish chunk at the bottom part of the screen (see the attached image at the end of the post, look at the mid-left side on the bottom, I marked the problematic area with a red line). It was shot with Uniformity compensation feature enabled, but it did not help to get rid of that grey chunk.

3) in general, UP3216Q doesn't feel as easy on my eyes when compared to the old one. I can notice some of that "IPS haze" that is present on many modern IPS panels. It did not exist on my old display. Not sure why - if it's because of some coating or polarizer or specific to LED backlight. I won't explain much here, it would be very technical, I have already asked for help on other forums about this issue. Many people have noticed it but accepted as "IPS deficiency", but my experience shows that not every IPS panel has this problem. I still have 12 days left to return my UP3216Q but I have no trust that I will get something better on my next try. I have seen people going through replacements multiple times just to get something without annoying backlight bleeding. I'm living in a small town and all this replacement process is complicated and expensive for me because of my poor vision (have no car, need to pay someone to drive me and the monitor back and forth).

I wish there was some service that inspects the specific monitor for you and sends you some video tests and images and picks one of the best units for you. People who work at a normal distance would not suffer from the issues that are so distracting for me. I would be gladly willing to pay more if I knew that I will get what I need at the first attempt.

My monitor is my work instrument and I really want to continue earning money. I'm following the latest tech news and the best option would be microLED but it will take many years for microLEDs to reach the computer display market.

I'm not sure why I wrote this. Maybe I'm just disappointed with the progress of modern tech. One step forward to 4K large displays and color depth and two steps back regarding backlight uniformity.
Please, Dell, introduce backlight uniformity calibration in your quality control routines - I would gladly pay more for backlight quality, instead of color depth and other professional features.

If Dell can replace my UP3216Q display with something that for sure has uniform whites and no brightness haze, then I would really appreciate this. I would even agree to have a smaller display if only it was as close as possible to the uniformity of my old one. Do you have any display that is as close as possible to LG LM230WF2-SLB1 panel but larger? Is U2721DE any better?

Anyway, thank you for reading this text. Have great holidays and merry Christmas!

 

Image of IPS glow at minimum brightness for both old display and UP3216Q:

 

 

White uniformity issues with compensation enabled: