Appearance
There she sits atop the glass rampart of my desk, elevating the monitor to direct eye height as I work. There doesn't need to be anything else in the picture to prove how big it is, the panel measurement of 24 inches correct as a viewable area - although you can see my Philips 200P4SS next to it on the right hand side of the picture. The Dell's bezel is obviously thinner, resulting in an optical illusion that the Dell is bigger than it actually is when viewed next to the other display. Black suits it, although I'm left wondering if white would have been cool, too. The stand is the same as you'll find on Dell's other large LCD monitors including 2001FP and 2005FPW.
The bottom right of the bezel houses see-through display for the five inputs (2 is lit up in the picture which corresponds to DVI-D, VGA being 1) with the simple controls for manipulating the monitor using the on-screen display (more on which soon) next door. Input switch, menu invoke, menu select and menu choice are all you get and in reality are all you need.
The monitor can be tilted away from you, rotated (a portrait 2405FPW looks faintly rediculous), and raised up and down on its stand to help you find the optimal viewing position. Side by side with another large monitor (the aforementioned 20 inch Philips 200P4SS), the Dell still looks massive.
Showing off an usual workspace for me (a browser, IM windows and Dreamweaver on the Dell, and only Photoshop and my main IM window on the Philips), you can see the Dell has plenty of pixels for large working areas in your applications, even without the luxury of pairing it with something else of similar size. The 'Midnight Grey' colouring, thin-ish bezel and cool looking stand add up to a nice aesthetic that appeals to this reviewer. Almost everyone else I show it to agrees. What do you think?
Big, good looking and with lots to look at, the 2405FPW will dominate almost any desk that it's put on. The only downside in this reviewer's eyes is that I don't have two. Black and silver clash this season, don't you know.
The input array is where you'd expect it (inputs spaced out in the large space to make it easy to connect them), the monitor takes a regular kettle lead to give it go-go juice and only the card reader on the left hand vertical edge of the bezel and USB port placement are physical downsides for me. They're just too hard to reach and use effectively for my tastes; who likes to fondle the side of a big black monitor to slide something into a waiting slot?
