Dell S2330MX LCD monitor

Name: Dell S2330MX LCD monitor
Item: Dell S2330MX LCD monitor
Rating: 2.75
Author: Campbell Simpson

A cheap, thin, but slightly wobbly 23in LCD monitor from Dell

Campbell Simpson

PC World

15/09/11

Expert Rating

2.75 / 5

Pros

Slim design

Cons

It's a bit flimsy

Bottom Line

Dell's S2330MX monitor is thin and lightweight, which means it looks excellent coupled with a small desktop tower or a laptop. This thin design does mean it's a bit flimsy, but if you've got it set up right the S2330MX is a perfectly capable mid-sized LCD monitor with a reasonable price tag.

Would you buy this?

Yes 42
No 17

Price
$ 229.00 (AUD)

Dell’s S2330MX is a very slim, reasonably cheap 23in LCD monitor. Its slim design does mean the stand is a bit flimsy and it’s not very adjustable, but if your needs are basic then it’s a perfectly capable monitor.

Dell S2330MX: Design and setup

The Dell S2330MX is, as $229 23in LCD monitors go, pretty standard. It’s got a reasonably thin bezel that’s finished in gloss black, and the stand is a simple one that’s a little thin for our liking. The majority of the screen’s body is around 7.5mm thick, but the base of the screen bulges to 30mm to accomodate the VGA and DVI-D connectors. There’s no inbuilt HDMI (and no inbuilt speakers) but Dell does ship a DVI-HDMI adapter.

The stand and monitor clip together, with the stand’s base and arm connecting with a single screw. The whole assembly is solid but when trying to tilt the monitor we found it felt slightly flimsy. The S2330MX doesn’t have a great deal of adjustability — there’s no swivel, and only around ten to fifteen degrees of backwards tilt. This is a far cry from the forward and backward tilt and swivel offered by premium Dell monitors like the U2410.

The ports on the back of the Dell S2330MX face outward rather than downward, which makes connection much easier. We hooked the S2330MX up to a Apple MacBook Pro as well as a Sony BDP-S580 Blu-ray player to test image quality.

Dell S2330MX: Video quality and performance

The Dell S2330MX is a Full HD screen, giving it a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels in the 16:9 aspect ratio. The LED backlight means maximum screen brightness is more than high enough for use in direct daylight, and the screen’s anti-glare matte coating does an excellent job of removing distracting reflections.

The S2330MX performed generally well in our video quality tests, where we used DisplayMate to test black and white level performance. With the screen’s settings optimised for the dim environment we tested it in, we were able to distinguish between all but the second darkest and brightest increments in the 256-level black-to-white tone test. This is a good result that reflects the generally high quality of the S2330MX’s display.

The Dell S2330MX stumbles slightly on colour performance, with a very slightly green hue overall in default settings. We did find that dialing down green hues manually by 10 per cent mostly solved this issue, though. Colour vibrancy is OK but not excellent, with our Blu-ray versions of Terminator: Salvation and The Dark Knight looking slightly desaturated.

The on-screen display of the Dell S2330MX is a little confusing to operate — the buttons aren’t in the same place as older Dell monitors so users upgrading will have to re-learn. We don’t expect you’ll have to use the OSD often, but there are seven picture quality presets to choose from (and you can pick different presets per input).

Dell S2330MX: Conclusion

The Dell S2330MX is a capable, although unspectacular, 23in LCD monitor. Our largest concern is that the stand is a bit small and wobbly for the monitor’s screen size. The S2330MX looks great, though.