Deth

It’s been a couple of months now since I bought a new monitor. I ended up settling on a Dell P2418HT from B&H Photo B&H Photo is a great place to buy stuff online, but that’s another topic for another day.

I didn’t really need a new monitor, but it was definitely something that would be helpful in many ways. The old Asus one had this odd ring thing in the back to keep it standing up, so it was always titled. For normal people that would be fine, but me being visually impaired I have my face so close I want it to be vertical. The ring like thing was also somewhat flimsy and wasted a lot of space. It really was just an example of looking pretty over function.

For that reason, when I was searching for monitors, it was important that it had a base that didn’t waste much space and worked the way I needed it to work with adjustable height. My current chair doesn’t go quite as low as I’d like, so I wanted the screen to be able to be adjustable to go high enough to be eye level. This Dell monitor has a nice, flat and solid base that’s heavy enough that the screen won’t be falling over.

I also wanted it to have touch screen abilities. It’s not something I often use and knew I wouldn’t use it often. It definitely is useful the time I do use it, though. As I get used to it being there, I’m sure I’ll use that feature even more frequently when I just want to quickly click on something. One thing I hate about using my tablet is having to rely on the touch screen for everything, but it definitely is better for some things.

There are two USB ports on the P2418HT, and I’ve already found that to be super handy to have. In the past, I’d been using an extension cable for plugging things in temporally, but that just gets in the way. (Garmin GPS or card reader or USB stick I use as the log, but for my Concept2 rowing.) I’d considered picking up a hub, but didn’t want something else in the way on my desk. I would just use the front USB port on my computer, but that seems to have failed.

There are actual physical buttons for the power and menu options on the Dell P2418HT. There is no limit to my frustration with devices not having something tactile. At least the old monitor, even though they were just touch buttons, had them in a way that you could feel them without looking. The TV downstairs has touch buttons that are flaky and no way to tell where they are by feel. That’s annoying as fuck, but this Dell has physical clicky buttons so not only do you feel the response but hear it too.

There is a nice, solid, heavy feel to the Dell P2418HT monitor. It is the total opposite of the old Asus monitor I used that felt like a mouse fart could knock it over.

The 24-inch screen itself, at least for my purposes, seems really nice and bright. The colors are impressive and there really isn’t a glare problem. Keep in mind being visually impaired I am really not a good person to judge display quality, but it works well for me. It was nice to find one with a matte finish instead of the typically super shiny ones that really only cause glare.

No, the screen isn’t 4k. Why pay extra for something that I most likely wouldn’t even be able to see the difference? Besides that, I’m uncertain if my old $30, fan less, video card would even support it. My ideal monitor would have been more square than the current wide screen fad.

There really weren’t a ton of choices that met my criteria that I had in my head. I didn’t want anything huge. I looked in a couple of stores in person but as is usually the case with me, I have something very specific in mind, but stores have 200 nearly identical copycat versions of an item that fit the current design fads.