[savingstimes]

I’m considering this display as it’s rather cheap on sale, about the equivalent of $205 US on sale (roughly $50 cheaper than the Alienware AW2521HF).

This is the only review I’m aware of with measurements – https://youtu.be/PPN-6EJs3Q4?t=335

In terms of contrast specifically there seems be a pretty hefty differences between it and the other 24.5inch 1080p 240hz monitors and specifically the Alienware AW2521HF to simply just be panel to panel variance? Especially the concern is the rather low contrast measurement specifically, at a level that’s already put me off from the LG Nano IPS 1440p panels.

On a related note would be thoughts on 240hz vs 144hz/strobing. The alternative choice would be the EX2510 which unlike this monitor does have a strobing option, and from what I gather a relatively good implementation.

I effectively only play one competitive MP game that I can consistently reach 240 fps, and even then I don’t play it hyper competitively (I even run max settings) and due to the lifespan of the game may or may not even be dropping it.

Which means outside of that for single player only is there any benefit of 240hz assuming you won’t be able run significantly above 144 fps (if even that) for the majority of games, especially in comparison to 144hz, and one with a strobe implementation?

[PCM2]

Hi savingstimes,

It isn’t entirely unexpected to see some differences in contrast even between units of the same model – or panel to panel variance as you say. In particular, some monitors have slight clouding in the central region that would drop contrast a bit in this way. Sometimes calibration differences can account for this as well, if significant colour channel changes are being made then it can have a potentially significant impact. Some panels are natively further off the usual desired ‘6500K’ than others or have green channel imbalances, so even the factory default setting could result in a larger shift being needed there. And certainly any individual calibration done to achieve the ‘6500K’ target or an appropriately balanced green channel could knock more off contrast in some cases than others. Unfortunately I don’t have any further data on the S2522HG in that respect, but it uses a 24.5″ 240Hz IPS-type panel that is most likely the usual AUO M250HAN01.7 as used in the AW2521HF and various others.

Regarding strobe backlight implementations, it’s a very individual thing whether you actually like to use them or not. They have a significant positive impact on perceived blur, but the flickering can be bothersome or at the very least can accelerate eye fatigue. You’ll also need the frame rate to match the refresh rate consistently, without VRR as an option at the same time with these options being considered. Strobe crosstalk and overshoot issues can also complicate things, as can more noticeable ‘interlace pattern artifacts’ (not everyone will readily notice these, either way). At least these 24.5″ models don’t have KSF phosphors for the backlight, which can introduce additional visual artifacts. The EX2510 is similar to the EX2710 with its strobe backlight implementation, which per our review is pretty good! Whilst you may not achieve >144fps at the moment with the games you play, a system upgrade in the future could unlock a bit more there? With the price of the S2522HG in your region it isn’t exactly as if you’re overpaying for the extra refresh rate. Even on the desktop there’s a bit of extra ‘enjoyment’ to be had from the elevated refresh rate. Sure it’s not going to deliver anything revolutionary there, but don’t think of it as entirely wasted.

[savingstimes]

That’s what I was thinking that the as far as I know they should all be using the AUO panel (although TFTcentral’s lookup seems to list a slightly newer one from AUO being available?) but the measurements on that one seemed quite far off and being a Dell I was expecting, or hoping, it’d be somewhat close to the Alienware AW2521HF but maybe rather cheaper and with a more compact design and preferable aesthetic. Granted it’s a sample of 1, although that reviewers Alienware AW2521HF measurements seem at least more in line with other reviews such as yours as well. I just wasn’t expecting such a wide gap with the contrast measurement given the likely same panel.

I do have some limited experience with strobing as I had an AOC 24G2 for roughly a couple of days to a week before returning (screen uniformity issue). From what I remember of the experience it did make the image slightly more clear but not really anything dramatic. Although from what I gather the AOC 24G2 implementation may not be as strong (or clear) as maybe the Benq’s. At the same time I’ve also tried 240hz briefly as well, but again it just didn’t seem extremely drastic either compared to 120hz/144hz. Certainly not in either case anywhere near compared to a plain only 60hz more dated and slower response IPS vs 120/144hz. It’s a only a $35 difference between the two so that’s not really the concern so much. More so that the Benq seems to have some pluses in it’s favor (strobe, known input lag, contrast?, very basic HDR to at least mess around with) and more certainty due to much more reviews.

I’m just not really sure how realistic 144fps+ for at least AAA single player games are due to the moving performance target barring something such as temporal projection or interpolation being implemented. Just using this Techpowerup chart as an example with something kind of absurd such as running a RTX 3080ti at 1080p it seems is quite challenging to even hit 144 much beyond that all the way to 240.

Worse for me is I typically go with a more modest GPU (such as a RTX 3060 level) if anything just keep the user environment heat bleed off and noise more in check.

[PCM2]

It is possible the S2522HG uses a slightly different variant from the M250HAN01 family, but even then I’d be kind of surprised if it showed consistently lower contrast. I’ll see what I can dig up, but usually Dell’s monitors don’t have their panels reported by reviewers or users as freely as those from most other manufacturers. Partly because they don’t disclose them in the service menu or any parts catalogues in most cases.

If I’m not mistaken those games were all tested with ‘Ultra’ settings or equivalent? It would be possible to boost FPS a fair bit by making sensible adjustments to the graphics settings. Hardware Unboxed (TechPowerUp’s YouTube side) recently published some videos stating how it rarely makes sense to run everything at ‘Ultra’ as the performance hit is usually unacceptable for the negligible boost in image quality. Obviously it makes sense for benchmarking, but that’s a separate issue. In my experience with 240Hz monitors (and as an owner of an FI27Q-X and RTX 3090), though, I definitely don’t find the boost up from 144Hz to 240Hz anywhere near as noticeable or useful as from 60Hz to 144Hz. And certainly not for single player or casual multiplayer gaming, where I don’t think it makes sense to sacrifice visuals too heavily if you’re already ~120-144fps anyway. For competitive gaming I can certainly appreciate a further boost in frame and refresh rate, though that’s quite subjective and I consider myself on the sensitive side when it comes to motion performance.

Edit: Plot twist. According to some information I’ve been passed via a Twitter contact, the S2522HG appears to use an LG Display panel; the LM245WF9 SSA3. See this review (Chinese). Said review also confirms a colour gamut that’s wider than on the AUO models at 89% DCI-P3. Bit of extra vibrancy for some red and green-biased shades. They measured contrast, but using a Spyder device which are inaccurate for such readings.

[savingstimes]

I was actually checking back since I also found a Chinese source with a review as well but I see you made an edit to your post with new information as well.

It also indicated it was using a new 240hz panel, the LM245WF9 SSA3 mentioned.

Not sure if it’s actually the same original source? Video here seems posted in June vs September for the article at least –

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1744y1z7cr/?spm_id_from=333.788.recommend_more_video.-1

They have a list of contrast measurements (not sure of the device used, perhaps you can tell by the video, starts 5:37s, and numbers) s2522hg is #28 on this list. –

http://www.xxrsm.com/h-col-123.html

[PCM2]

Yes, that is the same source I believe. Was relayed to me by a Chinese-speaking contact of mine on Twitter. I’m not familiar with the device they use for contrast measurement, but based on their measurements of other monitors they seem to be pretty reliable. 🙂

[savingstimes]

I’d actually leaned to the EX2510 as what you said here –

In my experience with 240Hz monitors (and as an owner of an FI27Q-X and RTX 3090), though, I definitely don’t find the boost up from 144Hz to 240Hz anywhere near as noticeable or useful as from 60Hz to 144Hz. And certainly not for single player or casual multiplayer gaming, where I don’t think it makes sense to sacrifice visuals too heavily if you’re already ~120-144fps anyway.

Tended to match what I remember with a brief experience of 240hz (on a monitor using the AUO panel).

I’m also a bit of a OCD “max or bust” (even ray tracing) mentality, even if I know those max settings might sometimes be visually indistinguishable.

But S2522hg being a different panel with different characteristics is rather intriguing.

This is going to be a generality but how do you find AUO vs LG anti-glare coatings typically compare?

[PCM2]

It really just depends on the individual panel. 🙂

[savingstimes]

So some followup. Found another recent review of the Dell S2522HG in Russian on youtube –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HerUFrlnGtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg7KHzJol64 (Review of the LG27GN800 as a comparison point from that site)

– Judging by this review and the others it appears that the contrast is like 25%-30% lower than AUO panels. Although not as low as LG’s Nano IPS 1440p 144hz panel vs AUO.

– Indeed wider gamut than AUO panels. Matches other reviews.

– Gamma is way off? Although I can’t understand what he’s saying, maybe you’d know or can infer more from the graph.

– Overdrive settings don’t seem to change much, which also means the highest setting is actually usable (at least at 240hz) without overshoot.

I actually ended up getting both the Benq EX2510 and Dell S2522HG. I don’t have test equipment but –

– Contrast is indeed lower on the S2522HG. So this matches the spattering of reviews. The 850:1 range numbers seem at least plausible. In a side to side comparison it noticeable, although of course not to the difference of say a VA panel vs IPS panel (I have an older sample of each of those as well).

– The S2522HG color wise is more vivid to the wider gamut. Is this better? Well of course it’s a preference thing. It’s wide enough you can see the saturation immediately, while also just being able to tell it’s not as natural. The other issue is back to the contrast, while the colors are more noticeable more vivid against the EX2510, the “dynamic range” (“pop”? Not sure how to best describe this) is slightly better on the EX2510.

– Response time performance on both was good enough. Well I can’t test VRR yet so it’s hard to know how that behaves lower down.

– Input lag might be slightly higher on the Dell if forcing 60hz. I don’t have equipment to test this with precision. It’s going to be under 1 frame of difference for sure, so it’s perceptibly likely noticeable.

– S2522HG color temperature wise is cooler (more blue) vs. the EX2510 at default settings for both. I don’t know which one actually tracks closer to 6500k however given no equipment.

– The gamma measurement would also explain other differences I’m seeing between the two as well in comparisons. I’m going to have to use another screen as a reference to see which is more “correct” as I don’t have equipment to measure. How the two displays resolve fine shadowing (? hard to describe) seems different in terms of what details get shown.

– As to the above I’m not sure if the Dell S2522HG might be slightly sharper? The EX2510 has no sharpness adjustment and I’ve seen some reports of people saying it isn’t sharp. It’s hard to compare as my other displays are all also 1080p but smaller and so inherently sharper. Again there is differently some other visual rendering differences not strictly related to color difference, not sure if this due to the gamma issue and the EX2510 is actually the “correct” one.

As for none visual aspects of the two. The Benq’s joystick control is sturdier, the frame uses more metal, a cover for the cable management, and overall the build feels slightly more quality in that sense. However the Dell otherwise beats it in terms of ergonomics and functionality. The stand and overall footprint is smaller despite the same level of height adjustment, the Dell also has additional pivot and rotate. The Dell has 4 additional buttons with 3 as programmable shortcuts to control the OSD and a software control system. The Benq basically relies on the Joystick entirely. The bezels of the Dell are also smaller, especially the bottom bezel.

As for which one I’d keep? At the moment given the cheaper price I think I’d prefer the Benq as the image quality due to the contrast overall I feel is slightly better. The Dell does have the 240hz selling but again it matches my previous experience in that I get limited usage out of it.

However the problem is my monitor luck (bad) keeps happening and they both need to go back. The Benq is actually visually fairly uniform and acceptable. However it does have a noticeable back light bleed spot, 1 dead pixel, and even worse noticeable scratch (!). The Dell suffers from a notice back light bleed spot as well, and a visually noticeable uniformity issue on the right (this seems really common with me for some reason, that’s 3 out 4 monitors now).

[PCM2]

Thanks for the extensive feedback on the S2522HG and your comparison with the EX2510 – that’s very helpful and a great addition for readers of this thread. I have to say that monitors with very wonky gamma and no options to correct that in the OSD is quite a pet peeve of mine. That was something that plagued some of Dell’s older gaming-oriented S series models like the S2417DG, S2716DG and a lesser extent S2719DGF.

It’s a shame the video doesn’t have autogenerated translated subtitles. Based on the graph the grey line deviates massively from the yellow line – it shows gamma is much too high in most regions, though it seems to crossover so it’s slightly too low for some dark shades. That would make some shades appear too deep and dull, whilst some dark shades are brighter than intended – the overall look that gives would certainly be unbalanced and could mean some shades just don’t stand out in the way they should whilst others just look ‘off’. IIt certainly sounds like a bit of a mixed bag overall and it’s a shame that contrast does seem to be a weakness as well as that gamma curve.

Regarding pixel overdrive, is there any change to the behaviour if you turn Adaptive-Sync (‘FreeSync’ in the OSD) off? And what about at lower refresh rates such as ~100Hz or 60Hz?

[savingstimes]

I forgot to mention something regarding 60hz with respect to Dell S2522HG. It actually has weird behaviour when set to 60hz as the image changes. The colors actually become less saturated and a combination of either the contrast becomes even lower or gamma shifts. This is if the monitor gets set to 60hz. I’m not sure if this behaviour occurs with VRR on as I don’t have a VRR capable GPU at present. This another potential issue with the display.

Another thing related to this is that the S2522HG only has >60hz options listed under “PC” in the Nvidia display panel. While under the “Ultra HD, HD, SD” section it only has 60hz 1080p as the highest. My understanding this can be problematic in terms of PS5 support for 120hz? The Benq EX2510 by comparison, a known PS5 supporting display, only has 1080p 144hz under the PC section. 1080p120hz is a choice in the Ultra HD, HD, SD section, along with options such as 4k 60hz suggesting the monitor is capable of taking a 4k signal and down scaling (2560×1600/1440, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2048×1536).

As for looking response times using the blurbusters UFO ghosting test I did not get the conclusions as the Russian review. My experience aligned with the review here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPN-6EJs3Q4

Extreme had noticeable overshoot even at 240hz. Super fast was slightly clearer than fast, however fast was usable at 240hz.
You have noticeable overshoot at 120hz with Super Fast while this setting is still fine at 144hz.
100hz is not inherently supported, would require a custom resolution so I didn’t test this.
At 60hz only fast did not have noticeable over shoot. Extreme of course had hilariously bad overshoot.
At 50hz not over shoot with fast either.

As far I can tell changing Freesync Premium to on/off doesn’t change anything but my GPU isn’t capable of VRR.

The Benq EX2510
AMA 3 had maybe mild overshoot at 144hz, although I wouldn’t say this would be unusable. This much lower than the S2522HG at it’s overshoot steps.
AMA 2 at 120hz with the same as the above.
AMA 2 at 100hz is when overshoot starts becoming noticeable, although not to the extent I mentioned with S2522HG in it’s steps.
AMA 1 at 60 you can maybe say there is some overshoot occurring? At 50hz it might be noticeable. Although there’s an interesting artifact here in that you can see a slight retention of the UFO in terms of afterimages.

There is no setting in the OSD to enable or disable Freesync premium.

I also noticed the Benq has a gamma setting OSD. Increasing it actually makes it display closer to the Dell S2522HG in terms of that difference I mentioned in the other post. So perhaps, at least partly, what is causing it is the Dell’s off gamma (higher). It kind of matches what those “black equalizers” try to achieve, in that “shadowed” areas essentially show more detail even though perhaps that’s not accurate/intended. The Dell as far as I can tell has no gamma setting in OSD.

[PCM2]

Thanks for testing that and providing further observations. It sounds like the S2522HG has an issue a minority of high refresh rate options do, whereby gamma shifts if you change the (static) refresh rate. Edit: Confirmed as ‘Limited Range RGB’ signal issue instead. In this case it’s mainly too high at higher refresh rates (though too low for dark shades) and lower at reduced refresh rates and presumably quite a bit too low for darker shades. You’re correct that having resolutions listed in the ‘PC’ section rather than ‘TV’ section can be potentially problematic for the PS5 – it means they’re listed in the EDID of the monitor as ‘PC’ rather than ‘TV’ resolutions and they aren’t always accessible to the PS5. In the April 2021 update Sony broadened support for this sort of thing and as I understand it the console can now read these resolutions just fine regardless of how they’re listed. Provided the PS5 is correctly configured. The AW2521HF listed them in the same way and initially didn’t work with the PS5 at 120Hz, but after the April 2021 update this does work. 🙂

It looks as if the S2522HG has a similar overdrive control mechanism to the AW2521HF. If you have VRR active it changes the overdrive behaviour completely so the ‘Extreme’ setting is actually optimal – at least at higher refresh rates where pixel responses are pushed pretty hard without introducing clear overshoot. Without VRR active the settings are far more distinct and the ‘Extreme’ setting is utterly useless with ‘Super Fast’ also quite badly tuned. So my recommendation there is to use ‘Extreme’ if you’re able to maintain high frame rates AND have VRR active. Otherwise stick to ‘Fast’. That seems to hold true for both models here.

[savingstimes]

The 60hz gamma/picture issue was a false alarm. I looked into it further and it appears that “Output Dynamic Range” was being set to limited with “use default color settings” even though everything was greyed out and it showed “full.” This was with a displayport connection. Not sure if this a quirk on the Nvidia GPU side or the monitor side. Changing to “use nvidia color settings” and manually setting out dynamic range to Full made 60hz match 120hz+.

The Benq as far as I can tell doesn’t have the same quirk. It does have an “auto-detect” setting in OSD (by default selected, or you choose 0-255 or 16-235) for PC RGB range.

One additional “pro” for the Dell S2522HG is if paired with a 60hz second monitor and set to 240hz it still enables regular idle (lowest power state on memory clocks) for the GPU. I tested this in particular because the Lenovo Y25-25 I tried a year ago did not allow this and required full memory clocks and from what I understand is not an uncommon issue with higher than 144hz+ (especially at 180hz+) displays in multi monitor configurations. Setting the second display however to 120hz (The Benq) still resulted in full memory clocks.

Circling back to a question I had earlier. The AG coating comparison, with just eyeballing a white explorer window to compare it’s hard to say. I waffle between the two in terms of which is lighter.

This also might just be my imagination but the Dell’s display also seems like it sits very slightly deeper to the actual outer most layer 9surface). Or the Benq’s is closer. Maybe the glass layer is thicker? Not sure if this is something that’s been explored with now common frameless displays.

Let me know if you have any other points you might want to looked out. Otherwise will probably be going to box these up for returns due to the defects. At a bit of a cross roads again on how to proceed from here. I’m even mulling on dropping multimonitor in order to maybe make the Gigabyte M27Q feasible.

[savingstimes]

I’ve given the gamma test on this site a try – https://glennmessersmith.com/images/adjust.htm as I could never figure out the Lagom one.

I’m guessing the Dell‘s gamma is off as you can very clearly see the green, red, blue and white stripes for each column.

The Benq is much fainter, blue is basically invisible (grey throughout).

[PCM2]

Ah yes, I was going to suggest checking the signal was corrected to Full Range RGB. I guess it’s a combination of the monitor and Nvidia driver’s fault as not all models have this issue. For some reason I was mentally picturing 60Hz in the ‘PC’ resolution section even though you specifically said it was listed as ‘Ultra HD, HD, SD’ column (‘TV’ in EDID), unlike higher resolutions. So I neglected to mention it. 😉

My only other question would be how much trailing you see behind the UFO with Test UFO on the S2522HG at 240Hz using the optimal response time setting? What about a lower refresh rate such as 144Hz? Would be curious how it compares, visually, to the best results from the AW2521HF.

[savingstimes]

I’ll give that a deeper test in a few hours. I’ve tried doing pursuit photography manually with the UFO test a few times (including in the past) but wasn’t able to get good results. I only have an older smartphone camera with no shutter speed adjustments (I think it’s fixed at 1/15s). Not sure if you have any tips on that, as I could supply pictures otherwise.

The EX2510 was unlisted from the store so it looks like they’ve cleared out the last of them so an exchange is not an option. The newer EX2510S is quite a bit more expensive (even more than the S2522HG) so won’t be considering that for the time being.

Nvidia has a gamma setting in the control panel. I’m curious if you know what the pitfalls of using that are? I haven’t ruled out going with the S2522HG (well at least an exchanged monitor, since that bleed spot can be seen even at 50% brightness with light color content with lights on in the room) but trying to overcome as many of the “flaws” as possible would help with going that direction. Although the contrast being relatively weak isn’t ideally what I wanted it does have a lot of other good things going for it as well.

[PCM2]

With a smartphone it’s often easiest to take pursuit videos instead, with several ‘swipes’ to track the motion. You can usually find at least one good snapshot from such videos, but it does depend on the phone itself. You could also simply observe the motion with your eyes with Test UFO filling most of the screen. Then have the pursuit images from the AW2521HF review up for reference and compare what you see.

It’s always best to adjust things like gamma on the monitor side if possible (in this case, it isn’t possible). The GPU driver adjustments can affect shade variety (induce banding) and potentially upset contrast. Relatively small adjustments there shouldn’t be an issue and either way it can sometimes be worth it if there’s no other way to achieve the desired image balance. The other issue is that they just displace the curve to the left or right, decreasing or increasing gamma. The issue with the S2522HG seems to be that gamma is too low for the darkest shades and too high elsewhere, so that can’t be corrected with the driver. If you increase the gamma slider (which, counter-intuitively, decreases the gamma value you’d observe or measure) you might be able to correct some shades, but others would go even further in the wrong direction. It doesn’t give you the much finer and more accurate corrections that profiling the monitor would provide.

[savingstimes]

Just found another interesting thing, if you connect to the S2522HG via HDMI then 1080p120hz shows up under the “TV resolutions” instead of “PC.”

I did video pursuit tests at 50hz fast, 60 fast, 120 fast, 120 super fast, 144 fast, 144 super fast, 240 fast, 240 super fast, and 240 extreme –

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/jm81oeag8ljqf/S2522HG_UFO_Test

Likely not the best examples even after multiple attemps, nor helped by an old Nexus 5. I’ll see if I can find a more longer term way to host them if I get some time later. Mediafire was the quickest way I could think of to upload them while retaining the filenames to indicate which picture was which.

One more thing I keep forgetting to mention. The Dell S2522HG has a something like a second or two of interlace pattern artifact? across the whole screen (faint grid lines) when it first powers on whether from off or sleep/standby. This doesn’t happen if you’re switching between refresh rates after the display is already on or between resolutions.

[PCM2]

Thanks for that – don’t worry about the quality, I can still see it’s pretty similar to the AW2521HF using the ‘Fast’ setting which is what I was hoping to see. 🙂 Odd about the ‘interlace pattern artifacts’ when it first powers on, but as long as it quickly disappears and doesn’t occur once it’s on it’s probably normal and nothing to worry about. Maybe it just takes a little while for the voltage to set correctly.

And with the HDMI connection, can you see ‘4k x 2k, 3840 x 2160’ listed in the ‘Ultra HD, HD, SD’ list? This downsampling mode is something the Alienware lacks but can be useful for console usage as it allows the monitor to accept a ‘4K’ signal (as a PC user you can use Nvidia DSR or AMD VSR for this).

[savingstimes]

No 4K options under TV or PC for either HDMI or DP, I looked for that as well. The main change is 120hz gets added to 1080p under the “TV” section and disappears from the PC section. Whereas with DP the TV section only has 1080p60hz. There’s a lot lower resolutions including 1080i options as well, but I didn’t check/compare those, so I don’t now if there are any differences there.

I actually have a usage case on the PC where being able to send a 4K signal might be useful at least down the line. I use Nvidia’s gamestream service, and in theory this would enable streaming to a 4K TV if the monitor can be set to 4K as well. I’m not sure if there’s way on the PC to actually force a monitor to receive a higher resolution but downscale via a custom resolution? I was actually also going to ask in the 1440p thread as well if there are currently any 1440p high refresh displays that can take a 4k120hz signal and not just a 4k60 one, although I don’t think there is.

[Author]

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