Dell IN1910N review

The Dell IN1910N is an 18.5-inch monitor that's available online for about £90. At that price, it's not surprising that it lacks connection options or any noteworthy features other than VESA mount support. This is a bare-bones, economy-class monitor. It has a wide-screen resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, and games and movies both return disappointing performance on it.

Who forgot the features?
The IN1910N has a glossy black bezel, and the surface of the matte screen itself is slightly frosted. The panel is 20mm deep, but the back of the display, which houses the backlight, connection options and ventilation system, extends another 32mm, bringing the full depth to about 52mm. The panel width is 452mm and the bezel measures 19mm wide on all sides. The flat, circular footstand measures about 201mm in diameter. Wobbling wasn't a problem when we knocked the monitor from the sides.

There are no screen-height-adjustment, swivel or pivot options with this monitor. A 20 degree tilt is the only ergonomic option available. The distance from the bottom of the bezel to the desktop is 70mm. The footstand can be removed and the panel mounted on a wall. It offers as few connection options as possible: VGA is the sole video or data option.

The circular footstand does a good job of keeping the IN1910N steady when it's knocked about

The on-screen display has the label-free design seen on many recent Dell monitors. Four buttons line the lower-right-hand edge of the bezel. Pressing any of the buttons brings up the OSD, which pops up parallel to the button array, and each option corresponds to one of the four buttons. Once a new menu comes up, the function of the buttons changes dynamically, as the top two buttons become the up and down arrow buttons used to navigate through the new menu. Since any button labels for the OSD are actually on the screen -- rather than on the bezel, as with other monitors -- calibrating the display in a dark room is painless.

OSD options include the standard brightness, contrast and various colour options. The presets are separated into two categories: 'graphics' and 'video'. There are six graphics presets to choose from: 'standard', 'multimedia', 'game', 'warm', 'cool' and 'custom'. The video presets are: 'movie', 'game', 'sports', and 'nature'. The presets don't change anything other than the red, green and blue colour balance. Consequently, how well each setting works is subjective. There are options to adjust the hue, sharpness and colour saturation, as well as an additional option for setting the OSD to stay on the screen for up to a minute -- useful for anyone who will spend a good amount of time calibrating.

The IN1910N's 16:9 aspect ratio has a 1,366x768-pixel native resolution. The 16:9 monitor trend currently sweeping the market has given many smaller monitors higher resolutions than they were capable of at 16:10. A 22-incher with a 16:9 aspect ratio now has a potential high-definition, native resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels, as opposed to 1,680x1,050 pixels.

It's all a blur
We tested the IN1910N with its VGA connection under the default standard preset. The display posted a composite score of 79 in CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests. Although the IN1910N's colour is decent, fonts on the display are noticeably blurry. Also, the screen has trouble displaying dark -- and even not so dark -- greys. The IN1910N achieved a brightness score of 174cd/m² -- much less than Dell's claimed 250 maximum.