Features

The Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP includes an abundance of connection options. For video connections, you'll find a VGA, two DVI, an HDMI, a DisplayPort, component, and composite ports. There's also a speaker port, four USB ports (plus one upstream USB port), and a media card reader for Compact Flash and SD formats. That's certainly a long list of connections, but if we're being greedy, we would have liked to have seen an optical audio out connection. Compared with the lower priced Gateway FHD2400 we reviewed recently and praised for its connection options, the Dell surpasses it in the variety and volume of connection options. In particular, the extra DVI port and the DisplayPort are valuable extras if you want to connect the display to a media center or high-end PC.
The Dell has a Dynamic Contrast of 3000:1. This means--according to Dell--that the blacks the display outputs are three times darker than the whites are when viewing dark scenes. To get that kind of contrast ratio the display powers down its backlight in dark scenes, so that the blacks are very dark. This also means that if the dark scene in question contains areas of bright light, the light may be sacrificed as the backlight does not have the power to represent it accurately. Basically, Dynamic Contrast is just a marketing term and, for now, there is no independent standard for measuring it, so it should not be considered when making a buying decision. We felt the display was capable of dark blacks, but they could have been a bit darker. The whites were as bright as any we've seen in a recent display.