Dell Ultra Sharp LED-Lit Monitor 25" Black (U2518D)| 2560 X 1440 at 60 Hz| IPS| Vesa Mount Compatibility

After trying a couple of other monitors with similar specs and having to return them, this monitor turned out to be really great.I was looking for a monitor with 2560x1440 resolution and a smaller screen, for under $300 or so, but there are very few options available. I find having two monitors at 27" just takes up too much desk space, and 23.6" - 24" screens at 1440p leaves on screen elements looking just a bit too small without scaling, which is not preferable. This monitor, at 25", was the perfect screen size and pixel density - surprisingly hard to find.The clarity of everything on screen is great. Everything is sharp and clear without appearing artificially sharpened. The couple of monitors I had tried prior to this had terrible issues with the "rainbow sparkling" of their matte/anti-glare finish, making it extremely difficult to focus on. This monitor does not have that issue at all.Colors appear very deep and rich. The monitor is capable of being very bright. I bought two of these, and they were very slightly different in their color - one naturally more warm, and the other more cool - which was apparent in the gray tone of the OSD menus. It doesn't bother me too much, and I was able to offset the colors so that it is unnoticeable, but it is worth considering if you're particularly set on having multiple monitors be calibrated exactly the same.On both monitors I've bought, the greens needed to be toned down from default settings, but otherwise the colors seem very true. More so than any other monitor I've owned, I feel like I am seeing closer to the full range of values, maintaining an ability to differentiate values in both bright whites and dark blacks.Across both of the monitors that I bought, it does seem consistent that the left side is slightly warmer toned and the right side is slightly bluer toned at the bottom of the screen. I don't find this color shift to be prominent enough to be noticeable in practical usage.I haven't used any features like the Smart HDR, because I generally find that kind of stuff to be gimmicky.No issues with backlight bleeding or anything. There is what feels like a very minimal/acceptable amount, only at the bottom of the screen. Not sure if I got lucky, but it seems that both of the ones I bought have far less than what I've seen pictured in some reviews.On the tearing issue - I have read a lot about this, and it did almost deter me from buying this monitor altogether, but I am glad it didn't. I have a GTX 1070, and have not encountered this issue at all so far. I am not sure if Dell has made any fixes to this in their firmware, but both monitors I bought came with the M2T104 firmware installed. I have only tried these monitors on PC and not on any consoles yet, but I will edit my review if this changes. However, playing a variety of games on PC hasn't made this issue appear yet.This isn't something I was looking for when I bought these monitors, but the adjustable stands are awesome and I generally like the build of the monitor. I always prefer monitors with a flat and rectangular base. The swiveling is convenient and the height adjustability works really well while maintaining sturdiness. I will probably never really use the full ability to rotate the screen, but it's nice to be able to. The monitor has a good amount of options for ports, and the additional USB ports are helpful as well.All around, I feel like these monitors were great quality for the price (I bought for about $300 USD each), and from a couple trials of other monitors in the screen size range of 24-25" and at 1440p in a similar price range, that you wouldn't be able to find much better.

I bought this monitor over a year before writing this review. I use it for hours every day, for my work. I don't game or watch videos on my computer, so my review pertains to people who do a lot of heavy text work - coding, reviewing financials, spreadsheets, etc.I have this monitor daisychained (DisplayPort) from my main monitor, a Dell U3417 (the curved one - you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands, it's so good). This is a side monitor in my multi-monitor setup. It works perfectly in this configuration.For my purposes, lots of small text, it works great. Displaying mostly white (black text on white pages, spreadsheets, etc.) it is excellent. The pixels are small enough that I almost can't see them (and I am VERY picky/scrutinizing). The anti-glare coating adds very minimal gray speckling - to the point it's almost unnoticeable. I have seen many displays (desktop and laptop) where the gray speckling on a white background is distracting and ugly. There is the tiniest bit on this monitor, but totally acceptable even to me.Viewing angle is great. I can look at this monitor from a range of angles and the picture is bright and good.I have it on a VESA monitor arm. That was very easy to do. The stand that comes with it is also really good, one of the best I've seen, which vertical and angle adjustment.The controls are just OK; they are a set of very small buttons on the right side of the bottom edge of the monitor. They're not the best, but hopefully you won't use them often.As with all monitors, the inputs are hard to get to once the monitor is installed. I don't understand why monitor makers are unable to provide clear, large, unambiguous labels on the actual back plate of the monitor, rather than stamped into the metal inside the port aperture, where you have to contort yourself and shine a flashlight onto the metal to try to make out what the port is (e.g. when there are multiple DisplayPort ports). Oh well, as with the monitor controls this should hopefully take minimal time out of your overall use of the monitor.I have had zero problems with this monitor in a year now. No dead pixels, no quality issues, nothing else.For the price, I think it's a good enough monitor that I'm buying a second one to build out my multi-monitor setup.