The monitor includes a range of ‘Preset Modes’; ‘Standard’, ‘FPS’, ‘MOBA/RTS’, ‘RPG’, ‘SPORTS’, ‘Game 1’, ‘Game 2’, ‘Game 3’, ‘ComfortView’, ‘Warm’, ‘Cool’ and ‘Custom Color’. The numbered ‘Game’ presets and ‘Custom Color’ are most flexible as they allow you to adjust the colour channels and saturation levels. The remaining presets make specific adjustments to those and can’t be manually altered. The numbered ‘Game’ presets can have unique ‘Brightness’ and ‘Contrast’ levels assigned to them as well, whereas this is set universally for the remaining presets. Many of the presets make further adjustments, such as ‘FPS’, ‘MOBA/RTS’, ‘RPG’ and ‘SPORTS’ adding a sharpness filter which can’t be disabled or counteracted effectively in the OSD aside from by selecting a different preset. These were briefly explored in the OSD video, but for the purposes of this table we’ll be looking at manual adjustments and settings we feel have more utility.

Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell Support for Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell

Should you want to dispense with the stand and use your own (or wall mount it) that’s possible, too, since the screen has VESA standard 100mm mounting points but it would be a shame to miss out on such a stylish stand. Dell claims the Alienware 25 can hit up to 99% of the sRGB color space. It comes close in our tests, but in Standard mode, the monitor only reaches 96.8% of the gamut, as shown in the sRGB color-space diagram below... At 60Hz, above, the UFO appears soft without sharp focus or clear internal detailing. This reflects a moderate amount of perceived blur due to eye movement and is something shared with the reference screen. There is various degrees of trailing behind the UFOs due to pixel response time weaknesses. In this case, overshoot (inverse ghosting) including some colourful bright ‘halo’ trailing due to aggressive pixel overdrive. The ‘Fast’ setting only showed a relatively small amount of this, whilst the ‘Super Fast’ and ‘Extreme’ settings ramped this up. ‘Extreme’ in particular showed very strong and eye-catching overshoot. ‘VRR off’ did not significantly affect the pixel response behaviour at this refresh rate. The ‘Fast’ setting was quite close to the reference here, with slightly stronger but still by no means extreme overshoot. We therefore consider ‘Fast’ the optimal setting at 60Hz. The image below shows how things look with refresh rate bumped up to 144Hz. Finally, note again that you can go to ‘Game Enhance Mode’ in the ‘Game’ section of the OSD to activate the ‘Frame Rate’ feature. This displays the current refresh rate of the monitor and will reflect the frame rate if it’s within the main variable refresh rate window (e.g. 80 – 240fps). The high refresh rate and frame rate combination can be particularly attractive for competitive gamers, but also appreciated by fans of less competitive fast-paced action. The Dell Alienware AW2521HF (now designated AW2521HFA in UK and EU) aims to find a nice balance between speed and image quality, combining a 240Hz refresh rate with the superior colour quality of an IPS-type panel. Adaptive-Sync support is included, allowing AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia’s ‘G-SYNC Compatible Mode’ to be used. We put this monitor through its paces, seeing how it compares to the more common TN options such as the impressively responsive Acer XN253Q X.It's definitely better than trying to fiddle with its Custom Colour preset, if only because each of its three Gamer profiles give you exactly the same level of control over its dozens of colour options. They're not particularly user-friendly, all told, and Alienware could probably do with chopping a lot of them to make the onboard menu settings easier to understand. Whereas most gaming monitors just give you easy RGB bars to adjust up and down, the AW2521HFL splits them into Gain, Offset, Hue and Saturation, and it's not immediately obvious which settings do what if you don't already know what those individual terms actually mean. Then again, my attempts at calibrating the Gamer preset to try and improve things further didn't actually yield the results I wanted (everything actually got a little worse), so they're probably best left alone anyway. The Alienware AW2521HFL has three main display outputs: two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2 output. We created out own LBL setting as described below. This provides effective blue light reduction and can easily be assigned to a numbered ‘Game’ preset for easy activation and deactivation. More importantly, though, the colour accuracy of AW2521HFL's IPS panel also leaves a lot to be desired compared to its AOC rival. Whereas my X-Rite DisplayPro i1 colour calibrator showed the AOC C27G2ZU was already showing a near perfect 99% of the sRGB colour gamut straight out of the box on maximum brightness, the AW2521HFL only returned a rather sub-par coverage score of 90.9% when I tested it on its default Standard preset. I'd normally expect an IPS panel to hit around 96% of the sRGB colour gamut, but this was more in line with what I'd expect from a good TN panel.

Support for Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFLA - Dell

Slight deviation from preferred ‘2.2’ gamma, without gamma settings in OSD. Some would prefer a wider gamut for extra vibrancy It's not just colour settings you get on the AW2521HFL, though. There are also specific Sharpness, Response Time and Dark Stabilizer settings, the latter of which artificially brightens the screen to help you spot things in the shadows. It's a feature often touted as a 'must-have' for competitive multiplayer games to give you that extra 'edge' online - especially when said games are often the ones that can make the most of the AW2521HFL's 240Hz refresh rate. However, I found that the screen's regular peak brightness and accompanying contrast ratio from the Gamer preset was more than enough to help me see everything that I needed to in-game. The average contrast ratio with only brightness adjusted was 1054:1, a hair above the specified 1000:1 and as expected for the panel. With our ‘Test Settings’ we recorded a perfectly respectable 1063:1. The highest contrast ratio recorded on the table was 1107:1, using ‘Custom Color’ with all colour channels at their neutral position of ‘100’. The lowest contrast ratio recorded was 831:1, following the significant adjustments made for our ‘Relaxing evening viewing’ settings. The maximum luminance recorded in this table was 427 cd/m², whilst the minimum white luminance recorded was 33 cd/m². This yielded a 394 cd/m² luminance adjustment range with a good bright maximum and dim minimum. The Alienware AW2521HFL offers 99% sRGB and around 82% DCI-P3 coverage so the screen is pleasantly vibrant with a balanced level of saturation. Its measured accuracy has a 1.56 delta average which is excellent for a gaming monitor and considerably better than the AW2521HF’s result. Do take note that color accuracy scores always vary between every unit due to manufacturing tolerances, explaining the massive difference between the two identical models. The image appears ‘rich and natural’ overall, with good variety. The gamma is slightly below target, brightening up some shades just a little, but the overall image balance is very respectable.Similar to above, as with ‘Game 2’ and ‘Game 3’. Greater flexibility offered in the OSD than the ‘Standard’ setting. Input lag is where the Alienware 25 really shines, as it should in a gaming monitor. Using an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix, we measured a 4.1-millisecond input lag on a 60Hz signal, which means an input lag of just over 1ms at 240Hz. That makes the Alienware 25 the fastest gaming monitor we’ve tested to date. The best thing about the Alienware AW2521HFL is its strong performance in motion handling. The monitor offers excellent control over blurring and ghosting which makes it great for fast-paced competitive titles. This model also has three overdrive settings to further clean up its image output, but we recommend staying with the Fast level.

Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell Support for Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor AW2521HFL - Dell

With a gaming monitor there are two key strands to image quality. Overall picture quality, which takes into account such elements as colour accuracy, contrast ratio, brightness and so on; and responsiveness, which is the chief concern of gamers. Full HD resolution is quite limiting in some respects, stand reasonably deep which could be an issue if you have a shallow desk (VESA mounting is an option) On Shadow of the Tomb Raider things were also presented in a rich and natural way. The environments looked in-place, with good variety and some good earthy browns and rich green shades. Some of the deep greens weren’t as lush as they could be, nor were things like bright purple flowers, red painted artifacts and some of Lara’s ornate dresses as eye-catching as we’ve seen. But they were still closer to the ‘vibrant’ vs. ‘washed out’ end of the spectrum in our view. Lara’s skin also appeared much as it should, without the overly tanned appearance that a wider gamut would provide. The strong consistency was also very evident when considering Lara’s glowing and all-too-perfect complexion. Even the best VA performers show quite pronounced shifts in saturation for such pastel shades when they’re shown towards peripheral sections of the screen rather than centrally. TN models show obvious saturation shifts vertically. In this case appropriate richness and saturation was maintained throughout. Strong colour consistency and slight extension beyond sRGB, giving a ‘rich and natural’ image without potentially overbearing saturationWarmer than factory defaults, but far from ‘Warm’ on our unit with a high colour temperature and cool tint to the image. Strong pixel responsiveness overall, low input lag and Adaptive-Sync working well with both our AMD and Nvidia GPU

Alienware AW2521HFA 24.5 Inch Full HD (1920x1080) Gaming

The image below is a macro photograph taken on Notepad with ClearType disabled. The letters ‘PCM’ are typed out to help highlight any potential text rendering issues related to unusual subpixel structure, whilst the white space more clearly shows the actual subpixel layout alongside a rough indication of screen surface. This model uses a ‘regular’ (medium) matte anti-glare surface. Strong glare-handling is provided due to significant diffusion of ambient light. This diffusion also affects light emitted from the monitor, with a negative impact on the clarity and vibrancy potential of the screen. The screen surface has a bit of graininess to it when observing lighter shades, a very slightly ‘sandy’ look to it, if you like. It doesn’t show strong graininess or a heavily smeared appearance, however. The surface texture is quite similar if not a touch lighter than the surface texture used on most high refresh rate ~24” Full HD TN models. A sensitive camera and a utility called SMTT 2.0 was used assess the latency of the Dell Alienware AW2521HF. Over 30 repeat readings were taken to help maximise accuracy. Using this method, we calculated 2.63ms (under 2/3rds of a frame at 240Hz) of input lag. At 60Hz we measured a slightly higher but still reasonable 6.47ms. This figure is influenced both by the element of input lag you ‘see’ (pixel responsiveness) and the element you ‘feel’ (signal delay). It indicates a very low signal delay at 240Hz which even sensitive users shouldn’t find bothersome. Note that we have no way to accurately measure input lag with Adaptive-Sync active in a variable refresh rate and frame rate environment. A ‘gamery’ but in our view tasteful aesthetic, good ergonomics, competitive pricing and a relatively easy to drive resolution The monitor produced most shades here quite faithfully, accounting for the natural differences related to emissive vs. non-emissive objects noted above. Some shades appear a touch oversaturated due primarily to the slight extension in the gamut, the most noticeable being dark lime green (18) which appeared a touch more ‘neon’. On models with a significantly wider gamut, this shade and candy apple red (14), to name but a few, tend to look significantly more ‘neon’ than they appear here. Candy apple red appeared with a bit of an orange-red tone due to extension in the red to green edge of the gamut. Some shades, such as cerulean (2) and lilac (8), appear somewhat undersaturated. Gamboge (23) verged too much on a mustard yellow without a suitably warm golden hue, too. Medium orange (3), Persian pink (6) and looked slightly undersaturated in person, but they appear much less saturated and overly bright in the image compared to how they actually looked on the monitor. The consistency is also very good in most cases, superior to VA models and far superior to TN models (references here). Aquamarine (4) is particularly good at highlighting this relative strength. Medium chocolate brown (24) is also good for highlighting colour consistency, which like Aquamarine is positioned at the extremities of the screen. Medium chocolate brown and some neighbouring shades appear a touch more saturated and warmer in tone on the AW2521HF when displayed at the bottom vs. top of the screen. But this is due more to uniformity on our sample than viewing angle behaviour. Although this won’t correct uniformity issues, profiling the monitor with your own colorimeter or spectrophotometer is always advised for best results if the strongest colour accuracy is desired. All that being said, if gaming is where your priorities lie, then the AW2521HF is a great choice. It’s fast and responsive, and is compatible with both AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia’s G-Sync technologies for tear-free gaming, which is a sensible move if you own a card from one manufacturer and think you might switch allegiance sometime in the future.The monitor also includes a Low Blue Light (LBL) setting called ‘ComfortView’. It’s important to reduce blue light exposure in the hours leading up to sleep, as it’s stimulating to the body and affects sleep hormones. Whilst this setting did tone down the blue channel from the factory defaults and reduce blue light output as a result, it was far from an effective LBL setting. At least on our unit, where the default colour temperature was far too high. It also imparted an obvious green tint, with a relatively strong green channel. This is quite common on LBL settings as reducing the green channel negatively impacts contrast, but in this case it was rather noticeable and you were left with a warmish but very green image. Almost alien-like, you could say. Calibrating the monitor will yield a very low deltaE average of only 0.54 which is very close to the result found on the Alienware AW2521HF. However, not all have access to a colorimeter, so we recommend using the custom color preset and tweaking the screen to your liking instead. The added cost of the gadget will make the total cost of your upgrade even higher, so it’s not worth it. The AW2521HFL has one key advantage over the AOC, and that's the size of its panel. Both monitors have a resolution of 1920x1080, but the Alienware's smaller 25in screen means it looks much sharper than its 27in rival. I've always said that 1920x1080 stretched across a 27in screen isn't ideal, as while it's fine for games, it's just not quite good enough for everyday desktop tasks such as browsing the web or typing up documents. Text looks distinctly hazy and pixellated on a 27in 1920x1080 display, and I always feel like my eyes are having to work harder when I do anything other than playing games on these screens. The video below shows the monitor in action. The camera, processing done and your own screen all affect the output – so it doesn’t accurately represent what you’d see when viewing the monitor in person. It still provides useful visual demonstrations and explanations which help reinforce some of the key points raised in the written piece. As shown in the image above, the monitor uses the usual RGB (Red, Green and Blue) stripe subpixel layout. This is the default expected by modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS. As a Windows user you don’t need to run through the ClearType wizard, although you may still wish to adjust this according to your preferences. As a Mac user there’s no need to worry about text fringing from non-standard subpixel layouts. The subpixel layout and arrangement is normal and we had no subpixel-related concerns related to sharpness or text clarity on this model.