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. The modest color space coverage of the Alienware 25 comes through in our 4K Costa Rica test video. The greens of plants and frogs look natural and reasonably well-saturated, but they could have appeared a bit more vivid. Details are sharp, and action is smooth, but colors aren’t quite as rich or as vibrant as they could have been with proper HDR processing, or simply a wider color gamut (like on the also-HDR-less Alienware 34). 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. Note that there is always some disparity between how emissive objects (monitor) and non-emissive objects (printed sheet) appear. The representation of shades in this image depends on the camera and your own screen, it’s not designed to show exactly how the shades appear in person. It still helps demonstrate some of the relative differences between the original intended sRGB shade and what the monitor outputs, however. Full profiling and appropriate colour management on the application would provide a tighter match, our intention here is to show what can be expected in a non colour-managed environment.

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. 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). Neither of these Alienware models have screen curvature, but the AW2518HF is not ideal for sharing, which is an issue that the AW2521HF ignores completely. at 24.5 inches is on the small and low-res side, but again, the monitor is designed for competitive esports gaming, where you want to be able to see the entire screen without darting your eyes around. The lower 1080p resolution ensures you can push as many frames as possible to reach that super-fast refresh rate, so while it isn't ideal for desktop work, it's all your graphics card can probably handle for gaming this smooth. And if you can't quite hit 360Hz, G-Sync is there to ensure you don't get any stutter or screen tearing.On Battlefield V the monitor provided a very fluid experience, where the frame rate kept pace with the 240Hz refresh rate. Compared to at 60Hz, or indeed a 60Hz monitor, you’re getting up to 4 times as much visual information pumped out every second. And twice as much when compared to 120Hz or 1.67 times as much compared to 144Hz. This gives an excellent ‘connected feel’, which describes the precision and fluidity felt when interacting with your character and the game world. The very low signal delay of this model also aided the ‘connected feel’, but the very high frame and refresh rate combination also helped. The perceived blur due to eye movement was also greatly reduced, much as demonstrated with the pursuit photos earlier on. The improvement in ‘connected feel’ and reduction in perceived blur was still noticeable to us and would be to sensitive users going up from 144Hz to 240Hz. Although not nearly as pronounced or obvious as stepping up from 60Hz to 144Hz (or even 120Hz).

My current Brightness setting on the monitors display settings is 90% and the contrast is set to 96%. The price should be the same for both models, though it can vary depending on your region. Price & Similar Monitors 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. It can also only reach 81.1% of the cinema-focused DCI-P3 color space. This isn't particularly high, and can result in dull colors when watching movies. Moving on, the Dell AW2521HF has a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, which results in a decent pixel density on its 24.5″ viewable screen. You get 90 pixels per inch, which makes for sharp details and a good amount of screen space.In case you just want to run your monitor at a fixed 240Hz refresh rate or with FreeSync/G-SYNC, the Dell AW2521HF will do just fine! This is also why TN monitors were almost exclusively used by competitive gamers and tournament organizers alike, as these panels are known to display the least amount of input lag, and have some of the fastest response times when compared to their early IPS or VA counterparts. However, as monitor technology has advanced, these shortcomings have been expiated to a considerable degree with the release of fast IPS, SS IPS, and SVA panels.

For more information, be sure to visit our comprehensive and always up-to-date best gaming monitor buyer’s guide. Conclusion Now, the specified response time speed is 1ms (GtG – gray to gray pixel transition) when using the ‘Extreme’ overdrive mode, 2ms with ‘Super Fast,’ and 4ms with ‘Fast.’ I've bought the monitor couple of days ago and so far I am enjoying it. I've tried finding the best OSD/calibration settings online but pretty much everywhere I see information about the older TN version of the monitor. I am hoping that other users that have the IPS AW2521HF will share some opinions about the best settings that work for them. 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. IPS glow’ eats away at detail, particularly near bottom corners. Screen surface imparts a bit of graininess to lighter contentStrong colour consistency and slight extension beyond sRGB, giving a ‘rich and natural’ image without potentially overbearing saturation Also of equal caliber are the peak brightness levels that these Alienware variants are capable of. Though neither of the two support HDR, both exhibit an impressively high SDR peak brightness level that exceed 400 nits. According to Tom’s Hardware the AW2518HF was able to reach a peak brightness level of 418.6 cd/m 2, while according to Rtings.com the AW2521HF exhibited an SDR Real Scene peak brightness level of 406 cd/m 2.

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) 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. The Lagom text appeared a blended grey throughout, with a slight red hue to the striping of the text. There were no clear flashes of saturated red, orange or green or shifts between these with a bit of head movement. This indicates a low viewing angle dependency to the gamma curve of the monitor, typical for an IPS-type panel. Alienware claims 1ms grey-to-grey response time, but there are numerous ways to fudge this spec, so it's mostly meaningless – real-world testing is far more revealing of a monitor's capabilities in this realm. Nvidia also offers its Reflex Analyzer built in to the monitor – we've dug deep into this feature before, so I won't rehash that here, but suffice to say it's a cool feature that helps you cut down on input lag, however marginal the improvements may be. Alienware AW2521H – Testing Decided to post this here since I struggled with how flat the colors and contrast looked. Hopefully anyone else experiencing this issue can use these settings and achieve similar results. Let me know if you try these and if you love or hate them.Intended as a Low Blue Light (LBL) setting, but very ineffective. The colour temperature is warmer by default but the blue channel remained strong on our unit and green channel very strong. This gave an unbalanced image with clear green tint, without achieving its key goal.