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Strengths: Price ($760.00 from Dell), bright display, onboard power supply, onboard USB hub, consistent colors, no perceptible "artifacting", dual analog VGA and digital DVI input(s).
Weaknesses: on-screen controls, high native resolution, required tweaking to get the best picture.
Summary: On-screen controls could be just a little more intuitive. I did like the auto-adjust feature though! It did a good job of centering and sizing the picture to take full advantage of the monitor's 18.1" span. I had to tinker around with the monitor brightness/contrast and windows video driver settings to get the best picture. This monitor seems to do better with the windows video driver "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts" feature turned OFF and the driver refresh rate set to 60 Hz. Display yields best (i.e. clear) performance at the native 1280x1024 resolution however, most people would probably use a lower resolution (say about 1024x768). Picture is still very good at that resolution though. Brightness was no problem; I actually had to turn it down! The speakers included in this monitor are best used only to augment other (larger) speakers for serious sound. The only problem I even noticed was some slight residual white illumination around the edges of the screen anytime the screen went completely black (i.e. before a game starts, before windows starts, etc). Eventually, I will get a digital DVI-output video card; I wonder how that will improve the display of this Planar 18.1" monitor!
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