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OSD Setup & Calibration
You access the full OSD with the third control key from the left. Icons pop up above the keys to denote their navigation functions.
First up is the luminance menu, which contains only Brightness and Contrast sliders. Light output covers a wide range from 29 to 342cd/m2. With 100 steps available, control is a bit coarse for our taste. Contrast comes out of the box set too high which causes some gamma issues and clipping of highlight detail. We’ll show you those results and how to fix the problem on page four.
After the input selector comes the Color menu. There are six preset modes and a Custom settings memory. That is the only slot that allows a white balance calibration. The other modes leave brightness and contrast available, but you can’t control color. Selecting Custom takes you right to the RGB sliders which start at 100%. We didn’t have to make too many changes to achieve accurate results, and no contrast is lost from the calibration.
In the Display menu, we found the Response Time option introduced visible ghosting, so we left it off in favor of the overclocked 165Hz refresh rate. The panel’s native rate is 144Hz, but our sample came set to 165Hz from the factory and worked perfectly without issue. You can adjust the maximum speed with an included slider.
To use the ULMB (blur-reduction) feature, you’ll have to turn off G-Sync in the Nvidia Control Panel and throttle the refresh rate back to 120Hz or lower. Since a backlight strobe is now in effect, light output is reduced by 56% and contrast drops a bit as well. There is a 100-step pulse width slider to control brightness, and that 56% value represents the highest possible output. We’d rather stick with G-Sync and a high refresh rate to smooth things out. ULMB requires a few too many sacrifices. The good part is you can adjust brightness independently when it’s on. If you turn the backlight up all the way, it hits 150cd/m2 in ULMB mode, which is perfectly acceptable.
The volume control affects both the speakers and the headphone output jack on the side. Turning it up to maximum introduces some distortion, so you might want to back off just a bit to keep the audio clear. OSD options include eight languages, transparency, and a timeout of up to 60 seconds.
The first and second OSD keys can be programmed to directly access the Preset Modes, Brightness/Contrast, Input, or Volume. This means fewer trips to the main menu for commonly-used functions. There is no info screen here, but you may have noticed in the photos that the input resolution, refresh rate, and mode (G-Sync, Normal, or ULMB) is displayed at the bottom of every sub-menu.
Calibration
The S2417DG comes set to its Standard picture mode and that provides a reasonably accurate image with neutral whites and vivid color. The main issue is with gamma, which is far too light in the higher brightness range and therefore clips detail. Reducing the Contrast control will pretty much eliminate the error. Further gains can be found in the Custom Color mode where a set of RGB sliders allowed us to achieve pro-level grayscale accuracy. Please give our suggested settings a try.
| Dell S2417DG Calibration Settings | |
|---|---|
| Picture Mode | Custom Color |
| Brightness 200cd/m2 | 66 |
| Brightness 120cd/m2 | 34 |
| Brightness 100cd/m2 | 27 |
| Brightness 80cd/m2 | 19 |
| Brightness 50cd/m2 | 8 |
| Contrast | 68 |
| White Balance | Red 96, Green 99, Blue 100 |
