Dell’s 24in 2407FPW LCD won a very rare Excellence award back in June 2006 and went on to win our Editorial ‘Most Wanted Hardware’ award for 2006. Needless to say, we were very keen see its new big brother, the 27in 2707WFP.

The first thing you notice is the impressive design. The bezel, back and trim is brushed metal while the stand and sides have a quality, piano-black finish. It swivels 40 degrees each way and rises 10cm too. Features include a memory card reader (all formats but xD) and a four-port USB hub. Video connectivity options include DVI, VGA, component, S-Video and composite.

It gets very bright thanks to a 450cd/m2 brightness rating and we were expecting a great tonal range thanks to the 1000:1 contrast ratio. It excelled In our DisplayMate Multi­media Edition technical tests. We had no problem with pixel timing or colour purities. A black screen showed virtually zero leakage from the back light. In the ‘white-level saturation’ test it showed all 254 out of 255 shades of light-grey/white and then matched this feat in the ‘dark-level adjustment’ test by showing all 254 dark-grey shades before turning black – one of the best contrast performances we’ve ever seen. This was reflected in our real-world movie and game tests where detail was retained in both bright and dark areas.

Colour blending was excellent with our colour ramps showing only very slight stepping in white, green and dark red areas. But, again, it’s one of the best performances we’ve ever seen from an LCD. All colours merged beautifully in our colour spectrum test though yellow was slightly dominated by surrounding orange and green.

Our digital photos looked great and professional photographers will find it great for retouch work. Our HD movies looked brilliant too – although you can just make out the extra grain from having the native 1920 x 1200 widescreen resolution stretched three inches more than its 24in brethren.

Being somewhat picky, the OSD is a bit fiddly, but that’s the only downside.

All in all we found 27in just a little too large for day to day office use – 24in seems optimal here as you have to move your neck for 27in displays. But the extra three inches enhances games and movies. If that’s your thing, then the $1699 price tag makes this a bargain and Dell’s 15-day satisfaction guarantee and three year onsite warranty ices a top-quality cake.