Dell Alienware AW2723DF Monitor Review

The Dell AW2723DF has a gamer-oriented design with typical Alienware branding throughout. It has a white body in the back with two RGB lighting zones, and there are black accents in front.

The build quality is excellent. The stand supports the screen very well, as there's minimal wobble, and it stays in place when you adjust it. The plastic materials feel good as they're sturdy and don't flex much.

The ergonomics are excellent. You can adjust it in all common ways, which makes it easy to place in an ideal position. The back of the monitor features two RGB lighting zones. You can pass the cables through the stand for cable management, and it has a panel cover too.

The V-shaped stand takes up a lot of space, but at least it holds the display well, and there's minimal wobble.

The housing width and height measurements include the headphone rack that sticks out slightly (0.161", 4.1 mm) and also the joystick that sticks out a bit at the bottom (0.149", 3.8 mm). The headphone rack measures 3.69 inches (9.36 cm) when you pull it out completely.

There's a joystick underneath the center branding to control the on-screen display, and there's a power button on the right side.

• Power cable
• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort cable
• USB-A to USB-B upstream cable
• User guides

The Dell AW2723DF has a mediocre contrast ratio. It means that blacks look gray next to bright highlights, and it isn't ideal for dark room viewing. Although it has a local dimming feature, it doesn't do much to improve the contrast.

This monitor has an edge-lit local dimming feature that performs terribly. Blacks look gray, and when there are bright highlights, an entire zone lights up, resulting in distracting blooming. It isn't so much of an issue with smaller highlights because small objects don't light up zones, and the local dimming remains ineffective. The algorithm is slow to turn the zones on and off, and it's distracting when they do.

It only has 16 dimming zones, which is half of what the Dell Alienware AW2721D has, so it performs worse, and it doesn't do much to improve the picture quality in dark scenes. The local dimming is also only on in the DisplayHDR 600, and you can't disable it. Other HDR modes don't use local dimming, but they aren't as bright.

The SDR peak brightness is great. It gets bright enough to fight glare, and while smaller highlights are dimmer than the rest, the difference isn't noticeable. It doesn't get as bright as the Dell Alienware AW2721D, mainly because you can't enable the local dimming feature in SDR, which you can with the AW2721D.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Custom Color' Picture Mode with the Brightness at its max.

The HDR peak brightness is decent. For the most part, it gets bright enough for highlights to stand out. However, small highlights are dimmer because all the dimming zones remain off with small highlights. The EOTF also follows the target well, except some shadows and midtones are a bit too bright. These results are in the DisplayHDR 600 mode, which automatically locks the brightness and enables local dimming. There are other HDR modes you can use that don't use local dimming, but that means that highlights aren't as bright.

This monitor has a good horizontal viewing angle. The image remains consistent when viewing off-angle, but there's still some color washout and brightness loss at wide angles.

The vertical viewing angle is very good. Once again, the image remains consistent if you're looking down at it, but it isn't perfect.

The gray uniformity is great. The edges are a bit darker than the rest, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, but it's minor and not distracting while you're browsing the web or playing games.

The black uniformity is poor. There's a noticeable backlight bleed throughout, and the image looks bad in dark rooms. The center cross doesn't activate any of the dimming zones, so you can see the same uniformity pictures with a rectangle instead:

• Local Dimming off
• Local Dimming on

The accuracy before calibration is excellent. The built-in 'sRGB' emulation mode does a great job limiting colors to the sRGB color space, so they don't appear oversaturated, and there are no noticeable issues with any color. The white balance is great, but bright shades of gray are a bit off. Gamma follows the sRGB target curve well, ensuring everything is displayed at the correct brightness levels.

The accuracy after calibration to the 6500K white point is fantastic. You won't notice any inaccuracies in the image.

The Dell AW2723DF has an incredible SDR color gamut. It has full coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space used in most web content, and it also has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in some photo editing.

The HDR color gamut is excellent. It has amazing coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, and its tone mapping is also good, meaning you don't lose details with saturated colors. However, it isn't as future-proof because it has limited coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, which more content will start to use, and the tone mapping is bad, resulting in a loss of details with colors outside of its gamut coverage.

The HDR color volume is decent. It can't display dark and bright colors very well, especially in the Rec. 2020 color space.

The text clarity is good. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) also helps make the diagonal lines easier to read. These pictures are with Windows 10, and you can see what it looks like with Windows 11:

• ClearType on
• ClearType off

This monitor has mediocre reflection handling. It struggles to reduce glare when there are bright light sources, and even if it has great SDR peak brightness, it's best to avoid placing it opposite a bright window.

The gradient handling is fantastic. You won't have issues with banding when sending a 10-bit signal, and the monitor can accept a 10-bit signal up to its max refresh rate, but only over DisplayPort.

The Dell AW2723DF has an overclockable 280Hz refresh rate which you can reach with a DisplayPort connection as long as your graphics card supports Display Stream Compression (DSC).

This monitor has decent motion handling across its refresh rate range. There's a bit of motion blur with fast-moving objects, and there's some inverse ghosting at lower refresh rates, but it isn't overly distracting either. All three Response Time overdrive settings perform similarly, and while 'Extreme' is the best at high refresh rates, 'Super Fast' is consistently the best at any refresh rate.

The refresh rate compliance is decent. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full transitions before the monitor draws the next frame with high refresh rates, but it's better at lower refresh rates.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 280Hz is good. Motion looks sharp without much blur. That said, the overdrive settings perform differently if you enable VRR, as it looks much better if you disable VRR altogether. All three overdrive settings perform similarly with VRR enabled, but the 'Extreme' setting has the lowest CAD and best motion handling.

The CAD at 120Hz is decent. There's a bit of blur and inverse ghosting, but it isn't too noticeable either. Unlike at the max refresh rate, the overdrive settings perform similarly with VRR on or off. While disabling VRR results in the best motion, enabling it has minimal difference in terms of motion handling.

The CAD at 60Hz is okay. There's more blur with fast-moving objects than at higher refresh rates, and unlike at 120Hz, the 'Fast' overdrive setting produces the best results, as there's more inverse ghosting with 'Super Fast' and 'Extreme'. This means you may have to change the setting if the frame rate of your game drops or if you change games.

The Dell AW2723DF doesn't have a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor has minimal VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is excellent for gaming.

This monitor is completely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Dell AW2723DF has low input lag for a responsive feel while gaming.

This monitor supports downscaled 4k signals with the PS5 as long as you enable Console Mode on the monitor.

The Dell Alienware AW2723DF supports downscaled 4k signals with Console Mode enabled, which is useful because the Xbox Series X|S only supports HDR with 4k signals.

There are two extra USB ports and the audio port underneath the left side, as you can see here.

You need to connect the USB-B cable to your computer for the USB ports to work.

The Dell AW2723DF works well with macOS, and there aren't any obvious issues with its HDR or VRR support. If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original position when waking up from sleep or closing the lid.

This monitor comes with a few extra features, including:

• AlienVision: Provides a virtual crosshair and 'Night', 'Clear', and 'Chroma' vision modes that adjust the picture to see opponents better. Your system won't detect this, giving you a competitive advantage.
• Console Mode: Optimizes the monitor for use with the PS5 and Xbox Series X as it downscales a 4k image. This results in a sharper image than a native 1440p signal.
• Dark Stabilizer: Adjusts the gamma in dark scenes so that you see opponents better.
• Display Alignment: Displays a virtual grid so that it's easier to line it up with a second monitor.
• Frame Rate Counter: Displays an overlay showing the current frame rate.
• Timer: Displays a virtual timer on the screen.

You can download the AlienFX software to control the RGB lighting, and there are a few options for it directly through the on-screen display. However, there are some issues with the RGB lighting, as it would turn on when we turned the monitor on and off again, even if we had it disabled before. We had to go back into the OSD to turn it off again.