Dell Alienware AW2725QF  Monitor Review

The Dell AW2725QF has a gaming-oriented design with an all-black plastic body and some branding elements on the bottom bezel and back.

The build quality is great. The plastic materials feel good and don't bend easily. The stand holds the screen well, and it doesn't wobble easily. The bezels are flush with the screen, except for the top one, which has a slight warp to it. The biggest downside is that our unit has about 30 stuck pixels. These are hard to see unless you're looking for them, but they're easier to notice with a dark background, like in our black uniformity photo. We expect this is an issue with our unit, so your experience may vary.

The ergonomics are excellent. It's easy to adjust and the movements feel fluid on the stand. There's a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The Dell Alienware AW2725QF comes with a hexagon-based stand, so you can only place your keyboard flush with it if you have it on an angle. As the stand has a tilt, the total thickness changes depending on the height setting. The measurement is at the lowest height setting, and the thickness at the highest setting is 7.0 inches (17.8 cm). 

There's a headphone hook on the left side, which measures 3.7 inches (9.3 cm) when extended.

There's a joystick to control the OSD underneath the bottom bezel and a power button on the right side.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-A to USB-B cable
• Power cable
• Alienware sticker
• User guides

The Dell AW2725QF has a mediocre contrast ratio. Blacks look gray next to bright highlights, and the edge-lit local dimming feature fails to improve the contrast.

The local dimming feature is terrible. It has 24 edge-lit zones and automatically turns on in HDR, with no way to disable it. It fails to improve the black levels in content, as all the zones are on most of the time. When any zone turns off, there's a ton of haloing around bright objects. This happens with subtitles, making them distracting to read, but all the zones stay off when there's a small, bright object against a dark background, causing a loss of details. While the algorithm keeps up with fast-moving content well, and zone transitions are smooth, the overall performance of the local dimming feature is so bad that it's better to keep the monitor in SDR to avoid using it.

Settings

• Preset Mode: Custom Color (after calibration)
• Brightness: 100 (max)

The SDR brightness is great. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most well-lit rooms and maintains its brightness consistently across different content.

Settings

• Smart HDR: Custom Color HDR
• Brightness: Locked to max
• Local Dimming: Locked on

The HDR brightness is good. Using HDR automatically enables local dimming and locks the brightness to the max, neither of which you can change. The monitor gets bright enough to fight glare, but small highlights are muted due to the local dimming feature. The brightness is more consistent with larger highlights, but highlights don't pop for an impactful HDR experience.

On the plus side, it has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking, and besides raised blacks in dark scenes, it displays most content at the brightness that the creator intended. It also has a sharp cut-off, allowing your source to perform any tone mapping. The PQ EOTF is the same in other picture modes, including if you use the Source Tone Mapping setting.

The gray uniformity is good. The edges are darker than the rest, and this is the same even with darker gray. However, there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is disappointing. There's clouding and backlight bleed in SDR, and switching to HDR enables the local dimming feature, which causes a ton of haloing.

You can also see the stuck/dead pixels in these images, but these are hard to notice unless you have a dark background.

The color accuracy before calibration in the 'sRGB' mode is fantastic. You can access this mode with the 'Creator' Preset Mode. There are minimal inaccuracies, but it isn't perfect, as there are white balance issues and the color temperature is on the cold side. Most colors are accurate, though, and gamma tracking is fantastic.

Using the 'sRGB' mode locks the Gain, Offset, Hue, and Saturation settings. You'd have to use another, less accurate mode if you want access to those settings.

The accuracy after calibration is superb. Calibrating it fixes the issues with the 'sRGB' mode and gives you access to all settings.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. It displays all colors in the sRGB color space, although blue is slightly undersaturated. It also displays a wide range of colors in the Adobe RGB color space, but oversaturates red and undersaturates green. That said, you may be able to fix this with a color-managed app.

The HDR color gamut is great. It displays a wide range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space, with minimal inaccuracies, but it undersaturates green. It has more limited coverage in Rec. 2020, though, as it undersaturates most of that color space.

The HDR color volume is very good. It displays most colors, but struggles with really bright and really dark colors.

The horizontal viewing angle is okay. Although the screen gets darker and washes out at really wide angles, it's still fine for sharing the screen with someone sitting next to you.

The text clarity in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode is fantastic. Letters are sharp and text is easy to read, especially if you're using Windows ClearType (top photo). However, text looks worse if you're using the 1080p Dual-Resolution mode, but it's still fine enough to read text in games.

You can see more text clarity settings with different settings and operating systems below:

The direct reflection handling isn't bad. Despite having a matte coating that spreads some light out, it still has mirror-like reflections.

The monitor does an excellent job of keeping consistent black levels in bright rooms, but because it has a low contrast ratio, blacks still look gray.

The Dell AW2725QF has distracting reflections in bright rooms, especially if you place it opposite a sunny window.

The gradient handling is superb, and there's almost no banding between shades of similar color.

Although the native refresh rate is 165Hz with a 4k resolution and 330Hz with a 1080p resolution, there's an Overclock setting to boost it to 170Hz, 175Hz, and 180Hz in 4k and 340Hz, 350Hz, and 360Hz in 1080p. You can reach 360Hz in 1080p with 10-bit signals over both DisplayPort and HDMI connections.

The Dell AW2725QF also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The Dell AW2725QF has great motion handling across its VRR range. The 'Super Fast' Response Time setting has the best motion handling across the VRR range, but it has some inverse ghosting as the refresh rate drops. The 'Extreme' setting has terrible motion handling in the 4k and 1080p modes above 165 fps with noticeable inverse ghosting. 

For the most part, the overdrive settings perform the same in the 4k and 1080p modes. However, Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) kicks in earlier in the 1080p mode, so the screen is refreshing at 120Hz with 60 fps content in the 1080p mode when you start at a higher frame rate and drop down using VRR.

The refresh rate compliance is good. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame at high frame rates. However, it's much better at 60 fps. The 'Fast' and 'Super Fast' settings perform similarly, but 'Extreme' is much worse above 165 fps, as explained in VRR Motion Performance.

The CAD at 180Hz in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode is very good. Motion looks sharp with the 'Super Fast' Response Time setting, and it looks even better in the 1080p Dual-Resolution mode at 360Hz. Unlike with other Dell monitors, motion handling is the same whether you have VRR enabled or not. Unfortunately, in both Dual-Resolution modes, the 'Extreme' setting has a ton of overshoot.

The CAD at 120Hz is good. Motion looks sharp for the most part, but there's still some blur. The 'Super Fast' setting has a bit more blur than the 'Fast' setting, but it's still the recommended setting. This is because 'Fast' has inverse ghosting that appears inconsistently at this refresh rate, whereas 'Super Fast' is more consistent at all times.

The CAD at 60Hz is good. There's persistence blur and some inverse ghosting with the 'Super Fast' setting, but it isn't too distracting either. Interestingly, the 'Fast' overdrive setting has more inverse ghosting than 'Super Fast' and 'Extreme.' If you use a fixed 60Hz signal, whether you have VRR enabled or not, motion handling is the same in the 4k and 1080p Dual-Resolution modes.

The Dell AW2725QF doesn't have a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The Dell AW2725QF has a bit of VRR flicker with changing frame rates in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode. While it isn't as bad as what the score suggests, you can see it more in person than in the video. That said, it's minimal in dark scenes and not distracting. However, there's more flicker in the 1080p Dual-Resolution mode due to the larger refresh rate range. You can see the results below:

The Dell AW2725QF doesn't use pulse-width modulation and the backlight is flicker-free.

The Dell AW2725QF has low input lag for a responsive feel. These results are in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode, and the results are the same in the 1080p Dual-Resolution mode. The input lag at 360Hz is 2.6 ms.

This monitor works perfectly with the PS5. It supports any signal whether you have Console Mode enabled or not, but you need to be in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode.

The Dell AW2725QF supports any signal with an Xbox Series X|S, including Dolby Vision. It supports any signal whether you have Console Mode enabled or not, but you need to be in the 4k Dual-Resolution mode. As the Xbox doesn't support HDR with 1080p and 1440p signals, this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

Without a 3.5 mm audio jack, you can't connect headphones directly to the monitor, but it supports ARC/eARC.

The USB-C port and one USB-A port are underneath the bottom bezel, making them easier to access.

Tested with: M2 MacBook Pro (Sequoia 15.5)

This monitor works well with macOS. There aren't any connection issues over DisplayPort or HDMI in either of the Dual-Resolution modes. That said, HDR looks a bit undersaturated compared to SDR, but the 'Desktop,' 'Custom Color HDR,' and 'DisplayHDR 600' modes look closest to a MacBook display in terms of accuracy.

If you're using a MacBook over a DisplayPort to USB-C connection or over HDMI and close the lid, without the MacBook plugged into power, the monitor goes to sleep. If the MacBook is plugged into power, you can continue using the monitor with the laptop's lid closed. Opening the lid or waking the laptop up from sleep causes windows to return to their original positions.

Besides the Dual-Resolution mode, the Dell AW2725QF has a few extra features, including:

• AlienVision: Allows for customizable crosshairs.
• AlienFX Lighting: Controls the monitor's RGB lighting on the back.
• Console Mode: Gives the best compatibility with consoles.
• Dark Stabilizer: Raises the black levels so it's easier to see opponents.
• Game Enhance Mode: Includes gaming-specific options such as Timer, Frame Rate, and Display Alignment.

You can learn more about the OSD in the user manual.