Dell Alienware AW3821DW Monitor Review

The Dell AW3821DW looks like most monitors in Dell's Alienware lineup with a gamer-oriented design. It has a white body with black accents throughout, and there's RGB lighting on the stand. It's mostly made out of solid plastic and feels very well-built. It also has a subtle curve to make it easier to see the edges of the screen.

The Dell AW3821DW has excellent build quality. It's capped entirely with solid plastic, and each component feels well-made. The panels fit well together, and there aren't any obvious gaps in construction. The entire monitor feels heavy and sturdy, and the stand supports it very well.

The Dell AW3821DW's ergonomics are good. It allows for some adjustments, but since it's a large screen, you can't place it in portrait mode. Still, the screen rotates a bit, so you can make sure it's leveled.

The back looks like most Alienware models, with a white back panel and black accents. It also has RGB lighting on the stand and on the branding on the back panel. There's cable management through the stand.

The stand supports the screen very well, especially for a monitor of this size. There isn't much wobble, and you can slightly rotate the screen to make sure it's leveled. Also, the wide-set feet allow you to place things in front.

There are five controls, including a joystick, on the right backside of the monitor to navigate the on-screen display.

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

The Dell AW3821DW has a disappointing native contrast ratio. Blacks appear gray when viewed in the dark, which is expected from an IPS panel. It's lower than the advertised 1000:1 contrast, but this may vary between units. It has a local dimming feature, but it actually makes the contrast worse in our test patterns because all the lighting zones remain on.

The Dell AW3821DW has a terrible edge-lit local dimming feature. It's enabled automatically with HDR content, and you can't disable it. It doesn't help improve the already-low contrast ratio, and blacks still appear gray when viewed in the dark. It raises the black level and doesn't crush any bright highlights. There are only a handful of vertical lighting zones, so an entire zone lights up when there's a small light source, which can get distracting in dark scenes. The local dimming also causes uniformity issues, especially when only a few zones are lit. The zones are on when there are subtitles, which may be distracting in dark scenes, but it's not as visible with most content. Fast-moving objects transition between zones quickly, but it's noticeable when each zone turns on, and motion looks jarring. Although the zones turn on quickly, they're slow to turn off.

We tested the local dimming, which is called Variable Backlight, in 'Mode 1' because it has the quickest zone transitions and gets the brightest. 'Mode 0' results in a better contrast ratio and deeper blacks, but the zone transitions are more noticeable. On the other hand, 'Mode 2' looks similar to 'Mode 1', except the black level is raised even more. You can see the differences between each mode below:

• Mode 0
• Mode 1
• Mode 2

The Dell AW3821DW has impressive SDR peak brightness. It gets bright enough to combat glare in most well-lit environments. It also maintains its brightness consistent across different content; small highlights are a bit dimmer, but most people won't notice any difference.

We tested the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Custom Color' Picture Mode with Variable Backlight set to 'Mode 1'.

The Dell AW3821DW has decent HDR peak brightness. It gets bright enough to make small highlights stand out in HDR content. However, it quickly loses its brightness the longer a bright object stays on the screen, and the screen is dimmer when large areas are lit. Also, the EOTF has a sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, meaning details in bright scenes are lost.

These results are in the 'Gamer 1' Picture Mode with Smart HDR enabled and Variable Backlight set to 'Mode 1'.

The Dell AW3821DW has a decent horizontal wide viewing angle, which is normal for an IPS panel. Colors remain accurate when viewing from the side, but you may notice that blacks look even grayer.

The Dell AW3821DW's vertical viewing angle is decent. The image remains fairly accurate even if you mount it above eye-level.

The Dell AW3821DW has great gray uniformity. The top and bottom edges of the screen are only slightly darker, and there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center.

Black uniformity is mediocre, but this may vary between units. Without local dimming, the entire screen looks gray, but there isn't that much clouding or backlight bleed throughout. However, the local dimming feature actually makes uniformity worse because there's more blooming around the center cross as the zones light up.

The accuracy is mediocre. Most colors and white balance are a bit inaccurate, and because it lacks an sRGB picture mode, colors are oversaturated in the sRGB color space. Gamma follows the target curve fairly well, but most scenes are a bit darker than they should be. Sadly, the color temperature is colder than the 65000K target, giving the image a blue tint.

The Dell AW3821DW's accuracy after calibration is remarkable. Any remaining color inaccuracies can't be spotted by the human eye, and the color temperature is extremely close to the 6500K target. Gamma still follows the target well, except some really dark and really bright scenes are over-brightened now.

The SDR color gamut is outstanding. It has perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used in most content, and photo editors will be pleased with the excellent Adobe RGB coverage.

The Dell AW3821DW has a remarkable SDR color volume. It displays bright colors well thanks to its high peak brightness. However, it struggles with dark colors due to the low contrast ratio.

The Dell AW3821DW has an excellent HDR color gamut. It has incredible coverage of the common DCI-P3 color space but struggles with the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The Dell AW3821DW's HDR color volume is great. It displays most colors at a wide range of luminance levels. However, it struggles with really dark and really bright colors due to the low contrast and only decent HDR peak brightness.

The Dell AW3821DW has okay reflection handling. It performs well in most dim or fairly-lit rooms, but the reflections may become too distracting if there's a direct light source on it.

The text clarity is good. Enabling ClearType (top photo) improves the appearance of diagonal lines, like on R, N, G, and S, but straight lines aren't as bold, as seen on the letters T and I.

The Dell AW3821DW's gradient handling is exceptional. You won't notice any signs of banding in real content.

You can reach this monitor's max refresh rate only with 8-bit signals over a DisplayPort connection. Due to bandwidth limitations, the max refresh rate is limited when sending a 10-bit signal, like in HDR.

The Dell AW3821DW has native G-SYNC support, letting you take full advantage of your NVIDIA graphics card with both HDMI and DisplayPort connections. It's also FreeSync compatible, but only over a DisplayPort connection.

The response time at its max refresh rate of 144Hz is great, and motion looks extremely smooth. The recommended overdrive setting is 'Fast' because it has the fastest total response time and the least amount of overshoot. There's visible ghosting with the 'Super Fast' and 'Extreme' settings. If you want a monitor with a better response time, check out the LG 38GN950-B.

The response time at 120Hz is very good. Although the overall response time is slower than at its max refresh rate, motion looks smooth and the recommended overdrive setting is still 'Fast'.

The Dell AW3821DW has a good response time at 60Hz. Motion remains smooth, and there's less overshoot than at a higher refresh rate. Once again, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Fast', so you don't have to worry about changing the setting if the frame rate of your game drops. There's significant overshoot and ghosting with the other settings.

The Dell AW3821DW doesn't have a Black Frame Insertion feature to clear up motion blur.

The Dell AW3821DW has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Dell AW3821DW has an incredibly low input lag for a responsive feel while gaming.

The Dell Alienware AW3821DW has a very large 38-inch screen with a high 3840x1600 resolution. It has the same number of horizontal pixels as a 4k monitor, but there are fewer vertical pixels. There's enough screen real estate to open multiple windows at once.

The Dell AW3821DW works well with the PS5 for 1440p and 1080p games. It automatically scales to a 16:9 aspect ratio, which means you don't have to change any settings, but you'll see black bars on the sides. Because it has native G-SYNC support, the VRR feature from the PS5 works.

The Dell AW3821DW has some limitations with the Xbox Series X. As it can't downscale a 4k signal, and because the Xbox only supports HDR with a 4k signal, it doesn't support HDR. Also, 1440p @ 60Hz only works by using the console's HDMI override, which also disables VRR. Because the Xbox doesn't support ultrawide gaming, you'll see black bars on the sides.

The four USB ports are USB 3.2, which has the same bandwidth as USB 3.0. It also has a USB-B port that you can connect to your PC as an upstream port, allowing you to connect your mouse and keyboard to the monitor.

The Dell AW3821DW works well with macOS, but there are some limitations, as you can't use VRR and HDR at the same time. Either you get VRR up to 100Hz, as seen here, or you have to send a fixed 60Hz or 85Hz signal with HDR enabled. Both VRR and HDR work without issue, but enabling VRR results in a dimmer image, so if you care about picture quality, it's better to have HDR enabled.

The Dell AW3821DW has a few extra features, some of which are listed below:

• RGB Lighting: There's RGB lighting on the stand and on the Alienware branding on the back panel. You can control it through the AlienFX software, and there are a few options available through the on-screen display.
• FPS Counter: Displays the current frame rate of your game.
• Timer: Adds a timer on the screen.
• Dark Stabilizer: Raises the gamma to make opponents more visible in shadows.
• Display Alignment: Adds an overlay to help when aligning two or more monitors side-by-side.