Dell S3220DGF Monitor Review

The Dell S3220DGF's design is quite similar to most other Dell monitors, only that the logos on the front and back of the screen are blue. It's a fairly large screen, and while the stand is larger than some of the other Dell monitors on the market, it's still not very big.

The stand does a good job of supporting the monitor and preventing most of the wobble. It's not too big and leaves enough space for other items to be placed in front of it.

The Dell S3220DGF's ergonomics are only okay. It can easily be placed in a comfortable position, but like most curved monitors, it can't rotate into portrait mode.

The back of the monitor is plain. Cable management is serviced through the stand, and it has a quick-release button.

Update 05/06/2020: The borders were incorrectly measured as 1.1" (2.8cm) thick. The measurement has been fixed.

The borders are thin and favor a multi-monitor setup.

The overall thickness isn't very big, even with the stand attached. However, as with most curved monitors, it sticks out a little when it's wall-mounted.

The Dell S3220DGF has a good build quality. The entire construction is heavy and feels sturdy with no gaps or loose ends. The stand provides good support and prevents most wobble.

The Dell S3220DGF has a very good contrast ratio. Thanks to its VA panel, blacks look deep in a dark room. The contrast ratio can vary between individual units.

The Dell S3220DGF doesn't have a local dimming feature. The above video is provided for reference only.

The Dell S3220DGF has decent peak brightness. It should be able to combat glare in most rooms, although you should avoid placing it in a very bright one. If you need a brighter screen, increasing the contrast results in a noticeably brighter, but less accurate image. If you want something that gets significantly brighter with real content, look into the ASUS TUF Gaming VG27WQ1B.

The Dell S3220DGF has decent HDR peak brightness. It can bring out highlights in HDR, but there's a slight variation in brightness with varied content.

As is the case with most VA panel monitors, the horizontal viewing angle is disappointing. You quickly lose image accuracy when viewed from the side, and since it has such a large screen, the sides of the screen appear darker if you sit too close. If you're interested in a VA panel with fairly wide viewing angles, check out the AOC CQ32G1.

The monitor has a disappointing vertical viewing angle. You lose image accuracy if it's mounted above or below eye level. Also, if you sit close to the screen, the top and bottom edges appear darker.

The Dell S3220DGF has excellent gray uniformity, better than most monitors we've seen, but this could vary from unit to unit. The sides of the screen appear darker mainly due to the viewing angles, but other than that, you shouldn't notice any uniformity issues.

The monitor's black uniformity is only okay. There's some slight blooming at the corners and around the edges, but it's almost impossible to notice in real content. Black uniformity can vary between individual units.

The pre-calibration color accuracy is reasonable. Most colors are inaccurate and the color temperature is warmer than the target, so colors have a red/yellow tint. Gamma doesn't follow the curve well, so dark scenes appear darker than they should, and bright scenes are brighter. Pre-calibration can vary between individual units.

The Dell S3220DGF has outstanding accuracy after calibration. Most colors are accurate and any remaining inaccuracies aren't noticeable to the naked eye.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.

The monitor has an exceptional SDR color gamut. It covers nearly all of the sRGB color space used in most content, and it has great coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing.

The monitor has an incredible SDR color volume. The good contrast ratio helps it display dark, saturated colors.

The Dell S3220DGF has a decent HDR color gamut. It has very good coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most content but has mediocre coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

Disappointing HDR color volume. Limited by its color gamut, the Dell S3220DGF can't display a full range of colors at different brightness levels.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the Dell S3220DGF, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast, static test image for 10 minutes. Image retention can vary between individual units.

This monitor has superb gradient handling. There are very faint signs of banding in darker shades, but this isn't noticeable in real content.

There are no signs of color bleed on this monitor.

The Dell has decent reflection handling. It performs exceptionally well in moderate-lit rooms, but reflections in really bright rooms are distracting.

The text clarity is decent. It's improved using ClearType (top photo), which makes the diagonal or curved lines on the letters R, N, G, and S clearer.

The monitor has a very good overall response time at its max refresh rate, but it's a bit disappointing for a 165Hz monitor. The recommended Overdrive setting, called Response Time, is 'Super Fast'. There's a minimal amount of overshoot, but the response time is slow, resulting in some motion blur. If you want the quickest response time, 'Extreme' is faster, but there's visible ghosting behind fast-moving objects.

The Dell S3220DGF has an adequate response time at 60Hz. Unlike when playing at its max refresh rate, the recommended Overdrive is 'Fast'. Motion is still blurry but there's a minimal amount of overshoot.

The Dell S3220DGF is flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

This monitor doesn't have a black frame insertion feature.

Update 12/09/2020:There are reports of screen flickering issues below 60Hz when using VRR through G-SYNC compatibility. Unfortunately, our unit is broken and we can't retest it. However, we didn't experience this issue during testing.

Update 08/20/2020: We rechecked the refresh rate, and clarified our text.

The default refresh rate of the Dell S3220DGF varies depending on the connection used. Over DisplayPort, it defaults to a maximum 165Hz refresh rate, and the only other option is to decrease it to 60Hz. When connected over HDMI, the monitor defaults to 144Hz and instead offers an overclock to 165Hz. It also supports FreeSync VRR technology to reduce screen tearing, and although it's not officially certified, we were also able to use it with NVIDIA's G-SYNC Compatible mode, but this only works over DisplayPort.

Dell tends to keep their monitors on the market for a long time, but they make slight changes to the hardware to fix known issues. Some users have reported that the A04 revision doesn't have G-SYNC compatibility out of the box, causing black screen flickering. Users have also noted that it can be fixed by using the Custom Resolution Utility software to limit the VRR range to 49-164Hz, although we can't confirm it because our unit is defective. Using this workaround seems to break FreeSync2 HDR. If you want to enable HDR, you need to disable G-SYNC in the Custom Resolution Utility software and revert the VRR range back to 48-164Hz, and revert all the settings back to default in the CRU