Dell S3225QS  Monitor Review

The Dell 32 Plus 4k Monitor S3225QS has a simple office-oriented design with a white plastic body and black bezels. The plastic on the back has a textured feel.

The build quality is mediocre. The plastic materials feel cheap, as the bezels and back panel flex easily. Even the top bezel is slightly warped, resulting in a small bump in the middle of it. One of the bigger downsides is that the screen doesn't keep its position once you adjust it on the stand, so you may need to adjust it a few times to account for this. And the screen isn't level with the stand on our unit, which is disappointing considering it doesn't have swivel adjustment.

The ergonomics are unremarkable. You can only adjust its height and tilt, and although you can rotate it a few degrees in either direction, you can't rotate it into a vertical orientation. The screen doesn't stay in place when you adjust it, though, so you may need to play around with it to find a position that you prefer. The stand comes with a rigid hook for cable management.

The stand prevents most wobble, and it stabilizes quickly even when it does. Plus, the stand doesn't slide easily on a desk.

The thickness measurement is with the height adjustment at its lowest setting, but the total thickness changes depending on the height setting because of the stand's tilt. It measures 6.0 inches (15.2 cm) thick from the screen to the back of the stand at its highest height adjustment. The clip on the stand is rigid and sticks out a bit past the top of the stand, but you can remove it if you prefer.

The weight doesn't include the plastic cover for the inputs, which weighs an additional 0.1 lbs (54 g).

The monitor has a joystick to control the on-screen display and a power button.

• HDMI cable
• Power cable
• User guides

The monitor has a great contrast ratio. It displays fairly deep blacks next to bright highlights, but it lacks a local dimming feature to further improve it.

Settings

• Preset Mode: Custom Color (calibration)
• Brightness: Max

The SDR brightness is great. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most well-lit rooms, but not if there's the sun or a bright light source directly facing the screen. Luckily, it keeps its brightness consistent across different content.

Settings

• Smart HDR: Desktop
• Brightness: Locked to max

The HDR brightness is okay. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most well-lit rooms, but it doesn't make small highlights pop in HDR. Its PQ EOTF also has a very slow roll-off until its peak brightness, as it preserves details at the cost of not letting highlights get the brightest possible.

The gray uniformity is great. Although the edges are darker than the rest of the screen, there's minimal dirty screen effect in the center. It looks similar with 5% gray, too.

The black uniformity is okay. The biggest downside is that there's backlight bleed along the edges, and it lacks a local dimming feature to improve this.

The accuracy in the 'sRGB' Preset Mode before calibration is great. It locks colors well to the sRGB color space, but the color temperature is cold, resulting in a blue tint, and it has white balance issues. Gamma is also a bit off, as most content is darker than intended.

Using the 'sRGB' mode locks the Gain, Offset, Hue, and Saturation settings. You'd have to use the 'Custom Color' mode if you want access to these settings. It's less accurate than 'sRGB,' but still locks colors well to the sRGB color space.

The accuracy after calibration in the 'Custom Color' Preset Mode is fantastic. It fixes most issues, and you have access to all picture settings.

The SDR color gamut is excellent. It displays nearly the full range of colors in the sRGB color space, but has more limited coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. Plus, it oversaturates red and magenta in Adobe RGB.

The HDR color gamut is decent. It can't display the full range of colors needed in the DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020 color spaces, and it has some inaccuracies with both.

The Dell 32 Plus 4k Monitor S3225QS has a decent HDR color volume. It displays dark colors well, but really struggles with properly displaying bright colors, especially in the Rec. 2020 color space.

The horizontal viewing angle is poor. The image quickly washes out from the sides, so it's a bad choice for sharing your screen with someone next to you. The edges also look washed out if you sit too close to the screen.

The text clarity is fantastic. Text looks sharp and using Windows ClearType (top photo) helps make letters look bolder. These photos are in Windows 10, and you can also see them in Windows 11 with ClearType on and with ClearType off.

Due to the monitor's slow response time, there's noticeable smearing with text when scrolling through webpages or documents. It's more noticeable with white text on a dark background than with black text on a white background.

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

The Dell 32 Plus 4k Monitor S3225QS does an excellent job at retaining low black levels in a bright room.

There's a lot of reflected light coming off the screen. This can be distracting in a bright room, as the screen is hard to see if you place it opposite a sunny window.

The gradient handling is fantastic. There's almost no banding between shades of similar scenes, like in scenes with a sunset.

Your computer needs to support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to get a 120Hz refresh rate with a 4k signal, otherwise it's limited to 60Hz with 8-bit signals or 30Hz with 10-bit signals.

The Dell 32 Plus 4k Monitor also supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The Dell 32 Plus 4k Monitor S3225QS has disappointing motion handling across its VRR range. There's blur and smearing with fast-moving objects at any refresh rate. Although all three Response Time overdrive settings perform badly, 'Normal' and 'Fast' are better than 'Extreme' at low refresh rates.

The refresh rate compliance is poor. Its response time isn't fast enough to make full-color transitions before the monitor draws the next frame with any refresh rate.

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 120Hz is mediocre. There's blur and smearing with fast-moving objects on any of the Response Time overdrive settings, and 'Extreme' has some inverse ghosting. That said, motion looks better with VRR off than with it on.

The CAD at 120Hz is mediocre. There's blur and smearing with fast-moving objects on any of the Response Time overdrive settings, and 'Extreme' has some inverse ghosting. That said, motion looks better with VRR off than with it on.

The CAD at 60Hz is poor. Motion is blurry with fast-moving objects, and there's smearing, too. Unlike at 120Hz, motion is the same whether you have VRR on or off. Although all the Response Time settings perform terribly, 'Fast' has the lowest CAD out of the three.

This monitor doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor has minimal VRR flicker, especially for a VA panel. There's a bit of flicker towards the edges of the screen in dark scenes, but it's hard to notice unless you're specifically looking for it. However, because of the monitor's narrow viewing angles, the edges look washed out if you aren't directly looking at them, making this flicker even harder to see.

The backlight doesn't use pulse-width modulation to dim its backlight and is flicker-free.

The Dell 32 Plus S3225QS has low input lag for a responsive feel at any refresh rate.

This monitor doesn't support 1440p @ 120Hz at all with an Xbox Series X|S, even when using the console's HDMI override setting. All other signals work without issue, but keep in mind that the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals, which isn't a limitation of the monitor.

The monitor's lack of audio output is disappointing if you wanted to connect speakers or headphones directly to it. It at least has built-in speakers, though.

Tested with: M2 MacBook Pro (Sequoia 15.5)

The monitor works well with macOS, and there aren't any obvious issues. If you're using a MacBook, the 'Desktop' Smart HDR mode looks closest to the laptop's picture quality, but colors are undersaturated and less accurate in HDR than SDR. No matter how you connect to the MacBook, you can close the lid and continue working on the monitor provided that the MacBook is connected to power. Without that, the laptop goes to sleep. When you reopen the lid or wake the laptop up from sleep, windows return to their original positions.

The built-in speakers sound good for monitor speakers and there are different Audio Profile modes to choose from, including a 'Custom Audio' mode for EQ tuning. Other features include:

• Aspect Ratio: Allows you to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios.
• Dark Stabilizer: Adjusts the black level so that it's easier to see opponents in dark scenes.
• ComfortView Plus: Although not a setting, it's advertised to reduce blue light by default.
• Shortcut Key Personalization: Lets you assign shortcuts to the joystick on the back of the monitor.

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