Dell U2724D UltraSharp Review UK (2026) - IPS Black, Colour Accuracy & Value

There's a dirty secret about high refresh rate monitors that the spec sheet won't tell you: a number on a box means nothing if the panel behind it can't actually deliver. Ghost-free motion, accurate colour, and a panel that genuinely behaves differently from the budget competition, that's what separates a proper display from a marketing exercise. The Dell U2724D UltraSharp lands squarely in the mid-range bracket, but it's making a very different argument to most of its 120Hz rivals. This one's not chasing gamers. It's after the creative professional, the dual-purpose home worker, the person who needs colours they can actually trust.

And based on 299 owner reviews averaging ★★★★½ (4.5), plus the published specifications Dell has put behind this panel, it largely delivers on that promise. The IPS Black panel is the headline, pushing native contrast well beyond what standard IPS can manage, while 98% DCI-P3 coverage and factory calibration make this genuinely interesting for anyone doing colour-critical work. But 120Hz isn't 144Hz, and the 5ms GtG response time needs some context before you get too excited about gaming. So is this the one? It depends entirely on what you're doing at your desk. Stick around, because the answer is more nuanced than Dell's marketing would have you believe.

Refresh rate sits at 120Hz, which is fine for most productivity and creative work, and honestly adequate for casual gaming. The quoted response time is 5ms GtG, which is on the slower end for a 120Hz panel but not unusual for an IPS Black display prioritising colour accuracy over pixel speed. Connectivity is genuinely excellent: two USB-C ports (one with 90W Power Delivery, one with 15W), two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, one HDMI 2.0, and three USB-A downstream ports. That's a proper hub setup for a modern desk. Dell backs all of this with a three-year Advanced Exchange warranty, which is one of the better manufacturer warranties in this category.

The stand offers height, tilt, swivel, and pivot adjustments, and there's a 100x100mm VESA mount if you'd rather wall-mount or use a third-party arm. The whole unit ships in Dell's signature silver and black colour scheme, which looks professional without being boring. Weight is around 6.5kg with the stand attached, which is solid but not unusual for a 27-inch panel with a quality stand.

In practice, what that means is blacks that actually look black rather than battleship grey. Owner reviews consistently flag this as a noticeable improvement over previous Dell UltraSharp models and over standard IPS competition. One recurring comment from owners is that dark scenes in films and games look dramatically better than they expected from an IPS panel. That's not a coincidence. The IPS Black technology uses a different liquid crystal alignment to achieve the higher contrast without sacrificing the wide viewing angles IPS is known for. You still get the full 178-degree horizontal and vertical viewing angles, which is exactly what you want on a monitor that might be used in a shared workspace or viewed from slightly off-axis.

IPS glow is still present, because physics. No IPS panel is entirely free of it, and the U2724D is no exception. A handful of owners mention visible IPS glow in the corners when displaying dark content in a dim room. It's less pronounced than on cheaper IPS panels, but it's there. If you're coming from a VA panel and you're very sensitive to this. If you're coming from a standard IPS panel, you'll likely find the U2724D a noticeable step up in black performance. The uniformity across the panel is generally reported as good, with no significant brightness hotspots according to the owner feedback pattern.

The anti-glare coating is a matte finish, which is standard for a productivity-focused monitor and the right call for a display that might sit near a window or under office lighting. Matte coatings scatter reflections rather than eliminating them, which means you lose a small amount of perceived sharpness and colour vibrancy compared to a glossy panel, but you gain a dramatically more usable screen in real-world lighting conditions. For creative professionals who need to see their work without fighting reflections, this is the correct trade-off. Published measurements from display-focused outlets have noted that Dell's matte coating on recent UltraSharp panels is on the lighter side, preserving more of the panel's native colour saturation than heavier anti-glare coatings typically allow.

Brightness uniformity is reported as solid across the owner reviews, with no major complaints about bright patches or dim corners. The 400 cd/m2 typical brightness is adequate for most office and home environments, though it's not going to overpower direct sunlight through a window. For HDR content, the peak brightness matters more, and we'll get to that in the HDR section. What's here is that the combination of IPS Black contrast, good uniformity, and a sensible matte coating makes for a display that looks genuinely premium in person. Multiple owners describe it as the best-looking monitor they've owned, which tracks with what the spec sheet promises.

Adaptive sync is handled via AMD FreeSync Premium, which requires a minimum 2.5x LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) ratio to qualify. The VRR range on the U2724D covers 48Hz to 120Hz, meaning FreeSync will engage down to 48 frames per second before LFC kicks in to double the frame rate and prevent tearing below that threshold. For Nvidia GPU owners, the monitor works via DisplayPort with Nvidia's G-Sync Compatible certification, though Dell doesn't explicitly advertise this. Owner reports suggest it works without issue via DisplayPort on Nvidia cards, which is the expected behaviour for a FreeSync Premium panel.

The practical upshot is that if you're running a mid-range GPU and targeting 1440p at high settings, you'll spend a fair amount of time in the 60 to 100fps range where VRR is actively smoothing your experience. That's where this monitor actually shines for gaming. Locked 120fps at 1440p high settings requires a fairly powerful GPU, so the VRR range is more useful in practice than the peak refresh rate number suggests. Dell has done the right thing by implementing proper adaptive sync rather than a limited range that only engages at high frame rates.

Published measurements from display testing outlets that have assessed similar IPS Black panels suggest that the average grey-to-grey transition at moderate overdrive settings lands closer to 8ms to 10ms in practice, with the 5ms figure representing the fastest transitions under optimal conditions. At 120Hz, each frame lasts approximately 8.3ms, so the panel is broadly keeping pace with its own refresh rate, but you're not going to see the ultra-sharp motion clarity of a fast IPS gaming panel. For the target audience, this is acceptable. Ghosting in fast-paced gaming is noticeable if you're coming from a 1ms IPS gaming panel, but it's not severe. Several owners who use the monitor for both work and casual gaming report it as perfectly fine for the latter.

Overdrive settings are available through the OSD, and Dell typically offers several levels. The middle setting tends to be the sweet spot, offering improved pixel transitions without the inverse ghosting (bright halo artefacts behind moving objects) that the aggressive setting can introduce. Owners who've experimented with overdrive settings generally settle on the medium option for gaming use. For productivity, video editing, and general desktop use, response time is essentially irrelevant, you'd need to be actively looking for ghosting in scrolling text to notice anything. This is a monitor built for the desk, not the tournament bracket.

Dell also quotes 100% sRGB coverage and factory calibration with a Delta-E of less than 2 for each unit shipped. Delta-E is a measure of colour accuracy, where lower is better and a Delta-E below 2 is considered imperceptible to most viewers. A Delta-E below 3 is generally accepted as colour-accurate for professional work. Dell's factory calibration claim, backed by a calibration report shipped with each monitor, is one of the things owners consistently praise. Multiple reviewers specifically mention that colours look correct out of the box without needing to fiddle with settings. That's not something you can say about most monitors in this price range, where factory calibration is often a rough approximation at best.

The wide DCI-P3 gamut does mean that sRGB content will appear oversaturated if you're not using the monitor's sRGB mode. Dell includes preset colour modes in the OSD for sRGB, DCI-P3, and other colour spaces, which is the right way to handle a wide-gamut display. Switching between them is straightforward once you've navigated Dell's OSD (which, to be fair, is one of the better OSD implementations in the industry). For anyone doing colour-critical work across multiple colour spaces, this flexibility is genuinely useful. The Adobe RGB coverage is quoted at around 90%, which is adequate for photography workflows targeting that colour space, though not class-leading.

So the honest answer is: HDR on the U2724D is checkbox HDR. It's better than nothing, and the wide colour gamut does mean HDR-graded content will display more of its intended colours than a standard sRGB panel could manage. But you're not going to get the dramatic HDR pop of a proper HDR600 or HDR1000 display with local dimming or an OLED panel. The 400 cd/m2 peak brightness is adequate for SDR use but modest for HDR, where peaks of 600 to 1000 nits are needed to properly render specular highlights. If HDR gaming or HDR film watching is a priority, this isn't the right monitor for the job.

Where the IPS Black contrast ratio does help is in making SDR content look better in dim environments, and it gives HDR content slightly more shadow detail than a standard IPS panel would. The 2000:1 native contrast means dark areas in HDR content are darker than you'd see on a 1000:1 IPS, even without local dimming. It's a partial mitigation rather than a solution. Owners who use this primarily for productivity and creative work don't seem to mind, the HDR limitation is rarely mentioned in negative reviews. It's only relevant if you bought this expecting a proper HDR experience, which the DisplayHDR 400 badge should have warned you against.

SDR brightness is rated at 400 cd/m2 typical, which is enough for a well-lit office or home workspace. In a dim room, you'll want to turn it down significantly, and the monitor's brightness adjustment range goes low enough to be comfortable for evening use. A handful of owners mention using it at around 30 to 40% brightness in typical conditions, which is normal for a 400-nit panel and suggests the backlight has a sensible range. The anti-glare coating helps in brighter environments by scattering reflections, so you're not fighting a mirror effect when there's a window behind you.

Brightness uniformity across the panel is generally reported as good. The IPS Black panel technology doesn't inherently improve uniformity over standard IPS, but Dell's quality control on UltraSharp panels has historically been above average. Owner feedback doesn't show a pattern of complaints about bright patches or clouding, which is a good sign. Some minor IPS glow in corners is the most common observation, but that's a characteristic of the panel technology rather than a manufacturing defect. For the vast majority of use cases, the contrast and brightness performance of the U2724D is a genuine step up from standard IPS competition.

The stand base has a relatively compact footprint for a 27-inch monitor, which is appreciated in smaller workspaces. Cable management is built into the stand column, with a routing channel that keeps your desk tidy. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of considered design detail that distinguishes a proper productivity monitor from a budget panel with a stand bolted on. The 100x100mm VESA mount is present if you want to use a monitor arm, and the stand detaches cleanly without tools once you know the mechanism. Owner reports suggest the stand attachment and detachment is straightforward.

Build quality overall is consistently praised in the owner reviews. The bezels are slim on three sides (the bottom bezel is slightly thicker, as is typical), and the silver and black colour scheme looks professional. The OSD joystick is positioned at the rear bottom-right of the panel, which is the standard Dell location and easy to find by feel once you're used to it. Dell's OSD menu structure is logical and well-organised, with quick access to common settings and full colour space presets. Several owners specifically mention the build quality as justifying the price premium over cheaper alternatives.

• 2x USB-C (one 90W PD, one 15W PD, both with DisplayPort Alt Mode)
• 2x DisplayPort 1.4
• 1x HDMI 2.0
• 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 downstream
• 1x USB-B upstream (for USB hub functionality with non-USB-C hosts)
• 3.5mm audio output

The two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs support the full 2560x1440 at 120Hz without compression, which is what you want. DisplayPort 1.4 has the bandwidth to handle QHD at 120Hz with HDR without needing Display Stream Compression. HDMI 2.0 will also drive the panel at its full resolution, though you'll be capped at 60Hz via HDMI from most source devices. For gaming consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X), HDMI 2.0 at 1440p 60Hz is the realistic scenario, since console HDMI 2.1 support doesn't help you here. The three USB-A ports make this a genuine hub for peripherals, and the combination of ports means you could run a laptop via USB-C, a desktop via DisplayPort, and a console via HDMI, switching between them with the OSD input selector.

The 3.5mm audio output passes audio from connected sources, which is useful if you have desktop speakers or headphones you want to connect at the monitor rather than at the PC. There are no built-in speakers, which is standard for a monitor at this positioning. The overall connectivity package is one of the best in the mid-range category, and it's a meaningful differentiator over cheaper QHD monitors that might offer a single DisplayPort and a USB-C with limited power delivery.

The BenQ PD2705U is another relevant competitor, targeting the same professional creative audience with a 27-inch 4K IPS panel. It offers higher resolution than the U2724D, which matters for detailed photo and video work, but it's priced higher and the panel's colour gamut coverage and contrast ratio don't match the IPS Black technology Dell is using here. The U2724D's 2000:1 contrast and 98% DCI-P3 coverage at this price point is genuinely hard to match. The 4K resolution of the BenQ is the main reason to pay more, and whether that trade-off makes sense depends on whether your work genuinely benefits from 4K.

The honest comparison is this: if you want the fastest possible motion for competitive gaming, the U2724D isn't the right choice and you'll find better value in a 144Hz or 165Hz IPS gaming panel. If you want proper HDR, you need to spend significantly more on an OLED or a high-tier mini-LED panel. But if you want a monitor that does colour-accurate creative work, looks genuinely good in a dim room thanks to IPS Black contrast, and offers the best connectivity package in its price bracket, the U2724D is a strong pick.

But if gaming is your main priority, the 5ms GtG response time and 120Hz refresh rate put you behind the competition. A 144Hz or 165Hz IPS gaming panel will give you visibly better motion clarity for fast-paced games, and you'll likely pay less for it. The HDR implementation is checkbox-level, which is the norm at DisplayHDR 400 but plainly. And if you're hoping for OLED-quality blacks, you need to roughly double your budget and look at something like the LG 27GS95QE or the Asus ROG Swift OLED range.

The 4.5-star average across 299 owner reviews is a reliable signal here. This is a monitor that makes its buyers happy over time, particularly those using it for professional work. The three-year Advanced Exchange warranty is a proper safety net, meaning Dell will send a replacement before you return the faulty unit. That's a meaningful commitment for a monitor you're going to spend thousands of hours looking at. The build quality, stand ergonomics, and OSD are all above average for the price. If you don't need the IPS Black contrast improvement or the wide colour gamut, and you're primarily gaming, honestly look at a cheaper 144Hz QHD IPS panel first. You'll save money and get faster motion. But if colour accuracy and contrast matter to your workflow, the U2724D earns its price.

Our editorial score: 8.5 out of 10. A premium productivity panel that delivers where it promises, let down only by modest HDR and a refresh rate that trails gaming rivals.