Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF review: improve your home office on a budget

This Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF review is aimed at anyone who wants to refresh their gaming setup without spending a ton of cash, its combination of price and quality is what earned this its place as one of the best gaming monitors.

You find some excellent but affordable gaming kit if you look hard enough, T3's guides to the best gaming mouse, the best gaming headset, the best gaming keyboard and the best gaming chair all list some options for those on a tighter budget.

Some of the key points to take away from this review include nice, although limited, features and its decent display. Some might write it off as being too small, I never felt like that impacted how immersed I was able to get in the game. 

Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF Review: Design and Setup

Setting up the Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF was probably the easiest experience I’ve had with a gaming monitor – for the most part. Putting the stand together requires just the simple act of turning a screw, and attaching the stand to the monitor is just a case of sliding it in.

The one sticky issue this has is that the ports are very annoyingly placed. They’re quite deep into the monitor and hidden behind quite a large plastic lip. I found it so difficult to simply find the hole the cable was meant to slot into that I had to fully lift the monitor with one arm and hold it sideways to see it. So, it’s a good thing that it’s actually quite light as gaming monitors go.

While I’m here I’ll go through those ports, the S2721HGF comes with two HDMI 1.4 ports, a DisplayPort 1.2 and a 3.5mm headphone out jack. It’s fine, obviously there are higher spec HDMI and DisplayPorts around and some budget monitors are starting to incorporate them, but this is pretty standard at this level. There’s also no USB ports, so I’m afraid you won’t be plugging your mouse in here.

When we see how it looks, there’s not a huge amount to get excited about. On the front Dell have gone for the gaming monitor standard black plastic. A thin 1mm bezel skirts the top and sides with a larger black band at the base of the screen where you’ll find Dell’s logo.

The rear bucks the trend of flashy lighting rigs and moulded, textured plastic to give us some more plain black plastic with an angular grille. It doesn’t look bad, and I’m sure it saves on production, but there’s just nothing to write home about. The stand is pleasantly angular but pretty basic, though it can be adjusted to 100mm.

Some people won’t like a curved 27-inch monitor as it makes a small gaming monitor look smaller – but I like it. If you’re shopping in this range, I imagine you don’t have a mansion to put this screen into. It feels neater on my desk, and it feels easier to see everything on the screen at once.

Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF Review: Features & Picture

You can manage the Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF’s settings and features through the use of the gaming monitor standard tiny joystick on the back. There are some buttons under this that will let you quickly access settings like contrast, brightness and your display preset configurations.

For gaming, there are a number of configurations built into the monitor. These include genre-specific settings for things like FPS, RTS, RPG and Sports as well as three slots for game modes that you can personalise to your own preferences.

You can also adjust response times, and it’s FreeSync enabled. You can manage simple settings like brightness and contrast but there isn’t much beyond that. It’s a simple monitor and it has the settings to match.

When it comes to the picture, it’s got a 1920 x 1080 VA panel display. Some might feel that resolution is a little low for this size of the monitor, but it backs it up with a 144Hz refresh rate, 99% sRGB coverage and a 1ms response time, which is about as good as you can get at this price.

The colours felt vibrant, the 3000:1 contrast is excellent and details are clear, although I did notice a little blurriness with rapid motion in dark settings – though that’s a pretty common issue with VA panel monitors, even at much higher prices.

Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF Review: Price & Verdict

The Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF is a cheap gaming monitor. It’s RRP sits at £268.50/$279.99 but it’s often found much cheaper (check our widgets for the best deal right now). It's also worth checking our Dell discount codes to pick up a great deal. That make’s it the cheapest monitor on our best gaming monitor list.

Are there better gaming monitors? Of course, but I’ve tested a few that are reasonably more expensive than this without feeling any significant uptick in performance. The Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF does exactly what it sets out to do.

So, if this sits inside your modest budget for a gaming monitor, I’d say go for it. If you need it for colour work, or picture/video editing then maybe this (or any curved screen) isn’t for you. But if you’re after something that works as a monitor and nails games without breaking the bank – I think the Dell Curved Gaming Monitor S2721HGF might just be it.

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