this
It's visible from all angles but only in dark conditions and with a dark image on the monitor. Like, for instance, if I were to play Doom 3 with minimal lighting in my room then the bottom left corner would be clearly brighter than the rest of the panel. Of course with a completely black image such as in the pic I linked, the bleed is most severe.
One thing I'm sure of: I would take the monitor back IF I had the chance (it is substantially more than 2 weeks old so I can't take it back). I am pretty sure that Dell won't consider this flaw reason enough for replacement under the ordinary warranty.
My 3007WFP always made an odd hissing noise when powering up, and sometimes the picture wouldn't come up at all. Sometimes I would get only 1 backlight, with the other staying off (I'm guessing it had 2, one at the top and one at the bottom). This was rare but it did happen more than once, and on multiple PC's, so it was the monitor.
As the TFT's I had before the 3007, the Dell also experienced the sticking picture problem. It got worse as time passed. When it was new I might see the stark contracts between toolbar rows and the lines between them in desktop apps (interweb browser, file browser, that sort). Lately it had started burning in even light areas. Sometimes I would get the whole browser window every time there's a grey area on screen, and with the color range of today's games, I would get that a lot.
Some time ago I noticed it had developed a dead pixel in center, lower third. This was the final straw. So I contacted Dell through a customer service e-mail form on their website. I waited, day after day... Soon a week had passed. So I called them on Monday. None of the flaws I had alone would have warranted a new panel, I'm sure of it, but all of them added together, they didn't even cough and promised me a new panel the next day as is their warranty. I asked the CS person, "can I have a phone call 45 minutes or 1 hour before the courier arrives?", to which he replied, "Ummm. Eh, our courier, it's kind of funny, but they don't want to do that. Um, they don't want to make these calls." Hilarious. But OK, I was going to be home anyway. I asked, "so when do they usually deliver? Some time during morning hours?", and he said "Yes, it should be in the morning."
Well, then it was next day. Morning went past, no monitor. Soon it was 4 pm. No monitor. Sleepy time... no monitor. Today at noon, I called Dell again. "Oh, you made the initial call so late (it was 3pm-ish). That would make it a day-after-tomorrow delivery." Fine. But why wasn't I informed of this? "You should receive the new panel today." Half an hour later, I received a call from a UPS courier. "Hi, Jupix there? I should be there within 1 hour."
So now I've got a 3007WFP-HC. I was hoping for a 3008WFP, but oh well. At least I got lucky in that respect - this one bleeds light from the top, and has blue spots all over the center of the image. The backlight looks very weird, like it has vertical stripes all over the panel. The HC is a bit better than my 3007WFP, but still unacceptable. (I'm not really surprised. I've heard of big corps like Dell replacing defective units with replaced defective units in the hopes the customer wouldn't notice or would be too tired to have a rant for a new one. Unfortunately to them, I'm used to ranting.)
So I called Dell. I explained the situation and again, the CS agreed with a sigh that this one is being RMA'd as well. This time, having gotten the initial someone-elses-RMA defective unit out of the way, I said I'd prefer if they stopped with that shit and shipped a factory-new panel. I remain sceptical as to whether I will actually get one, but if I do, at least it'll be a 3008. I would be happy with another HC, though, the bigger color gamut sure is nicer than the one in the 3007WFP. We'll find out soon, when they deliver yet another one. Talk about a cliffhanger!
