Home-office panel by day; wide, wicked-curved gaming display by night
Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.
The Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) is a good dual-use monitor for home-office multitasking and light-duty gaming. You can find better choices for either alone, but this display straddles both worlds well.
With one foot in the business world and one in the entertainment sphere, the Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) provides plenty of screen space for arranging app windows, displaying wide spreadsheets, or running flight simulations or racing games. This ultrawide 34-inch display ($769.99 MSRP, and on sale for $574.99 at press time) fits equally well in a home office, a den, or a family room, and it does double duty as a work and gaming monitor. You can find better bets if you're looking for a monitor strictly for productivity or games, but the S3423DWC's bright, colorful image and superior contrast provide a satisfactory experience in both venues.
The Dell S3423DWC's signature feature is its 34-inch panel (measured diagonally) with native UWQHD (3,440-by-1,440-pixel) resolution that works out to a 21:9 aspect ratio. Pixel density comes to 109 pixels per inch (ppi), which is common among ultrawide monitors and more than sharp enough for casual photo and video editing.
The monitor uses vertical alignment (VA) technology, known for its ability to render deep blacks. VA panels are most often seen in gaming monitors, where their high contrast ratio enhances players' ability to distinguish enemies lurking in the shadows. Although Dell does not sell the S3423DWC as a gaming monitor per se—such units either get Alienware branding or mention gaming in their product names—its superior contrast, ultrawide aspect ratio, AMD FreeSync support, and 100Hz refresh rate make it more than suitable for occasional gameplay.
As is generally the case with ultrawide monitors, the Dell has a curved screen that offers a more immersive viewing experience than a flat one. It has 1800R curvature, which means that if you were to arrange enough S3423DWC monitors side by side to form a circle, its radius would be 1,800mm (1.8 meters). That's a significant curve, though modest compared to the likes of the Samsung Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor's ultra-tight 1000R curvature.
Dell's Easy Arrange feature lets you organize multiple application windows on your screen and snap them into a template of your choice quickly and easily.
As with most ultrawide displays, the S3423DWC's ergonomic features are fairly limited. It's mounted on a compact yet sturdy base, with a stand that offers 3.9 inches of height adjustment, and you can tilt the top of the monitor up to 5 degrees toward or 21 degrees away from you. If you'd like to wall-mount the unit, there are holes to fit a VESA bracket (not included) in the back of the cabinet.
As for connectivity, the Dell has one upstream USB-C port that supports DisplayPort over USB Alternate Mode as well as up to 65 watts of USB power delivery, meaning it can power or charge an attached laptop. You'll also find an upstream USB 3.2 Type-B port and two downstream USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one of which can supply up to 10 watts for charging a handheld device. A pair of HDMI ports plus the primary USB-C port let you connect the monitor to up to three input sources, switching among them using a single keyboard and mouse, a configuration that Dell calls a virtual KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) switch.
Finally, the display has a security lock slot and a headphone jack. All the ports face downward in a recessed area in back, except for one USB-A port on the bottom that is somewhat easier to reach than the rest. Otherwise, without the ability to pivot the display, you'll have to crane over or move to the back of the cabinet to insert or remove cables.
Dell provides a rather thin one-year warranty for the S3423DWC. Most monitor manufacturers offer three years of coverage, as Dell does for many of its other displays. Philips goes a step further than most by adding a fourth year of support.
I tested the Dell S3423DWC's luminance (brightness per unit area), contrast ratio, and color accuracy using our standard test gear: a Klein Instruments K-10A(Opens in a new window) colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G(Opens in a new window) signal generator, and Portrait Displays' CalMAN 5(Opens in a new window) calibration software.
Dell rates the monitor's luminance at 300 nits (candelas per square meter), and I measured it as slightly better than that, at 313 nits. That's easily bright enough for most office purposes, as well as photo and video work. As a VA panel, the S3423DWC has a contrast ratio rated at a lofty 3,000:1, and it surpassed that with a 4,185:1 score. (See how we test monitors.)
According to Dell, the display covers 99% of the sRGB color space. As you can see above, it did even better in our tests, spanning 99.8% of the gamut. I also measured it as covering 88.3% of DCI-P3, a color space commonly used in digital video, and 87.8% of the Adobe RGB gamut frequently used by professional photographers preparing images for print.
In addition to our objective testing, we also put monitors through ad-hoc assessment of their image and video quality by looking at selected content from our photo and video-clip libraries. Colors in photos looked vivid and realistic. Colors also seemed true in our test videos, with the S3423DWC doing a good job of handling detail in both dark and bright areas. Note that most movies are formatted to fit widescreen (16:9) displays and appear sandwiched between black borders when viewed on an ultrawide monitor, so though the Dell's video quality is good, you can use only part of the screen to display content like this.
Two 5-watt speakers are built into the S3423DWC. They produce sound of decent volume and quality.
The Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) does a fine job as a combo productivity and gaming monitor, although as noted earlier, there are better choices if your focus is either task.
On the home-office side, the HP E27m G4 QHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor doesn't have as wide a screen, but it boasts an even larger set of ports, including Ethernet, DisplayPort-in and DisplayPort-out for daisy-chaining multiple monitors, and a hub of four USB-A ports for connecting peripherals. Its stand offers greater height adjustment and adds swivel and pivot options. Along with stereo speakers, the E27m G4's teleconferencing features include a 5-megapixel webcam and dual microphones.
If you want to focus on gaming, either of two PCMag Editors' Choice winners, the Alienware 27 Gaming Monitor (AW2721D) or the ViewSonic Elite XG270QG, would fit the bill. Well-to-do gamers might want to spring for the Samsung Odyssey G9 with its amazing super-wide (32:9 aspect ratio) 49-inch screen.
That said, between its high contrast, panoramic profile, great sRGB color coverage, and sensible port selection, the Dell S3423DWC is a fine choice for a display on which to toil all day and get in some gaming on evenings and weekends.
The Dell 34 Curved USB-C Monitor (S3423DWC) is a good dual-use monitor for home-office multitasking and light-duty gaming. You can find better choices for either alone, but this display straddles both worlds well.
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Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.
Over the years, I have reviewed iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the PCMag Digital Edition.
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