I don’t usually do stories like this one, but I love this design so much I wanted to share it with you. “Dell has flaunted this gorgeous monitor for a while in various trade shows and press events, always saying that it’s just a design concept and not available yet. That all changes now, because the 22-inch Dell Crystal LCD display is suddenly a real product. Just in time for CES, this beauty is set to ship in the next few days, and even though its spec list isn’t as high-end as we had hoped, it’s still so pretty, if it were smaller we’d want to wear it as a necklace.” On a related note, Dell machines are appearing at Best Buy.
More like ultra-ugly. It’s overdesigned, and looks stupid. Doesn’t even need 20 years to start looking silly. Kinda reminds those sci-fi wonders from the sixties – form over purpose all the way.
I wouldn’t agree; the only thing that lets it down is the stupid built in speakers; they never work as good as external ones – so buggered if I know why manufacturers still insist on bundling them.
Oh, and it reminds me of those robots from the 1920s and 1930s.
“I wouldn’t agree; the only thing that lets it down is the stupid built in speakers; they never work as good as external ones – so buggered if I know why manufacturers still insist on bundling them.”
You’re right, nothing beats a good sound system, at least not this kind of speakers. They waste horizontal space… just imagine that there could be some more screen space… and they make the thing looking weird, just as if it already wouldn’t look weird enough. 🙂
“Oh, and it reminds me of those robots from the 1920s and 1930s.”
Is this due to the keys (at least I think these are keys) on the lower left that look like springs? 🙂
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/01/dell_crystal2.jpg
Hey kids, it’s Buck Rogers, applause! “Boing, boing, my name is Monitantulus the supercomputer robot, take me to your leader! Meep meep!” =^_^=
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In general, I would agree. However, I’m reserving judgment on these. Dell bills them as “premium speakers”, and they look suspiciously much like the drivers used in my Altec Lansing system… which are absolutely the best computer speakers I’ve ever heard. They deliver a sound quality far superior to what one would expect from just looking.
True; but they always sound tinny when music is played through them – for me, to coin a sad phrase, “I’m addicted to bass”; when I hear my music, I want to have pounding bass that isn’t distorted.
Nothing is worse than listening to a piece of music, even a Charles Mingus piece finding that the bass lacks clarity its to the point of being awful to listen to.
Edited 2008-01-05 07:52
Very Jetsons. The ninth Doctor used an even cooler looking monitor in “Dalek!”. The whole thing was translucent. Looked like just a sheet of glass and translucent images and text just appeared within it.
That is sweet! (Not necessarily the looks) I cannot wait for the technology to become cheaper and used in their standard monitors.
tripod stand is ugly.
from a side view, it looks like just a regular LCD monitor with a small bezel, with a BIG PIECE OF GLASS stuck to the front of it.
Also …. I don’t want speakers attached to my monitor
With all of that said, it is the best looking Dell monitor to EVER come out.
Seriously, if that monitor didn’t have the glass in front and were built by NEC or Eizo, I’d be all over it. That has to be the thinnest bezel I’ve ever seen by far, and they ruin it with that huge piece of glass. Talk about gimmicky trash.
Except the bezel isn’t really that thin. It looks really thin in the first shot, but is of normal non-OMG thickness in the second. There are other differences too. The camera is in the glass in the first, but in the (thicker) bezel in the second. Speakers’ front is silver in the first, black in the second.
So which represents the actual product? If Dell’s page* is to be believed, the product is represented by the second shot. The one with the regular thick old bezel. So I wouldn’t even be interested *without* the glass
* http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/monit…
I do believe you’re right. I guess I just go back to wishing for a 24″ version of the NEC SXi. I’m happy with my WUXi for now, but do we really need a 3/4″ bezel?
Agreed. Glass is OK if you only spend a couple of minutes on the system. If you want to look at your screen for any amount of time, a true LCD with matte finish is the way to go.
And only 3 times the price of a regular 22″ monitor!
What a deal!
This whole genre of making everything look like it is Vista compatible even at the physical level is starting to bother me (esp those ABC News graphics & so on).
The Sony displays I have seen with the glass bezel look pretty good with just enough of a glass extension, but this Dell thing needs to lose the speakers and tripod. It also reminds me of those Apple special editions, looks good today, but dates quickly.
I did get to see the Sony OLED display in a VGA sized TV in Taiwan recently and those are really gorgeous in color scale, wide angle and very very thin, a few mm for the most of it. Now if the manufacturing issues get worked out at the larger sizes, perhaps in 10yrs…
Opps…
I accidently tipped your $1200 monitor over and shattered it.
It’s fairly ugly…