📅 2022-Mar-22 ⬩ ✍️ Ashwin Nanjappa ⬩ 🏷️ dell, display ⬩ 📚 Archive
The Dell C3422WE is a monitor that I started using recently for working from home.
Assembly: Assembling the monitor is easy: just assemble the stand and then plug it into the back of the display. The display can be adjusted in height, front-back swivel and horizontal dimensions.
With laptop: I love that this display almost eliminated the need for the USB-C dock/hub I used earlier with the laptop. It takes in a single power cable and provides a USB-C cable for my laptop that both charges my laptop and also helps appear as a second display with my laptop. All I had to do was to go into the display settings in Windows and set this up. Do note that this display can only deliver a maximum of 90W of power over USB-C, which might not be enough for laptops with discrete GPUs.
Size and resolution: This is a huge ultrawide 34-inch monitor that is curved. It took a while for my eyes to stop seeing it as a trapezium instead of a rectangle. I use it at the max resolution of 3440x1440. The text appears a bit small at this high resolution, so I am conflicted between having it at 100% or 125% resolution.
Power consumption: It draws a maximum of 220W of power. The max powerdraw is when the display is at max brightness and all the USB ports are drawing max power.
USB ports: Since this display also tries to replace a USB hub/dock, it needs to have lots of USB ports. It has 1 USB-C port and 2 USB-A ports at the back. Under the display at the front, it has 1 USB-C and 1 USB-A port. Once I connected it to my laptop, keyboard, an external hard disk and my smartphone, I pretty much ran out of ports. I definitely felt like it should have at least 2 more USB-A ports at the back.
Webcam and mic: Press the top-center of the display and a webcam + mic module pops out! The camera is 5 mega-pixel with a max resolution of 2560x1920 for photos and 1920x1080 for videos. You need to pop out this module to use the mic, else the mic will be disabled in Windows.
Display buttons: Located at bottom-left of the display, on the speaker panel are 5 icons that are actually buttons and LEDs. Left to right, they control launching Teams, ending call, volume down, volume up and toggle speaker mute. It is a nice touch that if I press the speaker mute button when the webcam module is not up, it overlays a message on the display to pop up the webcam module to use the mic.
Audio: I see two audio devices associated with this display in Windows:
KVM: There is a builtin KVM switch that can switch between up to 3 computers connected to the display. The idea is that you have a keyboard and mouse connected by USB to the display and then switch between the 3 computers connected through USB-C, DisplayPort and HDMI. USB-C can handle both display and USB, so it is a single cable to your computer. For DP and HDMI, you will be connecting both DP/HDMI and a USB-B cable (provided along with display) to the display. To switch between the computers, press the joystick behind the right side and choose Input Source.
Dell Display Manager: Apparently, I can use this software tool to manage the display and also window snapping. Since I am not using advanced features of this display, like KVM, I decided to use the Windows PowerToys instead for window snapping.
Advantages: The obvious advantages are that I can view 2 or 3 application windows side by side. This is really productive: for example, looking at email and calendar side by side. What they don’t tell you is also how useful it is when looking at spreadsheets that have lots of columns or code whose lines are long.