Dell W3706MC 37" High Definition LCD TV

Nice-looking set has great video, tremendous number of inputs

By Charlie White

The price of LCD monitors is in freefall, and that means you can get a great value in HDTV, particularly if you're considering a screen that's not the largest available. An example of that is the Dell W3706MC 37" High Definition LCD TV ($1599),  a 1366x768 flat panel display with an 800:1 contrast ratio and lots of inputs. We put the monitor through our rigorous battery of tests at the Midwest Test Facility Theater, and we were highly impressed with its performance.

This 37-inch LCD television is beautifully designed, vaguely resembling Dell's handsome PC monitors. It weighs nearly 62 pounds with its included stand, which can be detached for wall-mounting, but the TV's weight was still easily manageable by one fairly weak product reviewer. The product includes two speakers that can either be attached to the side of the monitor with included mounting gear, or can be freestanding, using stands that are also included in the box.

Looking at the bottom of the TV, there is such a tremendous number of inputs, some neophytes might consider it overkill (see graphics below). HDTV aficionados will appreciate the two HDMI inputs, one for each tuner inside this digitally-tuned set (but with no CableCard), and there are also four composite inputs, three S-Video, two component, two coaxial TV-in and nine audio inputs. Plus, there's an RS-232 input and a VGA connector as well, so you can plug your PC into the VGA port, or you can use an adapter and plug it into the HDMI port. Of course, if you have one of those new HDMI graphics cards in your PC, that will also do the trick.

Above is the left side of the input panel under the display, the below photo shows the right side of the input panel.

The input is automatically selected as you turn on the TV, and you can also designate which inputs are active. It's also quite a simple process to manually designate which input you'd like to use. Overall, the menus and on-screen displays of this monitor are excellent and are easily navigated, giving you plenty of flexibility.

 

For our testing, we plugged in 720p video signals via HDMI from a TiVo Series 3 HD personal media recorder, a high-definition Scientific Atlanta 8300HD personal video recorder, and a Toshiba HD DVD player. We also plugged in an up-rezzing DVD player, as well as a PC.

Looking at the picture with our DisplayMate Obstacle Course software we use for all our display reviews, we first noticed that the set arrived here with settings that were less than optimal. The most noticeable was the brightness. This TV is capable of tremendous brightness, which we had to lower by about 20%, but that was easy to do using our Spyder colorimeter equipment which quickly helped us adjust all of the levels to their optimal points.

Once we had all of the settings optimized, we were highly impressed with the TV's contrast ratio, indicating that Dell's 800:1 quoted spec is probably close to accurate. Displaying all types of high definition content as well is up-rezzed DVD movies, this television handled everything we threw at it with aplomb. It was even adept at handling computer signals, albeit at lower resolution than we're usually accustomed to with computer monitors. But if you have a graphics card that can handle 1366x768 or thereabouts, it will serve you well if you want to watch, for example, some iTunes movies using your computer. This TV can also play back Windows Media HD files beautifully.