Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsUnless You're A Techie, DON'T BUY FOR A MAC
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2020
SUMMARY
-- Beautiful monitor, wonderful picture
-- Not suitable for use with a MAC
-- The most important piece of software to manage the monitor is NOT AVAILABLE FOR MAC, only Windows.
-- Documentation is awful
-- Tech support doesn't speak English -- at least not English I can understand
I've only had it a day so who knows how it will hold up? But, it seems like a fantastic monitor. The colors are sharp and the resolution is great. I'm not a techie, so don't ask me about some of the esoterica some reviewers are really good at. I just look at the darn thing, it looks great to me, and that's that!
I'm running it connected to the latest state-of-the art MacBook Pro. The model was released very recently and I just received it a couple of days ago. I'm on the latest MAC OS, Catalina.
If the monbitor seems so great, why only 1 star? Actually, I'd give it zero stars if that was possible.
The MAC documentation is awful and a key Program -- the Dell Display Manager -- isn't available for MAC. It's the software that makes it easy to run the thing and make all the choices, changing things on the fly, etc "Our engineers are working on it and we hope (not plan, but hope) to have it available for MAC in early 2021" This is a $1,000 monitor, and they don't have one of its key features available for MAC? Are you kidding me?
And, what MAC documentation that IS there is based on a MAC OS from a generation or two ago. The buttons, clicks etc. Dell shows in the MAC documentation are, in many cases, just not there. I suppose they are someplace else in System Preferences, but, as I said, I'm not a techie.
And then try to find the documentation!!! The only documentation that comes with the monitor is a "Quick Start Guide" -- a few small pages, printed on cheesy paper, no words just pictures of how to connect the various cables. No problem. The last page of the Quick Start drive has a line drawing of a book with a floppy disk (YES, A FLOPPY DISK) in front of it and a pointer to a website, dell.com/U3219Q). It doesn't take a techie to figure out that must be the place to find the monitor's Users Guide! It is, but you'll never find it! I spent 15 or 20 minutes on that webpage and associated links looking for the Usert Guide until I got frustrated.
Lightbulb!! Tech Support should be able to direct me to the User Guide on the Dell website! And the tech support telephone number is easy to find on the website. A very promising start. I'll just call tech support and as where to go on the Dell website to find the User's Guide for my fabulous new $1,000 monitor.
DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME CALLING DELL TECH SUPPORT!
Only 15 minutes or so on hold until I got someone -- a promising start. It should be the shortest tech support session that day at Dell, right? How long does it take to ask where to find a User's Guide on the website and get an answer, right? As it turns out, it would take forever -- and you still wouldn't be able to get an understandable answer. I don't know what language the person on the other end of the line was speaking, but it wasn't understandable English, that's for sure. I think it was a woman and she didn't understand me and I didn't understand her. It took a while, but eventually I figured out she was asking me for some sort of a number somewhere on the monitor, but I couldn't understand the name of the number (serial number? product I.D.? Something else?) I got that she was trying to tell me where to look, but I couldn't understand her. From my perspective, she could have been speaking Swahili. So, I politely asked if I could speak to someone else who spoke better English. She had no clue what I was asking for. I gave up and hung up.
After another half hour or so surfing the Dell website, I finally found the 77 page User's Guide. I also found the 12-page User's Guide for the Dell Display Manager software. I skimmedf Display Manager User's Guide - it's amazing! It makes everything about the monitor totally and easily controllable from one place. Here are all the things it does -- easily and simply:
"Dell Display Manager User's Guide │ 1Del l Display Manager User's GuideOverviewDell Display Manager is a Microsoft Windows application used to manage a monitor or a group of monitors. It allows manual adjustment of the displayed image, assignment of automatic settings, energy management, window organization, image rotation, and other features on select Dell monitors. Once installed, Dell Display Manager runs each time the system starts and places its icon in the notification tray. Information about monitors connected to the system is ava!ilable when hovering over the notification-tray icon"
Wow! This monitor is going to be EASY to use! Perfect for a non-techie like me! But, of course, Dell hasn't bothered to write the software to run on MAC -- only Windows. Are you kidding me?
AND, get this... There is a separate piece of documentation on the website titled "Using a Dell UltraSharp USB-C Monitor with a Mac" Promising. Here are about the only directions for MAC...
"Setting Up Your Monitor
Follow the instructions to set up your Dell UltraSharp monitor using USB-C connection.
Connect your Mac system to the monitor using the USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 cable.
On your Mac’s System Preferences, select Displays to choose your external monitor.
Select Display tab to set your desired screen resolution.
Select Color and set to Millions of Colors.
Select Refresh Rate and set your Hertz to 60 Hz.
Select Arrangement Tab to set your display mode to either Extended Desktop (uncheck the Mirror Displays button) or Mirror Displays (Figure 1)."
There's only one problem. What the instructions say isn't applicable to the new MAC Catalina OS. For examples:
The Display tab has no option to set screen resolution (I found it someplace else)
Under "Color", there is no option for "Millions of Colors"
There is no option to set a Refresh Rate
I am not joking about this: The ONLY documentation in this guide is what I copied/pasted above -- and, as I wrote, it's worthless since it was written for an earlier generation MAC OS and what's written isn't right for Catalina. The rest of the Guide -- several pages -- is Troubleshooting Tips, 13 of them. Here's #13:
13. Is there a Mac version of the Dell Display Manager Software?
No. Dell is working closely with our software development teams to have a Mac version of the Dell Display Manager by early 2021.
So, as a non-techie I've now spent a couple of hours trying to make the Dell U3219Q work effectively with my MAC. I've been through several places in System Preferences (including Accessibility, that I've never used in my many years of MAC) and I think I've finally got it right. And as part of writing this review I re-skimmed the User Guide for the Display Manager -- what took me a couple of hours is probably 15 minutes using that software. Oh, did I mention that Dell sells a $1,000 monitor that isn't really suitable to run on a MAC?
I love the monitor after only a day. And, I now think I have it set up right. But, what if I want to change something going forward? What if I even want to experiment by trying different options? A breeze with Display Manager (FOR WINDOWS ONLY!) I can't even begin to figure out how to do any of those things. And, it's worse. I don't even know what some of the choices are.
So, to rew-summarize...
SUMMARY
-- Beautiful monitor, wonderful picture
-- Not suitable for use with a MAC
-- The most important piece of software to manage the monitor is NOT AVAILABLE FOR MAC, only Windows.
-- Documentation is awful
-- Tech support doesn't speak English -- at least not English I can understand
While writing this review, I am getting absolutely furious. I'll almost certainly return it to Amazon -- luckily I took pictures of each step of unpacking it so I can re-pack it right. I know everything is made in China these days, but I like to support an American company whenever I can. Dell doesn't make stuff here, but at least they are an American company. Too bad.
And, now it's back to Amazon to see if I can find a 32" 4K monitor that's made by a company that wants to sell to MAC users, not just Windows users.
