Dell P2417H 23.8" Black

The Dell P2417H is a 23.8-inch 1080p IPS office monitor with a fantastic ergonomic stand and a budget-friendly refurbished price. It's great for spreadsheets and email, but the 60Hz refresh rate, dim 250-nit panel, and weak color performance make it a poor choice for gaming or creative work. Buy it cheap for office use, skip it for everything else.

Let's be blunt: the P2417H is not a performance monitor. It runs at 60Hz with a 6ms response time, which puts it in the 9th percentile for performance in our database. That's fine for Word docs and web browsing, but it's a weak spot for anything fast-moving. Our gaming score for this panel is 19.6 out of 100, so if you're wondering whether this Dell is good for gaming, the answer is a hard no. You'll get smearing and ghosting in fast-paced titles, and 60Hz feels sluggish once you've used anything higher.

Brightness tops out at 250 nits, which is on the dimmer side. In a bright room with lots of windows, you might find yourself squinting. The 8-bit panel covers 16.7 million colors, but color performance lands in the 17th percentile, so don't expect vibrant, accurate hues. This is a monitor built for reading text, not editing photos. The 4,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio sounds impressive on a spec sheet, but the static contrast is 1000:1, which is standard IPS fare. In practice, blacks look a bit gray, especially in a dark room.

Compared to the top competitors in our database, the P2417H is in a completely different league. The ASUS TUF Gaming VG34VQL1B is a 34-inch ultrawide with a high refresh rate, built for gaming. The Acer Nitro XV272U W2bmiiprx and HP OMEN 27qs G2 are 1440p gaming monitors with much faster panels and better color. The Gigabyte M Series M27UP SA is a 4K productivity monitor that blows the Dell away in sharpness. Even the KOORUI 34E6UC, a budget ultrawide, offers more screen real estate and a more modern feature set.

But here's the thing: none of those monitors cost USD 110. The P2417H competes on price and ergonomics, not raw specs. If you need a cheap second monitor for a home office and you don't care about gaming or color accuracy, the Dell is a perfectly reasonable choice. If you want to do anything beyond office work, any of those competitors will serve you better, assuming your budget stretches that far.

Pricing on the P2417H is all over the place depending on condition and seller. We're seeing USD 110 to USD 190 across three US listings, with Newegg offering refurbished units at the lower end of that range. There's also a CAD 140 listing in Canada. At USD 110, this is a solid deal for an ergonomic office monitor with an IPS panel. At USD 190, it's a tougher sell, since you're getting close to newer budget monitors with better brightness and color. If you can snag one under USD 130, it's worth considering. Above that, you're paying a premium for the Dell name and the stand, not the panel quality.

The Dell P2417H is a 23.8-inch 1080p IPS monitor aimed squarely at office workers and anyone who stares at spreadsheets all day. It's an older model at this point, but it still pops up as refurbished or used stock in the USD 110 to USD 190 range, which makes it a budget-friendly option if you just need a reliable second screen. The headline feature here isn't speed or color accuracy, it's ergonomics. You get height adjust, tilt, swivel, and pivot, which is rare at this price point and lands it in the 91st percentile for ergonomics in our database.

People searching for a cheap Dell office monitor usually want to know if it's good for work from home setups. The short answer is yes, mostly. The IPS panel gives you decent viewing angles, the 1080p resolution is fine for text and email, and the stand lets you position it however you like. But if you're hoping to game on it or do color-critical work, you'll want to keep scrolling.

Connectivity is a mixed bag. You get HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, and a USB 3.0 hub, which is more than most budget monitors offer. But the spec sheet also mentions Thunderbolt, which is a bit misleading for a monitor this old. Don't expect to plug in a modern MacBook via USB-C and get video. This is a legacy port situation, not a modern docking solution.

Skip the P2417H if you're a gamer, a photo or video editor, or anyone who works in a bright room. The 60Hz panel and 6ms response time will frustrate you in fast-paced games, and the 250-nit brightness means you'll be fighting glare near windows. If you need better color accuracy, look at something like the Acer Nitro XV272U or HP OMEN 27qs G2. If you want a bigger screen for productivity, the KOORUI 34E6UC or Gigabyte M27UP SA are better picks. This Dell is strictly for basic office work on a tight budget.

Should you buy the Dell P2417H? If you need a cheap, ergonomic office monitor and you find one for around USD 110 to USD 130, sure. The stand is genuinely great, the IPS panel is easy on the eyes for text work, and the USB hub is a nice bonus. It's a workhorse, not a show pony.

But if you're spending closer to USD 190, or if you have any interest in gaming, photo editing, or watching movies in a bright room, look elsewhere. The 60Hz refresh rate, dim 250-nit panel, and mediocre color performance make this a poor fit for anything beyond basic productivity. This is a monitor that does one thing well: sitting on a desk and displaying documents. For that narrow use case, it's fine. For everything else, it's outclassed.