I have external monitors at home and work so I can just plug in my M1 Macbook Air and have plenty of screen real estate.
I bought this monitor 6 weeks ago to replace an aging 24" Dell monitor that had served me very well. But 4K monitors have been getting better and coming down in price, so it was time to upgrade.
Last fall, I bought the more expensive Dell U2720QM monitor for my office at work. That one cost about $550 (and often cannot be found for less than $650). This one, the Dell S2722QC, costs about $380. I will be comparing them in this review, and - spoiler alert - this monitor, the QC, is pretty much just as good as the more expensive QM.
Both the QC and QM models are 27", 4K, have nice bright screens, and accurate vivid colors right out of the box.
Both have wonderfully adjustable stands: there's the usual tilt & swivel, and you can slide the screen up to a higher position (useful if the screen is plugged into a laptop and the laptop is directly in front of the screen on your desk) or to a very low position where the bottom of the monitor is an inch from the surface of your desk. But the really cool thing is that stand (for BOTH monitors) allows you to rotate the screen 90 degrees so it's in portrait mode. That's really helpful for some of my use-cases. It's also useful to help you see the ports on the bottom edge of the display, when you're plugging in cables - otherwise they're hard to see when you're trying to plug something in.
Both of these monitors can replace a USB-C hub. Meaning, you can plug in several peripherals into the monitor and connect the monitor to your computer using just a single USB-C cable. Your computer will get power from the monitor over the same USB-C cable that your computer uses to transmit data to the monitor. And your computer will see all the peripherals that are connected to the monitor as if they were connected directly to your computer.
These USB-C hubs are godsends for people with laptops that only have 1 or 2 or 3 USB-C ports. For this reason, I have used USB-C hubs for my offices at home and work; they're not cheap, but they're worth it for me.
But the USB-C hubs take up desk space and have some cord clutter. With the Dell monitors, I don't need the USB-C hubs any more. I donated one to my college and the other to a local church. Both Dell monitors have enough ports for me to plug in my printer, my external hi-fi speakers, my external web-cam for Zoom & FaceTime calls, and an external SSD hard drive.
So why does the Dell U2720QM cost so much more than this Dell S2722QC? Well, the QM has one or two more ports (for the USB-C hub functionality) than this QC model. And, on paper, the QM seems to have a slightly better display, according to specs. But I have both, and I can't tell a difference in video quality. Probably people who do a ton of photo and video editing could, but I have good eyes and I can't tell the difference, and I don't think most people will see enough of a difference to justify spending $200 more for the QM model.
Oh, here's one more difference: the cheaper QC model has built-in speakers, the more expensive QM model does not. I have to say, I really dislike the sound that comes from the speakers in the QC monitor; it is very very thin and tinny sounding, almost to the point of being shrill and annoying. My laptop speakers (which are not great) sound way better.
And that's a shame, because if you're feeding video into the QC monitor from HDMI (for example if you plug a blu-ray player into the HDMI port), the audio goes in over the same cable, so the monitor really needs to have its own speakers otherwise it's difficult to find a way to hear the sound.
Bottom line: for most people, this $380 QC model is every bit as good as the QM model that costs $550 or $650 or more, even though both have a gorgeous 27" 4K display and both have very useful USB-C hub functionality. And the stand's flexibility is really useful.
Highly recommended!
InstallME_Dan