Dell Ultrasharp U2722DE KVM+MST 1 year experience

I have consumed many posts on KVM here and wanted to give back my experience using Dell’s KVM+MST monitor the last year.

I was looking into KVM alternatives so I can also work at my gaming PC desk because I was working on dining table the year prior and it was not a good experience. I was also in the process of upgrading my second monitor with employer money. I saw Dell U2723QE and pulled the trigger quickly. (Dell UltraSharp 27 USB-C Hub Monitor - U2722DE | Dell USA)

Setup was plug and play. I plugged the work laptop over USB-C and the gaming PC over DP+USB-A to the Dell and plugged my gaming monitor (Acer XB271HAbmiprzx https://www.acer.com/us-en/predator/monitors/xb1/pdp/UM.HX1AA.A01, award winner for worst named product) to the Dell. I have not observed an increase in delay but I do not play games competitively. I don’t know if the gaming monitor is able to make use of GSync because Dell does not support it, as none of my devices have Nvidia GPUs (previously had one, replaced with AMD).

Laptop is charged over USB-C with 90W which is more than all of my laptops support. I love knowing I can just pick up my laptop off it’s stand and it’ll be fully charged.

All of my peripherals are connected to the Dell, only one cable is connected to the laptop and 3 cables connected to my desktop.

My biggest frustration with it is switching between sources can be diffucult at times. There are two menus to do it. Source selection menu (when you tilt the rocker left-right) starts from auto-detect, and not the currently active option but the indicators make you think the cursor is on the active source. The other menu you can do it is configuration menu (tilting the rocker up-down), also starts from the top and you have to scroll down to get to the option you want. I really would’ve like two dedicated buttons you can just click to switch to source.

Also the signal detection can be finicky. I usually power my desktop, wait for it to boot then put my work laptop to sleep. But the Dell does not catch the signal from my desktop and switch sources. I have to press a key on the keyboard so wake up the display on my desktop so the monitor can detect it. The same applies in the reverse direction.

All in all I am extremely happy with my setup. It removed great amount of cable clutter from my desk (all of it tucked behind the Dell). It also removed the necessity to plug my work laptop to power when I’m home (I just don’t take out the brick from the backpack at all, the packing is also made easier). There aren’t secondary devices that take space from the desk and that needs to be powered. No additional display cables that create extra clutter. All in all, this was the best tech purchase I’ve ever done.

I am open for questions and discussions.

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