After doing some research and a lot of reading, I think the choices for a PC user are:

Dell 2209Wa - eIPS panel with good color and clarity for about $250, 22" and 1680 x 1050

HP LP2475W - 24", 1080p resolution for $575 with wide color gamut bit slightly harder to calibrate. Great if working in Adobe RGB color space.

NEC Multisync LCD 2690WUXi2 - 25.5", 1920 x 1200, wide color gamut, $1050.

Eizo CG243W - 24", 1080P, $2150, wide color gamut


Within the price ranges there is some give and take among brands, but generally there seems to be a 2x cost difference. So my question is am I missing anything here between the HP and the NEC that would give slightly better performance?

Second question is does the 23" Apple Cinema display surpass the HP or NEC and is it compatible with a PC?

How about the Dell U410?

Roy_H wrote:
After doing some research and a lot of reading, I think the choices for a PC user are:

Dell 2209Wa - eIPS panel with good color and clarity for about $250, 22" and 1680 x 1050

HP LP2475W - 24", 1080p resolution for $575 with wide color gamut bit slightly harder to calibrate. Great if working in Adobe RGB color space.

NEC Multisync LCD 2690WUXi2 - 25.5", 1920 x 1200, wide color gamut, $1050.

Eizo CG243W - 24", 1080P, $2150, wide color gamut


Within the price ranges there is some give and take among brands, but generally there seems to be a 2x cost difference. So my question is am I missing anything here between the HP and the NEC that would give slightly better performance?



There is a Dell U2410 to add to that, and i believe Eizo do a pro priced 22 inch too. What you pay for in the very expensive monitors are very wide colour gamuts, excellent uniformity in lighting etc, manufacturer supplied calibration systems and built-in Look Up Tables (so the calibration correction is done in the monitor rather than by the graphics card driver). There are some other bells and whistles too.

To justify the NEC (or the Eizo) i think you need to be pretty serious about your photography or have a specific need for the extended colour spaces they offer. Or just have too much money.

I don't know why people buy Apple screens for PC's. They were good when they first came out (the 30 inch cinema display made me drool involuntarily in the Apple shop), but i don't think they are anything special now.

The 23" Apple? No. It's a quality display, but it's long in the tooth at this point and isn't an Adobe RGB display like many of the others on your list. It's just a DVI monitor and is completely compatible with Windows, but it doesn't sound like a pony in this race.

The NEC is easy to hardware calibrate if you use their SpectraViewII software with either an i1Pro or their puck (which you can buy with the monitor). My calibration of it: http://www.neuffy.com/2009/12/printing-and-color-management.html

Truly excellent results, but at a price. I fail to see the additional benefit of the Eizo for most people.

there is also the NEC P221 which is a 22" Spectraview for around mid $700's

And the 2490wuxi which is a 24" sRGB Spectraview, at about $800. It's basically a wide-screen version of the 2090uxi that I use, and with which I could hardly be happier.

Nill

Whoa, the P221 is only $355 at B&H. Definitely seems work a look.

Nill

The smaller Eizo CG222W is excellent annd around $1300.00

Thank you everyone - this was just what I Needed!

Try to find a NOS CRT like my Viewsonic Grapic Series. NOTHING below $3/5K with do the same job (some say nothing at all). Price is low ($400-500 or less). Put the money you save into a good Monitor calibration package.

Good thread! I will be benefiting from it too.

Thanks.

Dear Neuffy (or anybody),

I just got a NEC 2490 with Spectraview. It's sitting here cold-iron waiting for a new Win7 computer to arrive. So I'm reading the manual and Googling to learn how to calibrate with Spectraview. Think I understand most, but one thing confuses me.

The book says Spectraview will create an ICC profile and add a loader to invoke the profile at boot. That sounds like the normal calibrations I've done in the past. I thought the NEC/Spectraview was all hardware calibration. What's the ICC profile all about? Why is it needed?

And for the OP, research wide gamut before you buy. I did, but the more I read the more confused I got about the problems of viewing websites with a non-color managed browser. So out of fear, uncertainty, and doubt I went for a normal sRGB monitor.

Now I'm reading the NEC manual and it says their wide gamut monitors have an sRBG emulation mode. Don't know what that means and if it solves the problem.

Here's one of the sources of my confusion. Read the part by Microsoft about "high color" in Win7. I think it says "maybe, some of the time".

if you already have Spectraview II and need a second calibrated monitor then getting the P221 alone is a huge bargain. i already have a 3090W-BK-SV, so a second NEC monitor of any kind supported by Spectraview II was worth looking into. i got a P221 for one of my other machines.

Herb...

Nill Toulme wrote:
Whoa, the P221 is only $355 at B&H. Definitely seems work a look.
Nill

to force the system to use a known profile that does nothing.

Herb...

redcrown wrote:
The book says Spectraview will create an ICC profile and add a loader to invoke the profile at boot. That sounds like the normal calibrations I've done in the past. I thought the NEC/Spectraview was all hardware calibration. What's the ICC profile all about? Why is it needed?

redcrown wrote:

The book says Spectraview will create an ICC profile and add a loader to invoke the profile at boot. That sounds like the normal calibrations I've done in the past. I thought the NEC/Spectraview was all hardware calibration. What's the ICC profile all about? Why is it needed?

And for the OP, research wide gamut before you buy. I did, but the more I read the more confused I got about the problems of viewing websites with a non-color managed browser. So out of fear, uncertainty, and doubt I went for a normal sRGB monitor.


The Spectraview calibration is hardware based. Your monitor's LUTs are displaying properly whether the boot loader runs or not.

The ICC profile is needed so that color managed apps know what the characteristics of your monitor are; this half the foundation of soft-proofing. Photoshop, for example, needs to know how your monitor displays color in order to make the display conversion to a profiled output device. It's also necessary that the NEC profile be seen by Windows as your system profile so that Photoshop knows which one to use. <rant> I hope this process is refined in Win 7—as opposed to XP, where you can have individually profiled dual monitors, but only ONE system profile. Therefore, Photoshop is displaying color on one of your monitors using a profile not created for it. Maybe the combination of W7 and CS5 fixes all this...</rant>

re the sRGB emulation mode, it's better than nothing. My solution was to keep my old Dell FPW2005 along side my NEC P221.

The NECs, Eizos and other pro segment monitors have hardware LUTs. These perform multiple functions, not just calibration/profiling.

The hardware LUTs are used to restore uniformity to the display, for instance, by opposing naturally occurring backlight and panel unevenness. Monitors in this segment also use panel blocking to enable operating brightnesses far dimmer than most consumer models can attain, if that's important to you.

I thought I was going to be using top notch CRTs for a while yet but stumbled on a used NEC 2490 and I absolutely adore it. The Colorcomp/Uniformity function is fantastic. With it turned off I can see some backlight variation and a little bit of blotchy rose tint in a couple of areas of the panel. With it turned on it's a perfectly uniform grey/white backdrop for PS, ACR, LR whatever. Simply lovely.

Hardware calibration with loss of tones is also the other obvious benefit. The gamma of this screen is always absolutely perfect, as is the colour response.

If you were going NEC, I'd try to find one of the newer PA series. Not that there's anything wrong with the 2490/2690 series, but the PA is a whole new generation with higher performance and some new advancements. The 2209WA is great bang/buck - no doubt about that.