Refurbished Dell Monitors from Dell give 90 day warranty unless you purchase a computer with it. New monitors have more like 3 year warranty. I have not had issues with refurnished monitors or computers yet there is some incremental risk and reduced warranty (which has value). I personally feel that for refurbished units I would need a 20-30% discount to be of equal value. Yet value is in the eye of the beholder.
ryn996 wrote:
Alan,
Than you very much for taking the time to reply. I believe any NEC monitors that have those features are outside my $500 budget, or am I wrong about that?
Buy used or refurbished and you might get something in that price range (if it's used and the current owner has Spectraview installed you can also check the number of hours uses it's had). I've bought used and refurbished NEC monitors in the past and had no problems.
Bifurcator wrote:
Just a short one from me: Unless you're doing color critical work even 60% of sRGB is fine. I have good and poor monitors in the house including a laptop with like 65% or 70% of sRGB and it just makes no difference at all on 99.99% of the images I shoot. I shoot only RAW and do a fair amount of personal printing with allot of web shares.
So that's my input on the topic.
I don't see what it has to do with color critical. It's not like wide gamut is more precise. It's just that some colors don't exist in sRGB.
Those cheap latpo[s/tablets/monitors with 60% sRGB are rather crippled IMO, even a lot of regular old whatever shots start getting clipped.
And if you shoot a lot of stuff like fall foliage, sunsets, flowers, most things shot under intense golden hour lighting, bright clothing and cars, gems, tropical waters, wide gamut is a lot nicer. I mean why go to all the trouble of trying to capture the shot well only for the monitor to clip away so many of the cool colors you saw in real life??
I don't get the obsession with every last ounce of lens perfection and the perfect tripod and camera body and expensive filters and this and that but then oh the monitor? eh whatever, doesn't matter. Actually viewing images we take? Huh? Why would anyone care about that?
And why is it that only how you share images matters? Nobody cares to actually look at their own images and want to see them in the best light? Plus basically every web browser (so long as not tablet based) doesn't choke on wide gamut images any more so slowly even for web sharing it will beyond just sRGB. It's sad that photographers seem to be some of the ones MOST preventing color-management and wide gamut from moving forward on the web actually when you see that places like smugmug and zenfolio outright BAN wide gamut and forcibly convert everything to sRGB even if you absolutely are 100% sure you want something left as wide gamut.
ryn996 wrote:
For those that have the NEC PA241 or an older IPS display, do you find the anti-glare coating intrusive/grainy?
It is a bit grainy. I wasn't crazy that my PA241W had it. But that said the calibration and controls and uniformity and gamut and so on were amazing. And I obviously, since I got, certainly preferred to live with the AG coating over getting an otherwise much lesser monitor.
The new PA that just came out as well as the more recent Dells have a new AG coating that is a lot less intrusive. The new NEC PA even used might still be just a bit above your budget though.
My new Dell UP2414Q has the newer type coating and I do like the new coating better.
But that said, I'd personally have stuck with my PA241W, as used as it was (still displays the same as when it was new, maybe the barest trace less max contrast and brightness, as for brightness who runs at 350-400 cd/m^2 anyway? and it still drives it way brighter than I'd ever use it and it has a lot of hours on it, they tend to last pretty long these days, usually 20,000 hours at least), over any of the new 6bit sRGB IPS as new, by a long shot.
But everyone values different aspects to different degrees.
And some are pickier about certain things than others.
Bifurcator wrote:
Just a short one from me: Unless you're doing color critical work even 60% of sRGB is fine. I have good and poor monitors in the house including a laptop with like 65% or 70% of sRGB and it just makes no difference at all on 99.99% of the images I shoot. I shoot only RAW and do a fair amount of personal printing with allot of web shares.
So that's my input on the topic.
skibum5 wrote:
I don't see what it has to do with color critical. It's not like wide gamut is more precise. It's just that some colors don't exist in sRGB.
Those cheap latpo[s/tablets/monitors with 60% sRGB are rather crippled IMO, even a lot of regular old whatever shots start getting clipped.
I didn't read the rest yet cuz I'm watching a movie but yes, a narrower gamut is the identical meaning with a lower precision. It may not be the precision of a single specific color (although it may be) but rather the precision of a range of colors. In both cases this lower precision does indeed present problems for activities such as color matching footage and stills, matching the gamut of a particular printer exactly, and so on.
Color critical work takes place in many industries and the problems are well known. It just so happens that most professional and hobbyist still photographers don't have to worry about it - which is great news for those of us on a budget looking to acquire something like a 24" LCD for under $400.
ryn996 wrote:
For those that have the NEC PA241 or an older IPS display, do you find the anti-glare coating intrusive/grainy?
I love antiglare! There is an associated frostiness occasionally with some cheaper models but even in the worst cases it's far less annoying and less affecting than the colors and shapes reflected (added!) by glossy models.
Here's two monitors reflecting exactly the same background area under exactly the same room and lighting conditions:
Bifurcator wrote:
I love antiglare! There is an associated frostiness occasionally with some cheaper models but even in the worst cases it's far less annoying and less affecting than the colors and shapes reflected (added!) by glossy models.
Here's two monitors reflecting exactly the same background area under exactly the same room and lighting conditions:
Keep in mind that colors are additive. Reflected colors are ADDED to the displayed colors and the mix amount is a function of intensity.
OTOH simply putting a large black cardboard behind a glossy screen gets rid of almost all of the reflections on semi-glossy screens and you get deeper blacks and better contrast than with matte. I actually much prefer something like semi-glossy Samsung Ultra Clear Panel myself to washed out matte which just smears the reflections from all sorts of angles all over the screen.
But anyway there are different types of AG coatings (even most glossy screens use some type of AG, although some really cheap ones might not and some coatings are more effective than others) screens. For a while the matte IPS were mostly using a fairly heavy AG that even had a bit of a crystalline structure to it. I really wasn't a fan of it. The newer matte IPS screens have gone to a less intrusive AG coating thankfully. (that said, I'd personally still take my old NEC PA241W even with the intrusive AG coating over a 92% sRGB screen with no internal LUT or uniformity compensation but with the new nicer coatings). Persoanlyl I'd still prefer if they went to a smei-gloss ultraclear panel instead of matte, but whatever.
