With an education discount I can get the Apple for $1599 before tax but with the Dell I can get the 30" for $1448 which includes a 4 year warranty, complete care and with tax and shipping.
Has anyone compared these two items and if so how is the color on one vs the other?
I would recommend waiting a little while as the Apple displays are a couple years older and they should be updating them soon. If you have to buy now I would go with the Dell since it's newer technology.
Dells are surronded by a certain level of criticism for the quality control and ability to accurately profile. Apple on the other hand is known for the best QC in the industry (though they are not without examples of mistakes). The Apple LCDs also profile much easier and more accurately than Dell.
Personally for that much money I'd get a 24" NEC with the best color and accuracy out there. Smaller, yes, but designed for full calibration and top notch performance.
Brandon Mizar wrote:
I was just looking at their site and they have a 26" version that covers 93% of the Adobe RGB gamut. I think I am going to go with that one.
Keep in mind that expanded gamut means more color space with the same number of colors....16.7 million. The pathway to the display is still choked by 8 bit steps (most OS and applications...video cards are becoming 10 bit). So there can be issues with banding or large steps in color differences in gradations. Its still a great LCD, but make sure you understand expanded gamut display and 8 bit color. Unfortunately the hardware is way ahead of software...lets go Adobe et al!
Josef Isayo wrote:
Apple will be announcing new monitors this January. Besides I would not want the name "Dell" to be staring back at me while I'm on my computer.
January? Proof? not even the rumor sites are saying this. No event until Feb (Mac World) and no real urgency to update them. LED backlights are coming so we may just see price drops. Apple does not chase trends like other....large gamut displays are largely that (for now). I expect LED backlights and expanded gamut in the next revision...maybe a year from now. Then an OS that supports 10 bit color or more. Then we will just need Adobe et al to move up from 8 bit color and we'll see a real benefit from high gamut LCDs.
Brandon Mizar wrote:
Ok I am now back at looking at the 24" and they have a version of it with the spectraview to calibrate and one without.
I have an Eye One Display 2 already. Would that spectraview give better results or should I just stick with the Eye One?
I think you still need calibrator hardware, only difference is, you would use spectraview(for NEC monitor)/colornavigator(for Eizo monitor) software instead of xrate's match 3.
regardless wide gamut issue,I think the monitor with 14 or 16 bits color processing make significant sense,there is a 8bits bottleneck on operating system and regular video card though. We all know 16bits file format is crucial format for pic editing while editing in 8bits file is forbidden for pro or any other serious designer/photographer because of potential loss of tonality in adjustment of curve,level,brightness,exposure or other. sometimes the tonal loss is tiny you won't see,but doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Calibrating a monitor without LookUp Table won't make big sense to us or even worse sometimes since we got loss of tonality during the adjustment on Video card 8bit LUT(think about you adjust curve/level/exposure in 8bit file in ps, you will get comb-like graph in histogram).
On the contrary,monitor with independent LUT won't make us really benefit from calibration because of less loss of tonality when calibrating directly processed in monitor's 14bit or 16bit LUT.
I'd either wait or get the 30" refurb from the apple site. Much cheaper. In any case, there's no point in comparing 30" to 24" monitors. The resolution difference is giant. If color accuracy is the issue then buy on those lines, but if resolution is where it's at the Apple 30" is sweet.
johnnydanger wrote:
I'd either wait or get the 30" refurb from the apple site. Much cheaper. In any case, there's no point in comparing 30" to 24" monitors. The resolution difference is giant. If color accuracy is the issue then buy on those lines, but if resolution is where it's at the Apple 30" is sweet.
I would much prefer to have 2 24" displays than one 30". I find its just too big and i have to move my head all around to find things. On 2 displays I can keep different windows or apps in their screen and find its much more organized and efficient. One could get a highly accurate 24" (NEC, Eizo) and a cheaper (Dell) for the price of a 30" and have more pixels, two displays, and better quality.
