dag_fosse

<p>It occurred to me that you may be in Europe, in which case the NEC is a dead end. In Europe they put a firmware lock in the PAs so that they cannot be hardware calibrated with European Spectraview software. You'll have to buy the Spectraview edition of the monitor at almost 50% higher price.</p> <p>Importing US Spectraview II software works, though. </p>

<p>Questions like this inevitably produce a predictable response: Spend more...easy to say when it's not your bank account.</p> <p>Between these two I'd go for the NEC. Eizos are great, I have two, but this Foris model is primarily a gaming screen.</p> <p>However. The monitor is simply the single most critical piece of hardware you have. Save everywhere else; but do get a good monitor. Spend until it really hurts. You can work with a cheap laptop and a good display, and produce better work, faster and more consistent, than someone with a state of the art workstation and a mediocre display. Good monitors are expensive, but if you care about your work it will pay for itself many times over.</p> <p>Being able to work with total confidence, knowing you can absolutely rely on what you see on screen, is worth a lot. Once there, you'll never look back.</p> <p>NEC and Eizo both produce monitors of consistently high quality, but in addition there's a secret weapon: the integrated calibration software of their higher-end models. This is what turns an already great monitor into a reference-grade display system. Both NEC Spectraview II and Eizo ColorNavigator are superb pieces of software, avaliable for the NEC P/PA series or the Eizo ColorEdges.</p> <p>The NEC P242 is a good choice, but if you stretch your budget to a PA242 (wide gamut) you won't regret. But note that it requires Spectraview II software ($100) to really shine, and you'll also need a good sensor if you don't already have one.</p> <p>A brand new Eizo model called CS240 looks like a real bargain at $830 (B&H), wide gamut and Colornavigator included. One step up, a CX241 buys you into Eizo's top line, with panel properties identical to the CG line but minus a few extra features.</p> <p>Oh, and my humble opinion: 4K is all the hype now, but the extra resolution is worth little if you can't trust what you see. Basic panel quality is infinitely more important.</p>

<p>And here's the Eizo:</p><div></div>

<p>These are real photographs of a Dell U2713H, and an Eizo CG246. Explain away this.</p> <p>The Eizo is mine. This particular Dell image was taken from the Dell forum - but I had a U2410 that looked exactly like this, and the problem is very widespread. Dell just calls this "within spec".</p><div></div>

<blockquote> <p>Calibration, and in particular some of the features allowing calibrations to be quickly changed, might possibly save some time, but in general it will <em>not </em>make images displayed with a look up table based profile significantly more accurate.</p> </blockquote> <p>The important part of calibration is where you set the targets, and these will vary with different output. You want the white point to visually match paper white, and the black point to match the paper/process contrast range.</p> <p>Profiling works within and relative to those targets.</p>

<p>I had to sign up just to say this:</p> <p>We all have budgets, and yes, an NEC PA or an Eizo CG/CX is expensive. But often I notice that people will spend that amount on computer hardware without blinking - but for a display it's "outrageous". In fact it's much more productive to have a cheap computer and a good display, than the other way round.</p> <p>Two things set these displays apart from the rest. One is tight tolerances and extensive quality control, which is exactly where the others will cut costs because it doesn't appear in the specifications. So that's how they can sell at low prices and still look stellar on paper.</p> <p>The other is an integrated and "smart" calibration/profiling system that communicates directly with the display at 14 or 16 bit depth and gives a degree of control and precision simply not achievable with third party "generic" calibrators. I have and use both Eizo ColorNavigator (on an Eizo CG246), and NEC Spectraview II (on an NEC P232) - and this is what transforms a good display into what Andrew calls a reference display system. And that's a very accurate description.</p> <p>What these display systems do is take out all the guesswork. Once you've been there, you don't want to go back.</p>