CRT recommendations

[paulr]

I decided against that $450 eizo ... everything i found out about it (including info from eizo reps) suggests it's way below the coloredge monitors, and probably well below the CRT that i'm used to.

Good news is a guy in NYC showed up on ebay selling 8 of the LaCie monitors for $40 each. Condition is a big gamble, but I'll take my chances at that price. If I can get a couple of years out of the thing, i might be able to afford a great LCD when it finally goes.

Of course if this monitor turns out to be crap I'll be right where I started, only $40 lighter ...

[Chris Strobel]

I decided against that $450 eizo ... everything i found out about it (including info from eizo reps) suggests it's way below the coloredge monitors, and probably well below the CRT that i'm used to.

Good news is a guy in NYC showed up on ebay selling 8 of the LaCie monitors for $40 each. Condition is a big gamble, but I'll take my chances at that price. If I can get a couple of years out of the thing, i might be able to afford a great LCD when it finally goes.

Of course if this monitor turns out to be crap I'll be right where I started, only $40 lighter ...

I had my eye on those too Paul.I hope they work out!

Chris

[Rakesh Malik]

We have several of the Dells too (20 and 23" models). It may be just that the Apple is my personal monitor and I've been able to tweak it to my heart's content, but I cannot get the Dells to show the same sort of subtlety that I get out of the Apple.

Yes. Dell buys the same monitor that Apple does. Then again, Dell is probably also buying some of the same laptops from the same ODM as Apple now, as well.

[JW Dewdney]

Yes. Dell buys the same monitor that Apple does. Then again, Dell is probably also buying some of the same laptops from the same ODM as Apple now, as well.

Isn't it just the same mfr of the actual LCD?? I think the control circuits and power supplies are different, no?

[Rakesh Malik]

Isn't it just the same mfr of the actual LCD?? I think the control circuits and power supplies are different, no?

Odds are they both use the same parts, so it's not likely that there are any measurable differences there.

[JW Dewdney]

one can only speculate i guess

[Struan Gray]

I really wanted the Dells to be good enough: had they done so I would have a bigger monitor on my work desk and a Dell flat panel at home. But whatever I did, and whatever computer I drove them with, the shadows blocked up faster, and there was a tendency to unsubtlety in the way colours were rendered. The difference was Velvia vs. Astia, rather than Velvia vs. Portra, but real enough for me to go for a smaller Apple screen.

I suspect the difference lies in the drive electronics, or the backlight, or perhaps the acceptable deviation from spec that Dell permits. I don't know, but the difference was significant for me, and consistent across several units.

The CE widescreen Eizos were a step up again, and the CGs better yet, but I have decided to live with a little 'digital drydown' while that level of quality drops in price.

[Dominique Labrosse]

We bought the widescreen CE Eizo's at work (2 of them, non-sequential serial numbers) just as they came out and found they varied gradually at least 10% or so across the screen. Left side was cooler and darker. Right side was lighter and warmer. It was like someone had used the gradient tool in Photoshop but across my screen – all the time. This was especially noticeable when looking at blues and oranges. I sent them both back to Eizo seperately over the span of a coupe of months.

Apparently they were within spec (according to the Eizo techs the allowable varience for this model was 30%!) and Eizo refused to replace them. We moved them on to other users in the company who do not require such critical colour work. We ended up buying Apple 23" Cinema Displays to replace them with and have been happy ever since. Much better colour purity. Go figure.

At the time the Apple's were almost half the price of the Eizo's and delivered a very similar gamut (yes I calibrated both of them with the same EyeOne Display2 and compared both the profiles using Eizo's on-line profile analyzer).

Your experience might vary but my experience is that the Eizo might make some really nice very high end LCDs but the mid-range product is overpriced and outperformed by other products available for far less money.

[Struan Gray]

Dominique, I think it's great to be able to compare experiences, especially to get input from users, and not just gawpers like myself.

[Rakesh Malik]

I suspect the difference lies in the drive electronics, or the backlight, or perhaps the acceptable deviation from spec that Dell permits. I don't know, but the difference was significant for me, and consistent across several units.

I suspect that it's something else -- PC's use a higher gamma than macs, so Dell's monitor might be calibrated for that, which would lead to blocking up shadows more, because on a system with a higher gamma, they'd be brighter.

I ran into this while working on some character animation; my monitor turned out to be set considerably brighter than my friend's (because he knew how to calibrate it, and at the time I didn't), and when I set up lighting in a 3D scene and rendered it out, he found that it was much too dark, and the shadows were heavily blocked up. Of course, in our case that was an easy fix since we were in XSI and draft renders don't take very long on my laptop, but it was very educational.

The CE widescreen Eizos were a step up again, and the CGs better yet, but I have decided to live with a little 'digital drydown' while that level of quality drops in price.

I'm with you on that one. Hopefully, it won't be much longer