Hi Everybody
What I've written here is the process of how I came to the decision of purchasing a DELL u2711 monitor for my desktop. Just like in every other aspect in life, you may be interested in it or maybe not. Consequently, you're not obligued to read it in order to give your opinion on the topic. Please feel free to ignore the whole thing until the last five lines.
After about one month looking for a what-a-pretty-nooby-in-this-matters person would define as a great monitor, I've found the DELL U2711, a monitor that seems to fit my craziest dreams about having a great monitor without neccessarily being an image edition professional.
Before any kind of consultation, I feel compelled to clarify that I'm neither a photo/video professional nor I have any knowledge in this science. Now this is clear, lets go with the consultation.
I'm what PRAD would qualify as an occasional gamer. I play games such as Fallout 3, Assassins Creed II, DeadSpace... so you can bet I'm not the guy looking for one less frame for a hardcore FPS (or whatever, you know what I mean. Sorry for the poor accuracy). However, I recreate myself both in image quality, such as game landscape, and also manufracture quality. When I first found out what IPS meant in terms of image quality when compared to TN, 95% of the monitors I had considered suitable for me just fell out from my list. Only a few remained: HP ZR24W, DELL u2410, DELL u2711, and the pricey NEC LCD2690WUXi. There were some more, but two great questions arosed prevented me from giving them any consideration:
- Is a monitor that doesn't have a high CDR (just like the HP ZR24W) still appropiate for occasional gaming? and How big of a deal is a high CDR when considering a occasional gaming IPS monitor?
These two questions remain unanswered, so feel free to give your opinion. It will be appreciated.
After instinctively deciding to ignore those monitors with absolutely no CDR (HP LP2475w), I decided to recurre to the PRAD revisions on my now shorter list in order to keep on discarding monitors. After reading DELL u2711's, I decided that I wouldn't buy the u2410. The u2711 looked just so much of an idealistic u2410. So the u2410 got kicked off my list. My next move was for checking out how better the NEC 2690 was in comparison to the DELL u2711. I found the NEC 2690 to be a kind of ''The Monitor.'' However, for when I read this NEC's review, I had already luckily noticed that all the scientific stuff that I found in the review had nothing to do with me. I didn't need such a monitor. So out with the NEC. However, I found something interesting when reading the reviews: Calibration. Every single calibration review I have read has achieved great improvements in the monitor, to the point that I feel in need of perform one of these in whatever monitor I finally buy. Consistently with my 'status' of 'looking for a good image quality noob', this was the first question that poped out from my mind.
- Is there a way to easily calibrate a monitor?
I know that instruments such as the Spyder 3 Pro are used for this. I also assume I could find tutorials in Youtube. However, a very general explanation of how the calibration is performed would be greatly appreciated.
Currently, and after acknowledging that I don't need Eizo's, NEC's or anything similar but a good image quality and decent non-FPS gaming suitable IPS monitor, only the HP ZR24w and the DELL u2711 remain untouched in my list. As a person looking for quality excellence in the parameters I've decided to set for my personal situation, I've chosen the DELL u2711. So here is the consultation:
Do you ratify my decision?
and a final question:
Consistently with both your experience and my situation, do you recommend me to invest in a good calibration instrument/software?
Thank you a lot for taking your time to give me a hand with this. Monitor and image reproduction science is definitely a complex one, and if you're here reading this that means you're conscious of what it means to have these kind of dilemma. So thank you a lot 