I borrowed a calibrator yesterday. A datacolor Spyder 3 Pro. So that my nice new monitor would display its colors properly. And also that the colors on the monitor would match those on the TV.
Everything went well. I calibrated the monitor, I calibrated the TV, I calibrated the TV to my HTPC. All the colors looked about the same. The grays on the monitor finally looked correct. The TV and the Monitor matched. But I wanted more...
I wanted to see how my monitor fares and the "Pro" software didn't offer the info I wanted. So for the purpose of this blog, I shelled out a tidy 75€ to buy the Spyder3Elite 4.0 software. Talk about stupid...
Well, since I paid the money, here are the results of 120 nit 6500K calibration:
Gamut:
The red triangle is my monitor, the purple one is Adobe RGB.
A simple calculation shows that my monitor covers about 86% of Adobe RGB gamut. The excessive coverage not defined by Adobe RGB would cover some 92% of the gamut.
Gamma:
Gamma looks OK. It isn't on the target curve, but it doesn't stray far from it either. A minor correction in the profile covers this just fine.
Screen backlight uniformity for 100% white:
The maximum deviance is 10% in the upper right corner.
The graph looks far worse than reality I'm happy to say. I can't say the difference is bothering to me.
The actual contrast ratio has been found at 400:1. This figure is quite disappointing, especially after reading the Anandtech review which suggested I'd have at least 800:1.
After shelling out the money and getting the results I wish I hadn't done so. I was aiming for a total bragging piece. The reviews suggested 95+% Adobe RGB, superior contrast ratios and superb viewing angles. Backlight uniformity also wasn't bad. Instead I only got a good gamut, an average contrast and a pretty poor screen uniformity. I can't say I feel bad about purchasing this monitor, but it sure isn't what it's advertized to be.
No more to say, I'm afraid.
