Monitor Suggestions?

[chrisc]

I have the Hewlet Packard HP LP2475w monitor calibrated with the Spyder 3 Pro colororimeter.Beautiful color. Check out the reviews. It is an H-IPS monitor and I couldn't be happier.


My budget couldn'tafford the NECMonitors so I went with this one. Got it at Provantage (received it in two days) for a great price (less than 530 delivered)

[canoli]

Without knowing your budget or your level of expectation, it's impossible to say "steer clear of all TN panels." If your budget is at least $600 I would recommend that, but under $600 you won't find anything but TN panels. TN panels are great for gamers, not so great for photographers. It's harder than it should be to find out what type panel is in a particular monitor, but viewing angle and price are good indicators. Look for 178 degree angles and prices over $600 if you want to avoid TN panels, but also google google google!


If you're just looking for a step-up from your laptop monitor, almost anything you buy new will look better, mostly because it'll be much bigger. Beyond that, it really depends on what you need the monitor to do.


I'd say one of the "lines in the sand" is at the TN panel vs. all other types. At about $600 you start getting into more color-accurate panels - or, I should say, these $600+ panels have the ability to be calibrated accurately. Actually the cut-off point is higher if you want true hardware calibration and not just graphics card "bending." Monitors that allow direct LUT calibration are closer to $1000.


Good luck on the search! There is a ton of information out there. If you plan to buy on the internet, make sure the return policy isn't ridiculously prohibitive - some require a certain amount of dead pixels before they'll accept a return...


I'm a huge B&H fan; their return policies are the standard by which I measure all the others - I was there the other day looking at a demo monitor - about $300 off the original price - and the policy was still "2 weeks to return, no questions asked (with receipt, packaging, etc)."