Cost effective display options for the rest of us

[digitaldog]

More is better...

Not necessarily! In fact, for some users, depending on the kinds of images they edit, less is much better.

[FredT]

Well, I may as well get all of my questions out now.  Jeff stated a few posts back the the current 30-inch ACDs are not as good as they used to be. That's really too bad, because they do make life a lot simpler with easy connection to the computer and USB and Firewire ports in the back.  I did some searching and found that the Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC seems to compare favorably to the ACD, with a more uniform screen and wider gamut (92% of NTSC).  It doesn't have any Firewire ports but does have four USB ports.  It costs less than a 2690 and much less than an 30-inch ACD.  Is it worth considering?

[FredT]

Not necessarily! In fact, for some users, depending on the kinds of images they edit, less is much better.

Oh Andrew, why did you have to go and confuse me even more!  OK, so for someone like me, an amateur photographer, but serious about it, who needs nothing more than getting a pretty close match between screen and print (an R2400) do I want or need more or less?  I've been reasonably content with a 20-inch ACD for the last four years, but I certainly can see it's deficiencies.

[digitaldog]

Oh Andrew, why did you have to go and confuse me even more!  OK, so for someone like me, an amateur photographer, but serious about it, who needs nothing more than getting a pretty close match between screen and print (an R2400) do I want or need more or less?  I've been reasonably content with a 20-inch ACD for the last four years, but I certainly can see it's deficiencies.

Do you work with images with saturated colors, those that exceed greatly sRGB OR images with very subtle and important colors that need editing within the sRGB gamut?

Wider is "better" for the first case, not the 2nd.

[pshambroom]

NEC is out of stock on the 2690 refurbs, probably forever. The ones sold by Tech for Less are "Factory Refurbs", the 90 day warranty on their web site is not accurate, it is actually one year. NEC confirmed this for me on the phone, Tech for Less is a factory authorized dealer.

[FredT]

NEC is out of stock on the 2690 refurbs, probably forever. The ones sold by Tech for Less are "Factory Refurbs", the 90 day warranty on their web site is not accurate, it is actually one year. NEC confirmed this for me on the phone, Tech for Less is a factory authorized dealer.

Thanks for the information.

[FredT]

I'm back to comment on my experiences with the 30-inch ACD and the 2690.

I found that Apple has refurbished ACDs at a very nice discount, so I decided to take a chance on one.  I found that the display behaved pretty much exactly like my 20-inch ACD, but with one big difference: because it is so large, the angle between my eyes and the corners of the screen were large enough that particularly in the lower corners, image quality fell of quite substantially.  It wasn't noticeable with bright material, but for dark material it looked like there were spotlights on the corners.  The other problem was that it was just too big.  The lack of vertical position adjustment put the menu bar too high.

So the ACD went back and was replaced with a refurbished 2690.  Image quality is excellent with no apparent off-angle problems.  As well this turns out to be the perfect size display for me.  With larger text it can sit a bit further back and still be easily read by my tired old eyes, and it can be adjusted so that the menu bar is not too high.  Esthetically it's a big step backwards have a big piece of black plastic replacing the elegant aluminum ACD, but I'll have to get over that.