LCD Update and Apple Cinema Display Results

Since I don’t know when I’m going to be able to give you a full report on our tests of the NEC LCD2690WUXI, I’m going to give you the executive brief today.

While I personally hoped this (by the numbers) super-accurate display would be the end-all, be-all display, curing all of digital printmaking’s shortcomings, stamping out imaging hunger and achieving photographic peace in our time, this has not been the case.

It’s a good monitor, but in real-world, side-by-side daily use and testing, the color accuracy (while better by the measurements) proves to not make any real difference over a ~69% AdobeRGB Display. I would not replace my existing ~69% color accurate display with it just because of the NEC's measured gamut...but if you are looking for a BIG color-accurate display it’s a good choice, albeit at $1,500.

This led us to do some additional testing with a brand-new Apple 23” Cinema Display ($899), and we were pleasantly surprised. The 23” Cinema Display was as accurate as our 19" NEC 1980sxi, and as accurate as the NEC LCD2690WUXI. To our obsessive-compulsive, color-critical eyes, there is no advantage to color accuracy with any one of these displays over the other. None perfectly matched the proof (and no display does), and all can make the finest-quality print (the finest-quality prints still require hard proofing). The NEC LCD2690WUXI has the advantage of size, but the Apple 23” Cinema display offers a huge size at a very affordable price, giving you the best bang for your buck.

As a side note, we have run into several problems with the NEC LCD2690WUXI, and have been through five different units trying to obtain a “perfect” one. Our first one was as “perfect” as they get, but we didn’t know it until we went through three bad ones and one more good one. We’ve had dead pixels in three of the five, all of them had a color shift in the corners from the off-axis viewing angle that happens with such a wide screen (we did not experience this on the Apple 23” Cinema Display), two have had problems with the backlight bleeding into the display area, creating a noticeable light spot, and our last two had slight vertical density bands in the center of the display. It’s possible to work around all of these issues, except for the blacklight bleeding, and NEC has been extremely cooperative in replacing every one.