NEC 2490WUXi - The Full Story

Besides calibrating it, you can test the backlight hour usage in the advanced menu -- requires some extra keystrokes. And do the lagom tests/check for dead pixels.

I'm not sure what else there is to check, as I don't have that model. I am curious how yours is, as I've considered picking up a used one for myself. Depends a bit how I resolve my current monitor issue (bought a different model from eBay and it's broken).
 
So the monitor arrived (used LCD2490) and it has less than 10k hours and I feel the colors are completely off from MBP13" (which drives it). I would like to know if I can buy any calibrator (hardware or software) to work with this monitor or only SV?

I'm also doing the lagom test, yet to complete it fully. Finishing it will make the colors standard?

I don't do very serious photography but a amateur level editing with loads software development. It's better to have a standard color to be displayed on the monitor. Any suggestions please?

Thanks.
 
I expect any calibrator will work if you adjust things manually, but I think (and may be wrong) that if you want to calibrate using that monitor's hardware (meaning it remembers the settings outside of software), you need spectraview?

Is your MBP calibrated? Just because the colors look different I wouldn't automatically assume they are off (unless they are really, really off).

The lagom stuff I usually do just to check for any major issues, especially the black/white colors, and to look for any banding. If you can't see some of those black/white images, your settings could be off. For my NEC VA, I could see all of them, except for some difficulty discerning between the first black square and background (0-1). Blacks 0-2, and everything else, it was fine with. Afraid I can't compare with a 2490, so don't know what calibrated results should look like.

You can play with the settings a bit and see if it helps, even without a calibrator. Try native, gamma 2.2, and if you notice any uniformity problems, turn colorcomp on. I found native looking a bit better than s-rgb on my NEC. Colorcomp lowers luminance some however, and I expect contrast. If the screen uniformity looks good to you, I'd just turn colorcomp off.

Hopefully a 2490 owner offers better advice. Just saying what I did for my 2190 (which seems to be slowly dying, but that is another issue).
 
Namelessme said it very well, actually.
You could always try resetting the monitor, in case the previous owner has done something incorrectly. After it's been reset (menu -> press reset and confirm buttons), set brightness to a very low percentage, contrast to 50% and black level to 50 %. Set the color profile setting to "native" and set colorcomp to "on", if the monitor turns out to show white with visible differences in color temperatures when colorcomp is otherwise off.

Other than that, a notebook panel (which is almost always 6 bit) is a poor choice of reference in order to tell what colors are right or wrong. The MBP13" covers a different, non-standard color space than sRGB. So I think for both the MBP and 2490 a calibrator would be a great idea.
To get the most out of it, definitely go for a calibrator supported by spectraview. Spectraview even comes bundled with either the i1d2 or i1 display pro. You can however use other sensors (non-NEC OEM) with SV. These are listed here: http://www.necdisplay.com/support-and-services/spectra-view-II/Compatibility#system_requirements.
I'm not sure that NEC's bundled sensors will work with other calibration software - someone else can probably confirm if this is true or not. So it might be a good investment with a non-bundled SV software and a separate colorimeter, if you want to calibrate the MBP as well as possible too. :)
 
Thanks to both of you, when I say the colors are off, I mean it looks pleasant on MBP, has that cool effect. But in this monitor, it has that dull color on it.

Also I could not complete the lagom test, as MBP loses internet when used as mirror display or extended display without external keyboard/mouse (in shipping now). I shall try the setting that you folks have given when I get back home, let me see how it turns out.

I don't think MBP was calibrated, definitely not after I purchased it. I'm looking to buy Spyder 2 Express from ebay, should I buy spectraview II on top of it or the software that comes with it is fine?
 
It could be that your MBP is set to 9300K colors. Most laptops are set at 9300, which makes everything brighter, gives whites a blue-ish look. Some people just get used to those unnatural colors and then think accurate colors are dull.

Or your 2490 simply has its settings off. The factory reset is a good idea, I forgot to recommend that. Your 2490 could also be set at a 'brownish' color, such as 5000K.

If you want to make use of the hardware calibration in the 2490, I'm pretty sure you need spectraview. Whether that is worth it to you or not... well, that's up to you. Take a look at Nec's site for recommended calibrators and how spectraview works. I don't own it myself... didn't make financial sense for me to spend several times the cost of my monitor for a calibrator + software (and mine can just use SV I, not II).
 
I used BasicColor with my Eye One calibrator and I'm pretty sure it allowed me to do hardware calibration (the monitor LUTs). I didn't choose to use that because I didn't like the results as much, and it's been a while so I can't be certain I'm remembering correctly, but I'm pretty sure you can use programs other than Spectraview to do internal calibration.
 
Forceman,
In Europe, basiCColor is "licensed" by NEC to perform hardware calibration in NEC displays (SVII is not for sale in Europe). No other software suites than these can utilize the monitor's LUT.

Swame Sp,
I think a calibrator would be a good idea (for both displays). Not too fond of Spyders - their track record of good precision (with low unit-to-unit variance) has not been good. From the FAQ, it appears that only the NEC branded EyeOne Display 3 (in the bundled package SVII-PRO-SET) can be used with third party software. I'd recommend the standalone SVII software along with an Eye One Display 2 (i1d2) or X-Rite DTP94, although it is more rarely found (only OEM). The i1d2 should be available as used... and if it isn't very old, i.e. more than two years, it's precision ought to be very good. You can always wait before buying SVII and try out how calibration works out with the included software.

Namelessme,
Most laptops are actually trying to hit 6500, but are often somewhat cooler (edge-mounted blue-ish LEDs). But not 9300. A color temperature of 9300 was (is?) a standard in Japan and maybe China for movies and TV broadcasts. Hence TVs had to support this per default. :)
 
Yeah if neither have been calibrated/measured, goodness knows what you're looking at. Color matching can be a royal pain ...
 
Namelessme,
Most laptops are actually trying to hit 6500, but are often somewhat cooler (edge-mounted blue-ish LEDs). But not 9300. A color temperature of 9300 was (is?) a standard in Japan and maybe China for movies and TV broadcasts. Hence TVs had to support this per default. :)

I could have sworn I had one years ago that was originally set at 9300, but I may be remembering wrong. The ones I've seen the past couple of years are so blue-ish, I just assumed they were all aiming for 9300. Whatever their setting, they didn't seem very accurate.
 
Yeah tried the settings by resetting everything from OSD and suddenly the resolution has jumped to 1600x1200 which is not sharp enough and even though I select 1920x1200 in mbp it doesn't reflect on the monitor. I'm not sure where the issue is.

Like Namelessme, said I could see that mbp colors are kinda bluish, definitely they are not 9300. I tried to do "calibrate" option in mac, nothing much of a change at "Native", "2.2 - gamma" in both mbp and monitor. This makes me to buy a calibrator and call it a day. I googled for a budget monitor calibrator and found that the latest products are expensive as they are capable of handling LED monitors too, I cannot spend more than $100 for the calibrator, any suggestions within this?

Spyder 2 express is very tempting as it falls within my budget. Initially I will go with the supplied software and may be later look at SV2.
 
A 14-day trial of BasicColor Display 5 can be downloaded for free and used with most colorimeters to calibrate the hardware LUT of the LCD2490WUXI.

There is also Lacie Blue Eye Pro 4.5.5 and higher that can do this too, but does not support newer colorimeters like the Eye One Display Pro.

The MBPs I've used for work were far too cold and both white and gray scales were blue tinted.

On another note I bought a great used example with only 6250 hours on it from someone in another city (Ottawa) and is nearly 100% perfect without a dead or stuck pixel/sub-pixel, but it's showing me something really strange:

Under OSD Tag E where the model and serial # are, it shows model number Caviar and Serial number ABCDEFGHIJ.

I've never seen this before and I have a feeling it has screwy firmware, so I'm asking if anyone has uploaded new firmware to one of these monitors, or if they've seen this before?

I've already tried the Factory P/re-Set but this does not work. So far SV2 is not seeing the screen, so I'm going to try the other software listed above to see if I can get a HW calibration of it, as native white is 5300K.
 
Has anybody used this monitor as a touch screen on Windows 7 with the touch pack?
 
I have a question or two for 2490 owners...

I purchased a 2490 off of eBay a while ago, and the first one had several problems so they sent me a replacement. And now that I have the replacement, I see it has a couple of problems too.

I posted this in another thread, but am curious if any 2490 people have had image retention occur with their 2490s?

I have two issues, one is if looking as a website with bright colors, then going to a darker website, the previous website's outline/info can sometimes faintly be seen in the background.

The other issue is a big 'L' (for lack of a better term) that slowly displays on the screen on light colors, primarily after the monitor has been running a while. It's basically a vertical line that takes up about 1/3rd of the screen, then turns more into an 'L' shape.

Is the latter due to possible burn-in by its previous owner? Anyway to fix this? Has any 2490 owners had image retention issues like I mentioned above? And perhaps pattern usage is to blame for the image retention in general? That is, if the former owner never ran a screensaver, or left the monitor on 12hrs day straight with the same image... that sort of thing.

I played around with colorcomp and such, but it has no real effect. Perhaps if I run a white background on the monitor for a while, it may fix the vertical line problem a little bit? Any other settings I am overlooking?

Otherwise, the monitor looks pretty good. No dead pixels, no bleed, nice angles, etc. The age isn't terrible on this thing, and I didn't have to bother with the touchscreen versions/removing the glass. But I'd rather not have a giant 'L' pop up on the screen every time I start photoshop...
 
Generally any sort of flat solid grayish background is terrible about showing lcd weakness. My 2490 is okay, but my 3090 is less than perfect for sure with some stripings. I have some ViewSonic lcds that will hold a faint image for hours, but I haven't noticed it on the NEC displays. I doubt there's much you can do about the L unfortunately.
 
Thanks for the reply.

It sort of looks like this image:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/62/lcddefect2.jpg/

That was the one on my first 2490. In person, it actually looked worse than the photo. The new one doesn't look as 'dirty', but after a couple of hours the 'L' is actually larger than the one on my first monitor.

Would burn-in cause this? I find it really weird how it's occurring in the same place, same shape, etc.

It's not a giant issue with browsing or playing games, but I do find it distracting when working with photoshop. It also is noticeable in some videos (like when the sky is light colored) or on the shut-off screen. After the monitor has been on a while, I can see it pretty much on most websites. I can see the line on hardforums, for instance -- it's like a dark vertical line.

I think the thing that bugs me the most is that the monitor is quite nice otherwise. And the fact that the reseller said she checked for defects, and I specifically asked her to check for dark spots/lines using light gray/white colors. Not sure how she missed this.
 
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After formating my PC spectreaview says no calibration is active? why is that? i thought calibration is done into the unit?
 
After formating my PC spectreaview says no calibration is active? why is that? i thought calibration is done into the unit?

Did you happen to change dvi plugs on the lcd? I think each port is uniquely calibrated. Other than that, I don't know.
 
Oh wow that's a lot more distinct than the generic wide banding on ccfl lcds.

Yeah, I don't think it's banding. I am guessing it's burn-in?

I contacted the reseller asking if the previous owner ran certain images non-stop without a screensaver or something. Since both of the 2490s I was sent had the same issue, I'd think it'd have to be something the previous owner was doing with these monitors that caused the problem.
 
Did you happen to change dvi plugs on the lcd? I think each port is uniquely calibrated. Other than that, I don't know.

I used Nvidia 7100GS for 1 week until my 680 arrived.

And i used it with VGA port of the monitor, now using the same dvi cable, connected to the same dvi port on the monitor, so i need to re calibrate again? :(
 
What is a nec 2490 with the A-TW polarizer worth nowadays?
I have one with 6500 hours, it supports hardware calibration with a calibration device.
I love mine, but I am thinking of a 27 inch imac
 
What is a nec 2490 with the A-TW polarizer worth nowadays?
I have one with 6500 hours, it supports hardware calibration with a calibration device.
I love mine, but I am thinking of a 27 inch imac

eBay will give you some idea.
 
If I had to guess, I expect you could sell it for $200-250ish + shipping costs, assuming it has no problems.
 
Based on the experience of other 2490WUXi owners in this thread, it seems I got very lucky in that my 2490WUXi (purchased from eBay) has no dead pixels, no backlight bleed and no image retention issues.
 
Need some help.

I calibrate my display, but now i'm seeing it setup the brightness at high 54% for my liking, i know the brightness should not be altered after the calibration, but is it possible to somehow lower it, and then load the profile from the last? will this make it stay at low brightness, but alter all other calibration settings?

Thanks.
 
Need some help.

I calibrate my display, but now i'm seeing it setup the brightness at high 54% for my liking, i know the brightness should not be altered after the calibration, but is it possible to somehow lower it, and then load the profile from the last? will this make it stay at low brightness, but alter all other calibration settings?

Thanks.

am I sorry, but how you calibrate your monitor?
don't you choose the brightness in the calibration process?
 
The color changes with the backlight brightness. Its big brother, the 3090, physically won't let the lamp go less than 70%. Everything below that is digital brightness reduction. Doesn't surprise me that you can't calibrate it to 0% brightness.
 
The color changes with the backlight brightness. Its big brother, the 3090, physically won't let the lamp go less than 70%. Everything below that is digital brightness reduction. Doesn't surprise me that you can't calibrate it to 0% brightness.

70% brightness? are you serious?
this means that there is no way to calibrate the monitor to 120cd/m2 or even 140cd/m2?
are you serious?
 
Hi friends,
How are your 2490WUXIs are doing?
Mine is 8 years old and still exceptional.
It's probably the best investment I have ever made.
An amazing product.
Time flies, especially in LCD industry.
A few generations of monitors have passed away.
But this one - I still don't know anything comparable.
Do you?


NEC 2490WUXi after 6000 hours

Other tests on video
 
Mine was bought used in 2012 and has 8,300 hours. Most recent Spectraview calibration results: 0.22 cd/m2 at 117.2 cd/m2 intensity, 540:1 contrast, and 0.97 delta-E (target D65 white point, 2.20 gamma, 120 cd/m2 intensity, and native color gamut).

I previously owned another unit purchased new. That one had better calibration results, with black levels around 0.17, 700:1 contrast, and delta-E under 1. During a period of light use I sold it and got most of my purchase price back, but later decided that it was a mistake and began looking for another unit.
 
Hi friends,
How are your 2490WUXIs are doing?
Mine is 8 years old and still exceptional.
It's probably the best investment I have ever made.
An amazing product.
Time flies, especially in LCD industry.
A few generations of monitors have passed away.
But this one - I still don't know anything comparable.
Do you?


NEC 2490WUXi after 6000 hours

Other tests on video

Mine was bought used in 2012 and has 8,300 hours. Most recent Spectraview calibration results: 0.22 cd/m2 at 117.2 cd/m2 intensity, 540:1 contrast, and 0.97 delta-E (target D65 white point, 2.20 gamma, 120 cd/m2 intensity, and native color gamut).

I previously owned another unit purchased new. That one had better calibration results, with black levels around 0.17, 700:1 contrast, and delta-E under 1. During a period of light use I sold it and got most of my purchase price back, but later decided that it was a mistake and began looking for another unit.

I don't own this monitor but I regret the good old times when monitors was measured on quality and not on fake features like now.
In any case, thanks for sharing your opinion.
 
My 2090UXi which I do not know how to check hour-count (seriously, how do you do it on 2490WUXi? I do not see this in service menu...) is very dim and very yellowish, to the point I need to use setting like 150, 140, 255 or something like that to boost blue color which reduce contrast ratio. Black is still yellow and correcting it would reduce contrast ratio even more...

Well at least because it is running 100% brightness it is PWM-free ;)

albovin said:
A few generations of monitors have passed away.
But this one - I still don't know anything comparable.
Do you?
RGB-LED monitors are superior in image quality and difference is quite big.
GB-LED monitors from EIZO are also superior.

LG W2420R compared to 2090UXi (which is almost the same as 2490WUXi just smaller) have much better multimedia picture quality. Difference is quite big.
NEC is better in text due to native sRGB (cleartype and other subpixel rendered font engines look better on native sRGB displays) and flicker less (those RGB-LED have very strong PWM, or at least mine does) but other than that it is worse in everything else. Except coating and viewing angles which are the same.
 
My 2090UXi which I do not know how to check hour-count (seriously, how do you do it on 2490WUXi? I do not see this in service menu...) is very dim and very yellowish, to the point I need to use setting like 150, 140, 255 or something like that to boost blue color which reduce contrast ratio. Black is still yellow and correcting it would reduce contrast ratio even more...

Well at least because it is running 100% brightness it is PWM-free ;)

I've ran mine at 0-5% for all this time. I wonder if that contributes to lasting a lot longer.
 
My 2090UXi which I do not know how to check hour-count (seriously, how do you do it on 2490WUXi? I do not see this in service menu...) is very dim and very yellowish, to the point I need to use setting like 150, 140, 255 or something like that to boost blue color which reduce contrast ratio. Black is still yellow and correcting it would reduce contrast ratio even more...

not having a colorimeter with a monitor like that is like saying, ok I have a good monitor for six months, who cares for the rest of the use.
my S2433 is like I bought it 5 years ago thanks to the colorimeter.
 
not having a colorimeter with a monitor like that is like saying, ok I have a good monitor for six months, who cares for the rest of the use.
my S2433 is like I bought it 5 years ago thanks to the colorimeter.
using calibration, even hardware like S2433 is from technical standpoint identical to using RGB sliders in OSD

new S2433 calibrated to 6500K have best contrast ratio it can have. The longer it runs the more blue phosphor burn out and the more correction needs to be applied reducing contrast ratio. So your five years old monitor have worse image quality. If you corrected only white then you lost some contrast ratio and have more yellowish blacks. If you corrected both white and black chromatic point then you lost even more contrast ratio.
 
using calibration, even hardware like S2433 is from technical standpoint identical to using RGB sliders in OSD

new S2433 calibrated to 6500K have best contrast ratio it can have. The longer it runs the more blue phosphor burn out and the more correction needs to be applied reducing contrast ratio. So your five years old monitor have worse image quality. If you corrected only white then you lost some contrast ratio and have more yellowish blacks. If you corrected both white and black chromatic point then you lost even more contrast ratio.

S2433 does not support hardware calibration, I can't save the icc profile directly on the monitor.
Udact test says that my monitor can pass it with easy, probably it have changed a bit but it is a good grandfather to pass the udact with easy ;)

No evident aberration as you are saying, I can assure it :)
 
I had in my 2090UXi bad caps in CCFL voltage supply and severe backlight bleed. Caps replaced and bleed fixed by removing metal bezel of panel itself. Now black is almost uniform and contrast much better overall. At native white (255 255 255) its yellowish but looks pretty much like CCFL should look like. My measurement device which is old Spyder 1 show 5500K white point temperature. Might be accurate cause its still really warm. In past I actually deliberately set my monitors (CRT) to be that level of warm cause I liked it better that way. Over the years I got higher and higher temperature. To see if I can get used to warm monitors again I set all monitors to identical white point which also enable most fare comparison of contrast ratio. And it actually seems NEC have it almost identical as LG.

Color wise comparing monitors most colors are identical after using EDID color correction except those colors which get clipped. NEC have bad blue point which after correction become less saturated but need correction because otherwise it have bad hue. On the other end GDM-FW900 have good blue but undersaturated red and it cannot really display deep reds such as are displayed on LG. NEC is somewhere in between those two when it comes to red. From my three monitors only one that have all colors displayed properly and without any color correction is LG but its hardware calibrated and wide-gamut so it can actually 100% of sRGB color space.

I wonder about NEC 2490WUXi native gamut. In specs it is said to be identical to 2090UXi so should require similar correction. In my 2090UXi comparison with and without correction looks like that:
sOHhakm.jpg

CjaqQIM.jpg

its with factory EDID content. It does seem to clip gamut quite nicely which also show when just comparing colors on all three monitors which like I said are mostly the same except some more saturated blues/reds which get clipped and are less saturated. Without correction hues differ, especially blue.

Could someone send me EDID grabbed from their 2490WUXi for comparison purposes.
and/or do similar comparison of gamut with and without EDID correction

@sblantipodi
first you write this (in other thread)
I have a 5 years old monitor with S-PVA, it is an all rounder, it can do amateur photografy, wide gamut, when calibrated it has 1100:1 contrast, 0.11cd/m2 black, good overdrive, 10bit lut, precise calibration and it can pass the UDACT test at 100%.

and now:
S2433 does not support hardware calibration, I can't save the icc profile directly on the monitor.
those are some conflicting informations

besides according to this (unfortunately in polish) EIZO S2433W does support hardware calibration. At least gamma/LUT. Gamut is most probably not correctable that way.
 
besides according to this (unfortunately in polish) EIZO S2433W does support hardware calibration. At least gamma/LUT. Gamut is most probably not correctable that way.

I wrote that I can calibrate my monitor, I don't written that I can hardware calibrate my monitor.
I can calirbate it using the OSD, I can load the ICC profile in windows.
Hardware calibration means that you can load the ICC profile on the monitor directly, I can't do it.
 
my 2090UXi support calibrating using hadware LUTs in SpectraView Profiler 5
maybe you need to fiddle with software and firmware. Maybe something with DDC stuff.

In LGs "True Color Finder" software I had lots of issues with DDC and was unable to hardware calibrate on my normal PC in Win7 64bit. It didn't even work in normal 32bit XP. I was finally able to calibrate it using Via C3 Terminal on DVI output in XP.

On EIZO site it is stated that S2433WFS-BK support "10-bit hardware calibration" so it should support it. Make it work =)
 
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