Planar PX2611W 26"

LittleMeEgo said:
Yes you can change the border color in the menus. I have the monitor myself and assure you that you CAN change the color, even to black.
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Mine wouldn't let me set the border color to fully black. When I set all the RGB values to 0%, it was some kind of dark purple. This becomes obvious when putting up a black screen.
 
Ok. I bought the planar 26" yesterday and am going to test it out for a week.
So far (keep in mind I am used to playing games at 2048 x 1536 maxed).

From a hardcore gamer's perspective:
- World In Conflict looks awesome
- BF 2142 looks ok (not native ws game)
- GRAW2 looks ok. Notice some jagged edges.
- Oblivion looks ok.
-WOW looks great (wow's graphics are dated but it uses a lot of color) great color!
- Backgrounds, Vista Aero, photos, streaming vid, all look awesome.

-Things seem a little bright. Still learning contrast and brightness adjustments, modes, etc.

-I'm seeing some backlight bleeding, but I don't know if what I am seeing is normal or unusual. Dont notice it really.

-Not sure if I'm viewing at the correct angle verticaly. Got it sitting on a 1990's isobar surge protector desktop box (do they still make these?)

So far I am 80% keep this panel. Not much better technology is going to be out there for a while.


What do you folks who have it have your brightness and contrast set to?
(This is my first LCD and want to see how others like it.)
 
DeadByDawn said:
- GRAW2 looks ok. Notice some jagged edges.
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GRAW2 doesn't support proper anti-aliasing, FYI. This isn't the fault of the monitor.

Thanks though for your perspective. Yes on a black screen there is some backlight bleeding that is more visible as I move my head around. It's not much, not distracting and not visible in a game or anywhere. If there is a lot of black area then I see it but it isn't bad.

Great display I'm happy with it. Good luck with yours. Please do let us know if you keep it.
 
My conclusion is this is one of the best lcds I have seen.
(Although this is the second lcd I have ever tried using for gaming).
My new vista desktop is jaw dropping.
The quality if the unit feels very good.
Also, no dead pixels that I am aware.
If I don't keep it, its not the lcd, but because I am spoiled playing games at 2048x1536 for so many years. I have to see if I can get over it.

I may have acess for free to the color calibrator that was mentioned earlier in the post. I am not a graphic designer, but do like the great color of this panel. Should I do the calibration?

Whats your brighness and contrast setting at?

Thanks
 
godvirus said:
I used a 23" apple cinema display (the old ones with white bezel) a few years ago. Is this panel any better in terms of total image delay? (response + input lag + refresh slowdown)?
Besides size how else is the Planar different?
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The old 23" Apple Cinema Display with the white plastic bezel has an IDTech DD-IPS panel. I haven't ever used one of those, but supposedly the pixel response time is worse.

I might as well post a comparison against the current 23" Apple Cinema Display since it also has an IPS panel, so some people might be interested in that.

Before returning the Planar, I did a lag test against the Apple with a DVI splitter. All of the shots show the Planar is exactly the same as the Apple. Even the transitions are exactly the same. The miniscule difference I thought I felt at first must have been due to other factors outside of the display such as one port on the video card being slightly ahead of the other or impaired brain functionality.

Here are some of the shots:
http://www.toastyx.net/apple-planar-lag-1.jpg
http://www.toastyx.net/apple-planar-lag-2.jpg
http://www.toastyx.net/apple-planar-lag-3.jpg

I've always said the Apple has almost no lag except for the response time, and testing reveals the Planar is the same way. The only other 1920x1200 monitor I've tried that doesn't lag is the HP L2335, but that's not being sold anymore. The Apple doesn't have overdrive, and I don't think the Planar does either. I haven't been able to spot any evidence of overdrive being used.

The Apple had backlight bleeding at first, but it disappeared after a week. That didn't happen with older revisions. The Planar never improved.

The Apple is on the left, and the Planar is on the right:


The Apple has the same white glow the Planar has. Older revisions had the familiar orange and purple glow.

The Apple has an S-IPS panel, not H-IPS like the Planar. S-IPS panels have a different pixel structure and look sharper to me than other types of panels.

The Apple is not wide gamut. I'm on the fence about wide-gamut displays because they oversaturate everything outside of color-aware programs, but the colors are more pure. The saturation setting on the Planar doesn't work unless you use one of the DV modes with banding.

As I mentioned earlier, the Apple has a strong anti-glare coating, like there's a fine layer of dust on the screen. The Planar is mild in comparison.

The Apple also has faint lines, but they're vertical instead of horizontal, and they only appear on aqua colors. I don't know what the deal is with IPS panels and faint lines, but I've seen IPS panels without lines, so I don't what causes them.

The Apple has no trouble with checkerboard pixel patterns. They all display properly.

The Apple doesn't have a scaler, so it only supports the native resolution. Most video cards these days have their own scaler and can emulate other resolutions, so that's not really a problem, but some older video cards don't emulate text mode, which means you might have trouble seeing the BIOS screen.

Those are most of the differences.
 
DeadByDawn said:
If I don't keep it, its not the lcd, but because I am spoiled playing games at 2048x1536 for so many years. I have to see if I can get over it.
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If you don't keep it, I am going to find you and club you to death with a rotting fish. :D
 
ToastyX said:
The Apple is not wide gamut. I'm on the fence about wide-gamut displays because they oversaturate everything outside of color-aware programs, but the colors are more pure...
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Interesting. That explains why some folks think wide gamut monitors have better colors. They must be doing that at the driver level to skew the saturation for eye candy effect. Otherwise, it should just be the same sRGB either way. Sounds like a silly thing to do. Or am I misinterpreting that comment?

Have you seen that same effect on other wide gamut monitors? Just curious but that would be a deal breaker for me.
 
I wonder if the saturation is from the different type of backlight, or if it is something in the electronics... I use Windows XP.. I guess I won't be needing to have Digital Vibrance on at all. :D
 
UrielDagda said:
I wonder if the saturation is from the different type of backlight, or if it is something in the electronics...
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It's from the backlight.

Luthorcrow said:
Interesting. That explains why some folks think wide gamut monitors have better colors. They must be doing that at the driver level to skew the saturation for eye candy effect. Otherwise, it should just be the same sRGB either way. Sounds like a silly thing to do. Or am I misinterpreting that comment?

Have you seen that same effect on other wide gamut monitors? Just curious but that would be a deal breaker for me.
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Nothing is being done at the driver level. Gamut is directly related to color saturation. Wide-gamut displays have more saturated colors. Why would it be the same?

Both the Planar and the NEC have more saturated colors than regular monitors, but what's worse is neither monitor provides an adequate way to reduce the color saturation.

The Planar has an sRGB preset, but it's useless. It doesn't reduce the color saturation. It just makes everything pink. The saturation setting doesn't do anything when DV MODE is set to TEXT or sRGB, which are the only two modes without banding.

The NEC has an sRGB preset, but it desaturates the colors too much, so it doesn't look right. The NEC doesn't provide a way to decrease the saturation manually.

Profiling the display will allow color-aware programs to display images with the correct saturation, but everything else will still be oversaturated. Calibration can't reduce the color saturation.

If you don't need a wide-gamut display or support for external devices, I think the Apple is a better monitor.
 
Review without using the monitor or buying it yet that is 99% accurate if not 100%:

It is the best monitor below 1001 dollars new that can display 1920x1200.

Planar will take it back and wants you to send it back if the backlight shows non uniform bleeding. non-uniform bleeding is the occurence that Toastyx documented perfectly with photos. His issue, according to the tech at Planar, would have been resolved if he had sent the machine back to Planar. I guess he was just sick of crap being handed to him. He is waiting for his Eizo 24" hd thingie to come in the mail.

Planar will take the monitor back if you ask them nicely if it has less than 3 dead pixels.

Planar is not intended to work with other than pc/mac devices. However, it can. Also note that no monitor in existence below 1600 dollars that can fully interface with HDTV/SDTV- satelite or cable, a ps3 and xbox360 without major issues. So why not get the planar if you have the cash for it?

I am buying it :)
 
ToastyX said:
...Nothing is being done at the driver level. Gamut is directly related to color saturation. Wide-gamut displays have more saturated colors. Why would it be the same?...
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Something doesn't add up and makes one wonder if this all being done to get an eye candy effect to move panels. Here is why I am saying it shouldn't make a difference:

1) All colors within sRGB is within the 72% NTSC range. There are not additional shades to see to increase saturation due to the properties of the images viewed in the OS (excluding color aware programs).

2) Whether 72% or 92% gamut all of todays monitors are limited to no greater than 8 bits or 16.7 million colors. The same number in sRGB.

3) The color associations for each monitor are not fixed but determined by hardware profiles: icc and icm.

4) You state that these wide gamut monitors display sRGB correctly in color aware programs. So the units are capable of displaying these color spaces correctly.

5) To my knowledge there are only to reasons why an image could appear oversaturated (assuming it wasn't to start with). One, there additional shades of colors that were not displayed prior because the prior monitor was not capable of displaying the full gamut. In this case, this simply does not apply. Two, a lower gamut image is displayed using a wider gamut profile which incorrectly associates the color values which oversaturates the image.

Given that there is no technical reason that these images should be saturated (additional shades, additional colors points) and that they do respect color profiles in color aware programs, it lends one to believe that the one profile it does not implement properly, the sRGB.icc used by Windows must be by design given that it is not necessary due to technical limitations.

So yes I was genuinely surprised when you said that they do.

Reminds me of an used car salesman that bust out with the cheap Maco Paint job, Armor All and some Turtle Wax to sell a car.:p

Anyway, I am off topic.:D
 
Luthorcrow said:
Something doesn't add up and makes one wonder if this all being done to get an eye candy effect to move panels.
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You're thinking way too hard. Outside of color-aware programs, colors are mapped by RGB values. The same RGB values will be more saturated on a wide-gamut display. That's all there is to it.
 
LOL, nah just curioius.:p But that but doesn't explain why? Actually outside of a color aware program a sRGB color profile is still used by Windows. The sRGB.icm or sRGB.icc (can't remember which) used by Windows should be identical to the sRGB.icc used by Photoshop. Technically you are never really out of a color managed environment on today's PCs. Its just that with none coloraware programs you are locked into the OS sRGB profile.

There is no reason these reason for OS default handled images to oversaturate unless the drivers/profile for the panel are purposely optimized to skew the OS controlled color profile. It just seems like a really funky thing to do.
 
Someone was asking so here are my Planar's settings:

Brightness at the minimum 0% (zero) -- still plenty of brightness.

Contrats at 50%

Sharpness at 70%
 
Luthorcrow said:
There is no reason these reason for OS default handled images to oversaturate unless the drivers/profile for the panel are purposely optimized to skew the OS controlled color profile. It just seems like a really funky thing to do.
Click to expand...
I don't know about Vista, but Windows XP and Mac OS X don't do global gamut mapping, so everything is oversaturated except for images handled by color-aware programs.

If Vista does global gamut mapping, then using the appropriate color profile should reduce the saturation so everything is displayed properly on this monitor.

If you have Vista, there's an easy way to test this even if you don't have this monitor. Load this color profile: http://www.toastyx.net/Planar-Default.icc

If everything looks less saturated when you load that profile, then Vista does indeed do global gamut mapping, which is a good thing. I wish Mac OS X would do this.

I don't have Vista, so I can't test this.
 
~El~Jefe~ said:
amikoenig, how is the uniformity in backlighting?
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Don't know... I hardly know what's backlighting, as you may have noticed... I need to wait for late evening to shut off the lights in my office, in order to test the existence of backlighting on my Planar...
 
http://www.andymelville.net/Photo/8sec.jpg

That's an 8 second exposure of the monitor taken on a kodak 7.1mpx camera (not a photographer so I don't screw with the settings much) - looks fairly uniform to me.

If anyone has any ideas for a test I could run (with just a point&shoot camera etc.), feel free to make a suggestion.
 
1. It is only a half screen. Can you make a picture of whole screen?
2. I don't think you need 8 seconds. It looks too overexposed. It is almost white. You have to set it to total black and nothing on the screen and make a picture with reasonable exposure (picture of screen should be gray color) with lowest ISO settings on you camera.
3. Your camera should be perpendicular to the screen.

Thanks
 
I received my PX2611W today from Dell.

The box was alittle beat up and also some fingerprints on the screen which I think someone else received theirs the same way. No damage though.

I did some simple tests and found no dead pixels, no banding and little if any backlight bleed.Didnot like the way the image was calibrated out of the box. Brightness was set to 100 and contrast to 50. I calibrated the display with the Spyder 2 and got a lot better picture although it did set the brightness back up to 100. I changed some of the setting to the way I like it and now have the brightness at around 17 and the contrast at 40.

I now have it side by side with my Dell 2407HC and find the picture quality and images about the same between the two. I do like the larger screen of the Planar although it is not that much larger. Text is also just alittle bigger on the Planar which is nice.

So far I like it and think it might be a keeper............
 
The Planar is really 25.5" right? Somebody should measure it. :D

If so it's right smack in the middle of the 24" and 27" monitors.
 
Don't understand why, and how did your Spyder set the brightness back to 100... That's just nuts...

I would try setting the brightness down to ZERO and work from there... Most, if not all LCDs come at 100% brightness, and then users are advised to set them down to zero...

And yes, real diagonal size is 25.5".
 
It did the same with my BenQ 241W. It came from the factory set at 90. I set it down when I got it. The Spyder set it back to 90.
 
Spyder must be doing something wrong... isn't it still WAY too bright? And can make you BLIND at these kinds of levels...
 
UrielDagda said:
The Planar is really 25.5" right? Somebody should measure it. :D

If so it's right smack in the middle of the 24" and 27" monitors.
Click to expand...

The Planar measures: diagonally: 25.5
Length: 21.75
Width: 13.75

Dell 2407 measures: diagonally: 24"
Length: 20.5
Width: 12.75

Not that much difference between the two of them. $300 - $400.00 difference in price dont know if it is really worth it. Really just getting a better quality screen but I think the 2407 and 2611 both look great.
 
amikoenig said:
Spyder must be doing something wrong... isn't it still WAY too bright? And can make you BLIND at these kinds of levels...
Click to expand...

I have been setting the brightness and contrast to where I like it. Just using the calibrator to get in the ballpark.
 
solaris54 said:
The Planar measures: diagonally: 25.5
Length: 21.75
Width: 13.75

Dell 2407 measures: diagonally: 24"
Length: 20.5
Width: 12.75

Not that much difference between the two of them. $300 - $400.00 difference in price dont know if it is really worth it. Really just getting a better quality screen but I think the 2407 and 2611 both look great.
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Yeah, I keep toying with the idea of going cheaper but.. I resist.. I need to make sure the monitor's also viewable from my couch and my eye level a foot or two below the monitor's level. Not sure how well PVA panels would deal with that. I just hope S-IPS can. :D
 
I really do not understand about the viewing angles. Both of these screens seem the same at any viewing angle. You do not lose anything. I can look at them directly at the side with no problem.
 
I am very interested in the Planar, as I think the 25.5" screen will lower my PPI into the high 80's range, which I find comfortable. I am a bit concerned about the 500 brightness, though. My current Dell 1905FP is a 250 monitor and I set the brightness to zero! Does anyone know if I can approximate the brightness that I will get on the Planar by setting the brightness on my Dell to 50 or 100? What does a zero stting on the Planar bring the brightness level down to?

I posted a lenghty message regarding PPI, please see my post here.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1210917&highlight=planar

Post #17

I think it is the least heard of and one of, if the the, most important specs to understand when choosing a monitor:


Thanks,
 
That's another thing I should mention. The brightness on the Planar can only go down to around 180 cd/m². If you want it lower, you have to reduce the contrast, which doesn't look good because the contrast suffers. The NEC is the same way. It has a low brightness mode, but that just cuts the contrast in half. The Apple can go down to 80 cd/m² without affecting the contrast.
 
Care to hazard a guess as to what the zero setting on my 1905FP would be as far as brightness?
 
impactdax said:
Care to hazard a guess as to what the zero setting on my 1905FP would be as far as brightness?
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I have no way of knowing without measuring it. There's no standard for these things. If you have a CRT handy, most CRT monitors go up to around 100 cd/m², maybe a little more.
 
That's a little concerning. I really don't like overly bright monitors. I work on them all day. I don't need them to jump out and say "hey look at me". I just want a high quality picture that is not fatiguing. How did you feel about the lowest setting on the Planar when you had it?

Anyone else having an issue with it?

One more question. Does your response mean that I can have a zero brightness and still have 100% contrast? (assuing I would even want that, not likely) If not what is the contrast at zero brightness and is this too low?
 
88.8 = planar Pixels per inch

94 = LG 24" pixels per inch


my favorite resolution on a high qualit crt is 83 pixels per inch. LCD + ips should make it, of course, a lot clearer for text. 88.8 sounds nice. 94 sounds pushing it. 100 = my screen now at 1600x1200. thats very high. the difference between 83 and 100 is 17% which doesnt sound that much... but its difference of leaning in a foot to see text vs sitting back a foot.

hmpf!
 
Good point. Thanks for the calcs on the PPI. Anything below 90 should work ok for me. I prefer 85 ideally, though. Scaling works but only on some material. Do you have any thoughts on the brightness
 
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