U2311h dilemma

[adrichardson]

Hi guys. I've had my Dell U2311H for a while now. It's mostly used for photo editing (Lightroom, DXO, Elements), movies and gaming.

I'm finding the 16:9 aspect ratio a bit claustrophobic in Lightroom and I'm thinking about upgrading. Budget-wise, the U2412m is bang on the money and it looks like a good performer. I've got a few reservations though - am I wasting my money for 120 pixels and is going from CCFL to LED a downgrade?

The only real alternative I can see is the U2711, but my workflow isn't really 10bit friendly and I've heard mixed reviews about srgb performance... I'm also a bit worried about whether my rig's got enough muscle for gaming at that res!

Cheers!

 

[austinpike]

For the price of the u2412, I'd be looking at one of the cheap 27" panels (Catleap at al, or the Microcenter Auria) if you can work with a glossy screen. Or if you are considering the u2711 - what about the HP zr2740w? It doesn't have the wide-gamut display.

I personally don't see any downside to LED - the picture looks every bit as good as CCFL imho, thinner profile, much less heat, no warm-up time (the CCFL 27s and 30s can take awhile to warm up, which bugs me.)

Obviously with a 27" you are still at 16:9, but I assume the extra pixels would make up for it? For gaming, you can always drop the res down to 1920x1080.

 

[adrichardson]

I was pretty impressed with the HP, but lack of colour controls is a bit of a deal breaker for me. Can't believe a £600 monitor has less functionality for pros than a £250 Dell

 

[austinpike]

So you have seen the HP in person? To me, the color seemed completely spot-on out of the box. I don't have hardware calibration tools, but just running through the MacOS color calibration, I don't think I touched anything. I'm not sure how much one would really need built-in adjustments.

I do architectural rendering for a living, so I'm pretty picky about color, though I'll admit I'm no pro when it comes to color management. I tried the Dell u2711, the wide-gamut was a nightmare; swapping inputs required slogging through a half-dozen menu items. I was just so pleased with the HP in comparison.