im thinking about buying a DELL 2713HM - how important is wide gamut?

[Malte_P]

i need a new monitor.
i looked for month while my old samsung monitor gets worse and worse because of aging.

i read a lot good things about the DELL 2713HM and also a lot of worse.
the worse was some noise when text is displayed and bad luminance uniformity that some models show (the 2713H was said is worse in that regard).

anyway for 500 euro (the maximum im willing to pay) it seems to be the best 27" monitor so far.
i want 27" and high resolution because i do a lot of 3D work and need the screen space.
i know the 2713H is just released, but it´s 300 euro more and i don´t want to pay that.

my question is... how important is wide gamut for you?
makes it such a great difference when working with photos?
i have no idea because i never used a wide gamut display.

i don´t work for the web. all my stuff is for video output or print (i have a epson r2880).

anyone here who has a DELL 2713HM and want to share his experience?

[endiendo]

I'm hesitating too, but I have seen the Asus PB278Q, which seems to be very good too.
The Dell should be calibrated, but some say that they have differences between samples..  you have not always the same result. So i don't know, I'm a little afraid about this dell.

[Malte_P]

i have a DTP94 colorimeter so that would be no big concern.

differences between samples are normal i think.
you get a PDF with the calibration details.
i think if one monitor is way outside the tolerances they would notice that.

it´s more that i don´t know how much better the photographic workflow would be with a wide gamut monitor. 
if the output matching (prints on my R2880) would be much easier when i have a wide gamut monitor.

[Z]

I've just swapped to wide gamut and I wouldn't go back. The extra colour depth is noticeable and I really appreciate it for skin tone highlights.

However, wide gamut comes with several caveats. You really need a solid understanding of colour management or it is likely to bite you in the ass.

When you say the Dell "should be calibrated"... I would like to correct this. Dell will send your monitor with a factory calibration report, usually stating that DeltaE (the measure of how well colour is calibrated; lower is better) is < 5 or something. This is 100% lies. My U2410 came with a calibration report stating average DeltaE was 4 (which is 'okay' but not really acceptable for colour critical work), but when I measured DeltaE with my i1 display pro, it was actually around 10. In fact, the monitor had a distinct cool green hue to whites.

Now that I've calibrated it myself using the i1, average DeltaE is 0.7 with max of 1.3. Pretty good by any standards.

Regarding the PB278Q, here is the tftcentral review: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_pb278q.htm
His model came with a maximum DeltaE of 10 in the blue hue measured... which is pretty bad to be honest. Average of 3.4 is not awful but not great either.

RE: The Dell 2713HM, it had a DeltaE average of 2.7 with a max of 5.7. So slightly better.

In a nutshell:

1) Wide gamut is useful for printing because some printers are capable of displaying a wider gamut than sRGB. It is not particularly useful for web display, and can even be detrimental if you forget to convert your photos to sRGB for web use or when sending to other "non photo" people.

2) A good monitor is only as good as its calibration and all 'out of the box' calibration is pretty rubbish. As a photographer you shouldn't be saying "I have x budget for my monitor", you should be thinking "I have x budget for my monitor and calibration equipment"

[Malte_P]

i think you wrote as i typed my second post.
i have a DTP94 already.

web output is as i said no concern for me.

95% of what i do is video burned to blu-ray and prints.

what would you say on how many percent of your images a wide gamut display will make a significant difference?
on most images or only on special images that show some very saturated colors?

[Z]

i think you wrote as i typed my second post.
i have a DTP94 already.

Ha, yeah I did.

web output is as i said no concern for me.

95% of what i do is video burned to blu-ray and prints.

what would you say on how many percent of your images a wide gamut display will make a significant difference?
on most images or only on special images that show some very saturated colors?

That's a good question and I don't really have a good answer. As I said, I've only recently swapped to wide gamut. But if I had to take a stab at a percent of my photos that would significantly benefit from wide gamut editing/printing, it'd be around 5%. It seems to be photos taken in direct sunlight or with saturated flowers and clothing where I've compared sRGB to Adobe RGB and been like ... "wow, before I was editing these colours I couldn't even see".

However, that doesn't go to say that ALL these extra colours and nicely graduated tones that I can see on my monitor will print that way. As it happens, my local printing company supply print profiles for proofing (very handy) and overly saturated reds come nowhere near to the Adobe RGB colour space.

[dafrank]

Tough question to answer completely, but here goes.

Since you "do mostly 3-D" (I have done my share as well), what you most need, if your are rendering the images or animations yourself, is a monitor that covers, as close as possible, the NTSC gamut, which is larger than even the typical  "wide gamut" monitor. In the alternative, at least have a small real NTSC gamut "video" monitor to also check your work on, in addition to your primary computer monitor which can vary significantly from a true video monitor by gamut, format or resolution.

Secondly, their are many different definitions of "wide gamut," usually expressed as a percentage of one particular gamut, and you should understand the definitions of the various gamuts, their relationships to each other (usually expressed in colorful graphs) and their significance. Do some research on the web. Bing and Google will be your friends. Note that a true NTSC gamut monitor requires a bigger or "wider" color space than even one which can display 100% of Adobe RGB, usually the gold standard for wide gamut monitors. Therefore, it would be best, if one does high-end 3-D which is destined to be mixed with video or displayed on video monitors, to choose a computer monitor with the widest possible gamut, to get as close to NTSC as possible.

Three last things. Make sure you have the proper monitor color profiling tools, from either the monitor maker or from companies like Xrite, and learn to use them correctly and often. And, it would be best, if you do get a good wide gamut monitor, that you also get a monitor/profiling system which can fairly well simulate narrower gamuts, especially SRGB, so that you can accurately guage how your work will likely appear on the "average Joe's" home or office computer monitor as well. About uneveness of color across the screen: don't underestimate how awful this one flaw can be; it will have a very negative effect on your work, both in possible color errors, and/or the extra time needed to "move around" your images on the screen to check color. I would never accept a monitor that had more than a trifling of uneven color, no matter how big the screen.

Regards,
David

[Malte_P]

ok so i bought one. came today.
will send it back tomorrow.   

i read the good review at prad.de and could not believe the bad reviews on amazon.de
well they seem to be true.

backlight bleeding. and a nasty change of brightness over the screen.
lower left corner way brighter then the rest of the screen.   

not worth the money.
can´t believe dell sells such crap.. did they have no quality testing?


so i will save some more money and buy a NEC 27 in a few month.

[Z]

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.

I was hoping my U2410 would have better panel uniformity to be honest, but I knew what I was getting in for after reading the tftcentral review. My monitor is calibrated to 100cd/m^2 but the bottom left hand corner is 83 and the right-hand side is 107! Still, it's very much a midrange product and I've decided to put up with it.

[Malte_P]

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.

I was hoping my U2410 would have better panel uniformity to be honest, but I knew what I was getting in for after reading the tftcentral review. My monitor is calibrated to 100cd/m^2 but the bottom left hand corner is 83 and the right-hand side is 107! Still, it's very much a midrange product and I've decided to put up with it.

i did a lot of research on the web and this is a common issue with them 2713HM.
i just thought it´s a pretty small amount of monitors who have this issue and i would be lucky.
well i was not. 

i could not believe dell is selling such crap when they know about the problem.

it seems like all 2713HM monitors have this issue but in different strength.
i could see it even when working in photoshop on a gray background.
others just see it on a black background.

and my 200 euro samsung monitors from 2007 are better in this regard.
that is a real shame for dell.

[nda]

We bought 2xDell 2713hm for our studio, one was faulty and replaced by Dell but the replacement was also faulty!!! in the end we bought the Asus PB278Q, very happy with it as good if not better than the Dell

[Maui5150]

STAY AWAY FROM DELL.

Worst Monitors I have owned.  I am going on my 4th monitor in 5 months because of dead/dying pixels and other issues. 

Specs are nice - but product is crap.  Your luck may vary, but I don't even bother putting the box in the attic any more... I just leave it right besides the desk. 

Maybe Dell can offer a new service and include a future dated RMA with every purchase.

[nomad85]

I have 3 Dell monitors here and all are highly appreciated . The U2711's are my main monitors, which I have 2 of next to eachother on my desk. The U2412m is my secondary screen where menu's etc are placed.

I am a fulltime photographer and really like the 2711's and when working on photo's for print etc it's really good. But some of the work I deliver is digital only to consumers and that's where it goes wrong. I like my photo's light and fresh and I push that in my workflow. On my calibrated screens I have no blown out whites and really like the photo's. On the clients laptop / crappy screen with no wide-gamut the photo's are to white and have blown out colors.

My solution is placing de U2412m in sRGB mode and since it has no wide-gamut I use that screen to "proof" what the client will see.

But all in all, I think you should get the U2711 or U2713 screen, the resolution and the quality allows you to work well in photoshop and lightroom.

[Malte_P]

But all in all, I think you should get the U2711 or U2713 screen, the resolution and the quality allows you to work well in photoshop and lightroom.

did you read what i wrote?

STAY AWAY FROM DELL.

today i was at the local electronic store and they had 2 of the 2713HM on display.
showing some fancy colorfull slideshows.

i asked the salesperson if i could test it and he connected it to a PC so i could surf and open a few windows programs.

what can i say it showed the same issue as my 2713HM, just not as strong.
or maybe it was because ambient light was brighter in the store.

i showed it to the salesperson... asked him to connect the other monitor. result: exactly the same.

asked him if he would buy such a monitor for 559 euro... well of course he said no.   

[bchernicoff]

I bought a 2711 to sit next to my 27" iMac to gain wide color gamut. The anti-glare coating makes the monitor useless for photographic work. I can't really describe how bad it is. It's like someone put a thin film of prisms in front of the screen. You get multi-colored sparkles everywhere. The monitor now sits on the floor, unplugged.

EDIT: For what it's worth, I don't know if the 2713 has an improved anti-glare filter or not.