Buying a LCD monitor for photo editing is the most popular entry in this blog.
Since I wrote that blog in 2007, I have gone through various monitors. I am glad to report that IPS monitors have fallen in price so much that photographers don’t have to choose between PVA and IPS monitors in most cases. PVA does have its advantages, but since almost all the newer good monitors are IPS based and are modestly priced, our options are excellent today as compared to 3 years ago.
These are the monitors I have used in the meantime.
a) Samsung 215TW
b) Dell 2408 WFP
c) iMac 27″ i5
and finally
d) HPZR24W
Each one of these monitors is good in its own regard. But since Mac OSX does not support wide gamut monitors, aka AdobeRGB monitors, I was in a world of hurt with the Dell 2408 WFP. It was rather painful to live with that.
When I needed to upgrade to a quad core desktop, my choice was the excellent iMac 27″ i5 monitor with the purdy 27″ LED backlit screen, albeit glossy screen.
I used the 27″ iMac for a few months and I was getting very frustrated since I was hitting the limits of the iMac, mainly with storage. Given that I had no way of adding another HDD to the iMac and was stuck with external HDDs, when I bought an i5 MBP, I was left with two nearly identical machines, albeit one with a very pretty 27″ screen. I sold the iMac shortly thereafter.
Now, replacing the 27″ iMac monitor is not an easy task. That is easily one of the best monitors around and that explains the popularity of the 27″ iMac amongst photographers.
I was nudged towards the HPZR24W by this excellent review in FlatPanels. I am happy to report that that review is spot on. Here are a few salient points. At each stage I will compare it to the monitors I have owned in the past and particularly the iMac 27″ since the iMac sets the bar so high.
24″
Is 24″ good enough for photo editing? Particularly after you are used to the 27″? I think so. I like the extra 3″, but I suspect I never used the lower portion of the 27″ screen. I am a bit of an ergonomic freak and the inability to adjust the height of the iMacs (up and down) used to drive me nuts. My keyboard and chair height are set in such a way to enable natural typing and the inability of adjusting the height of the iMacs was a bit of a bother. I worked around it by pushing the iMac further back or forward so that I wasn’t moving my head too far up or down.
This varies from person to person and I suspect a lot of you would find the extra 3″ worth it. YMMV.
16 x 10 Aspect Ratio
The 16 x 10 aspect ratio of this monitor offsets a bit of the 3″ lost from the 27″ iMac. I dislike the 16 x 9 aspect ratio for photo editing, particularly when editing photographs in the portrait mode. The 27″ iMac makes up for it with its huge girth, but I have disliked the 16 x 9 ratio in a few other monitors. To me, the 16 x 10 ratio is a big win and it offsets some of the 3″ lost.
1920 x 1200 resolution
I miss the iMac’s 2560 x 1440 resolution. The extra 600 x 240 pixels were worth it. I admit it I had to crank up my fonts to 16 or 18 pixels to make them readable (and heard from people who received emails from me with those huge fonts), but I loved it for photo editing.
1920 x 1200 is adequate for photo editing, but nowhere near the iMac’s resolution. Yes, I have been spoilt.
Matte screen
If there is one thing that can compensate for the loss of resolution is the matte screen. I had forgotten that using a monitor should be pleasurable and not one filled with adjustments around your work area. The glossy screen of the iMac caused quite some grief since I work adjacent to a huge bay window. My wife likes the window open and if I did that, unless I crank up the iMac’s brightness to about 160 Luminance or higher, it was difficult to use in a bright setting. I dig the matte screen and love to have it back.
I already notice subtle effects of the matte vs glossy screens. Photos that appeared contrasty and saturated on my glossy screen seem a tad bit less so on the matte screen, as expected. I was getting a bit irritated by the photo prints I received from say Costco not having the same punch as I see in the monitor, but I now wonder if it was a glossy vs matte screen effect going on there. I am going to print a few photos and compare the results against printed results to see if they match better.
Ergonomics
I touched upon this earlier, but the HP ZR24W is very ergonomic. The height adjustment works just fine and I can adjust it just right so that my eyes rest on the center of the screen. The shortened height of the monitor also means that I am not nodding my eyes up and down a lot. Ergonomics is a big win for this monitor.
sRGB color space
My biggest problem with the Dell 2408 monitor was the lack of support for AdobeRGB or wide gamut colors in Mac OSX. It rendered my monitor unusable for most normal uses. When I had to buy a new monitor and had to choose between the Dell U2410 and the HPZR24W monitor, I chose the HP just for the sRGB color space and for no other reason. I am glad to report that there are no such issues with this monitor.
Calibration
Another big win for this monitor is that you can calibrate just about every aspect of the monitor, including contrast, brightness, custom white balance. The iMacs do not support any of these other than the brightness component, so this is a big win. I calibrated the monitor using Monaco EyeOne Color and it calibrates well.
The initial brightness of the monitor was way too high even at 0% brightness, and flatpanels suggested that since all the RGB guns were set to 255, the monitor is overly bright. I brought down the RGB values to about 180 and started over. It calibrates well and the monitor brightness is down to 120 luminance as well.
The blacks seem a bit muddy with this monitor as compared to the iMac 27″, at least as muddy as the Dell 2408 monitor. I read that the muddy blacks are seen in many of the IPS monitors and typically the glossy screen offsets it. I haven’t found this disturbing yet, but I admit, the photos on the iMac appear punchier than they appear on this monitor.
Appearance
The HP monitor is ugly. It is surprisingly light but surprisingly stout for a monitor. HP – your neighbors in Cupertino can fit an entire computer in about 2/3 rd the size of your monitor. You must be doing something wrong. I dig the extra 4 USB ports on the monitor and the extra inputs for the monitor, but should the monitor be this big, particularly when it lacks a speaker?
Conclusion
I like the HPZR24W. For $399, there isn’t a better monitor out there. If you can afford the 27″ iMac and can live with its quirks, there isn’t a monitor that can compete with it. But if the iMac isn’t enough for you and you want a monitor to go with your laptop / desktop, you have a great choice between the HPZR24W and the Dell U 2410. If you are running Mac OSX, you really have only one choice, which is the HPZR24W monitor.
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