A chance to talk to FlatpanelsHD's reviewers.
#6122
Hi Rasmus,

Just wanted to thank you for writing such a detailed review on the Dell U2312HM. It helped to answer a great number of questions I had about this monitor.

I had one question regarding your calibration process. In your article you mention a calibration device and then a number of custom settings that you changed within the monitor to achieve the overall desired calibration.

What I'm curious to know is did you:

a) calibrate your monitor using the default preset mode, let your calibration too generate an ICC profile for your monitor and then adjust the physical monitor settings (brightness, contrast, sharpness, RGB etc)

or

b) adjust the settings for your monitor (brightness, contrast, sharpness, RGB etc) and then use your calibration device?

The reason I ask is my Spider 2 Express calibration device suggests that I should leave all the factory settings enabled and then just calibrate from that. The manual advises me that I if I were to change any of the default monitor settings then I would have to calibrate again (which makes sense).

I'm just wondering what you you feel the best approach is? Any advice or comments that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Carl
#6123
In theory you use both methods but things like brightness (backlight level) has to be controlled through the monitor settings.

On cheap monitors - typically TN monitor - the software-only method is actually the easiest because the controllers are often horrible. On mid-range and high-end monitors you definitely want to take advantage of the monitor controls before you create an ICC. Also, remember that in order to change between different color gamuts on graphic monitors you need to utilize either hardware gamut controls on the monitor or gamut emulators. An ICC profile won't do the job.

But with your U2311H and Spyder setup I will recommend method b.