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Big curved monitors for photo editing - Dell U3821DW

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Linwood Ferguson

Linwood Ferguson
Lightroom Guru
Joined
Jan 18, 2009
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Fort Myers, FL
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Lightroom Version
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Lightroom Version Number
102
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I have a 24" and 27" NEC monitor; the 27" is failing (despite being 3 years newer than the 24").

I like the NEC Spectraview, but they are pretty pricy now and not many choices. I also found over time I did not care about the wide gamut.

I am thinking about getting a wide (physically not gamut) monitor, like the Dell W3821DW. I'll get something to calibrate it to hopefully match the 24".

Has anyone tried these large, curved monitors? This is not the really large one Dell has (which is 49"), but has higher resolution. I think I will still have room for the 24" to run in portrait mode as it does now on one side.

But... it's not exactly a photo editing monitor, and while I don't care about wide gamut, I do want accurate color.

Any experiences?

Linwood

PS. I'm hoping my poor GTX970 will power it, since I can't seem to buy a new GPU. Darn crypto miners.
 
Well, in case anyone comes across this later -- I got one. It's gorgeous. The curve is a bit disconcerting at first but you quickly acclimate to it and realize it is helpful. I think I would NOT like some of the wider ones not because of width (e.g. the 49" version of this) but because of lack of pixel density on the height, this has a finer pitch, the 49" appears solely aimed at "really wide" with a more coarse density.

What I haven't done is calibrate it. I adjusted it to sort of kind of match to eye skin tones on the 24" I left in place beside it (my 27" main NEC was failing, the much older 24" is going strong). I'm trying to find out if I can reuse my NEC (x-rite made) colorimeter with current software, waiting on xrite to answer.

However, it may end up costing me another monitor -- one thing I had not noticed is how LONG it is taking for my current NEC's to, for want of a better word, warm up. This monitor comes up full brightness quickly (seconds), and it is MUCH brighter than the left monitor for maybe 15-20 minutes. After that time, the NEC 24" has reached a stable point and more or less matches brightness. For the first 5 minutes or so it is actually kind of difficult to use both. This may also be a sign of age -- the NEC uses florescent tubs, the new monitor LED's -- maybe the tubes take longer to come fully bright as they age.

Frankly I like it so much my first reaction was to order a second, and just span the whole desk in a big 120 degree or so circle. Then I realized using two side by side puts the joint directly in front of you -- so that won't work. So I'll save the $1000 and keep the NEC 24" a while long. It's kind of nice to have a portrait oriented monitor (I have always had it in that orientation on the left, and keep mail, and a second LR screen there).

When I can check color will report back just for posterity sake.
 
I have considered a curved monitor to replace my dual display. I will be interested in your evaluations. Please post any follow ups


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
I got the i1 Display Pro (the NEC one won't work) and built a profile roughly matching my 24". Once it warms up, they match fairly well.

It's a WWWWWIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEE monitor.

It really neatened up my desk, it's a lot thinner than the old florescent tube monitors, a LOT cooler also, the other was really hot if you felt the top. Built in speakers were a plus (back in that day photo editing monitors didn't have sound built in). I was surprised, it has a NIC on it, so you can plug in a laptop (or something) with USBC and power the laptop (haven't tested that), and also the laptop gets a USB based ethernet adapter implicitly.

I wish the 24" on the left were the same pixel pitch though, now all fonts (etc) are about 50% larger on it than on the new one. Not bad, in fact I usually put email and similar on the left, so it's actually easier to read.

Lightroom is nice spread across the wide one, really big grid. Will take some time to decide how the color looks, but just staring at the real life version of the below screen (this one is a bit over-saturated) it's really pretty closely matched.


wide.jpg
 
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