Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Test conditions: Snow Leopard 10.6.6 in 64 bit mode on a Mac Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics card using DVI cable, second computer is a Power Mac G4 tower with ADC to DVI connector
Conflict of interest: NEC provided the display for the purpose of the review and then offered to the reviewer at a significant discount from the retail price.
Few photographers or videographers have physical darkrooms these days. Instead, their darkroom exists largely in their computer. This virtual darkroom has two points of visual access: the display and some output mechanism such as a printer or TV screen. But all of the creative work is done through the display, making it the single most important part of the process. It is much more important that having the fastest CPU. With this in mind three years ago, I purchased a NEC announced the LCD2690UWXi, a 25.5" display that was available with its own calibration software (SpectraView II) and a specially calibrated colorimeter.
I have been extremely happy with my NEC display, but technology marches on. So I was particularly interested to learn that NEC had released a new 27" display, the PA271W-BK-SV (BK stands for black; SV stands for SpectraView) that improves on their previous impressive product. I was even happier that NEC agreed to provide AAUG with an evaluation display to review. At the risk of spoiling the ending, allow me to say that I have not been disappointed.
Ergonomics: The PA271W display is attached to a stand that allows it to be moved up and down over a 5" range, rotated 360 degrees about a vertical axis and 90 degrees about a horizontal axis. The latter allows the display to be used in landscape or portrait orientation. The display also tilts back. The available range of movements makes it easy to find a comfortable viewing arrangement.
Connections: Cables included with the display are a power cable, a DVI-D to DVI-D cable, a DisplayPort cable (not mini), and a USB cable. The PA271W is capable of handling 10 bits per color channel, although the DVI cables can only transmit 8 bits. A display port connection can transmit 10 bits per channel, but Apple's OS X only supports 8 bits per color channel. Based on comments from NEC's technical support staff, very few mini display port to full size display port adapters work well with this NEC display, Apple's included. NEC recommends MonoPrice's "Mini DisplayPort Male to DisplayPort Female Adapter" part # 5714 ([...]; $4.25 plus $1.56 for 1st class shipping) if you want to use the mini display port on your Mac. I have been using the DVI-D cable with my Mac Pro with no problems.
Also included in the box are screws for mounting to a wall bracket and a CD with the manual. Although the PA271W is available as a stand-alone display with no dedicated calibration software or hardware, I reviewed the model with these included. The colorimeter is manufactured by X-Rite for NEC, which then custom calibrates it. The software, SpectraView II, is a NEC product. More about this in a moment.
Setup is straightforward, regardless of whether you're using DVI or display port. The PA271W supports two video input streams from two computers, although both must be digital. If you have a computer with only VGA graphics, you can purchase the PA241W, which does support analog input. You can switch between your two inputs on either the PA271W or the PA241W with a button on the front of the screen. Interestingly, you can run a USB cable from each computer into the back of the PA271W and then output a USB to a single keyboard and mouse. Then, when you switch between input streams, you also switch keyboard inputs. So you have one keyboard, one mouse and one display for two computers. As the Barefoot Contessa says, "How cool is that?"
Of course, the real point of all of PA271W is the image on the display, and that is outstanding. At 2560x1440 pixels, this display has a high resolution for its size. Its color gamut is 97.1% of the Adobe 1996 RGB color space. This compares with 73% for the Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display and 83.2% for the Apple 27 inch LED Cinema Display. For those of you who think that you can edit photographs with a MacBook Pro, the 2010 15 inch MacBook Pro displays only 75% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. These data come from [...].
Having a display with a great image is only part of the equation. The display must be calibrated and profiled. SpectraView II is the software supplied with the PA271W-BK-SV that performs this task. It is very easy to use and comes with excellent documentation. The process takes about 5 minutes or so from start to finish, except on the very first usage when you need to make some choices about your configuration. One of the settings is target for which there are several default choices as well as the ability to create a custom configuration. I use the Photo Editing target which has a white point of 6500 degrees Kelvin, a gamma of 2.2 and an intensity of 140 cd/square meters. It is possible to set multiple targets and have respective calibrations. This is very useful if you work in both still photography and videography, where the white point setting are quite different (6500 vs. 9300 degrees Kelvin). Most videographers work with ECI/NTSC color space rather than the Adobe 1986 color space. Note that I prefer to use the Native color gamut for the display rather than the Adobe RGB gamut. In any event, you can apply the appropriate calibration and profile for the work that you happen to be doing at the moment. There are a number of other preferences that you can set, although I found that the defaults generally worked for me. All of these are well documented in the SpectraView II documentation as well as in text supplied on the SpectraView interface. If you're stumped about something, you can call NEC's technical support staff, which I found to be excellent.
You may wonder why you should use SpectraView II instead of a calibration/profiler package by DataColor or X-rite. SpectraView II writes its output to a 14 bit color look-up table (LUT) that allows the display to achieve its high gamut level. Other calibration tools will achieve good results, but the gamut will not be quite as wide. I recommend purchase of SpectraView II with the PA271W even if you already own another calibration product.
One of the nice touches on the PA271W is the ability to display the input from the second video stream as a picture with picture (PIP) or picture beside picture (PBP). PIP can be done with buttons on the lower right bezel, or with software called MultiProfiler that NEC supplies on its web site. The software solution allows you to easily choose between PIP and PBP, as well as the size and position of the second display in PIP. I've found that PIP is most useful when I'm tracking the progress of a program on my second computer while working on my Mac Pro.
MultiProfiler has quite a few other capabilities, including the ability to quickly switch between several standard color gamuts (your calibrated profile, Adobe RGB, sRGB, High Bright and Full). If you're viewing files destined from web display and not in Photoshop at the time, you can switch to sRGB and see how the image will look when displayed on a generic display and then switch back to your calibrated display. You can also use MultiProfiler to control settings for the power-on LED on the front of the screen, and more importantly for the correction level that is applied to the brightness of the image on the display. This refers to the amplification that the display applies so that the brightness on the sides of the display is the same as that in the center. The default setting is maximum correction, which is the setting that I use. I've had this display for one month now and find the light extremely uniform.
The NEC PA271W-BK-SV is not an inexpensive display, especially when you add the shipping required to get it to Anchorage. What distinguishes this display from the less expensive displays manufacturer by HP or Dell, some of which have an even wider color gamut, is that the NEC display is guaranteed to work with Macs. The tech support staff has Macs in their lab, so that you can be certain that the display will in fact work with your Mac. In reading the threaded discussions on the HP and Dell web sites, it's clear that neither company explicitly supports their display on Macs.
If you are serious about color management and quality, I highly recommend the NEC PA271W-BK-SV. You could select the PA241W-BK-SV if one of your video streams will be analog or if you prefer a smaller display.
Click Here to see more reviews about: NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK-SV 27-Inch LCD Monitor
NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK-SV 27" 2560 x 1440/60 Hz 300 cd/m2 1000:1 6 ms 0.233 mm LCD Monitor
Click here for more information about NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK-SV 27-Inch LCD Monitor
0 comments:
Post a Comment