Monitors around the £300-£400 price tag for Photo Editing.

[captures.in.time]

I have a MacBook Pro... but looking for a 21-24" monitor to do photo editing on... surely any monitor will work with a PC or a Mac??? I recently moved from the iMac to the MacBook Pro.. my iMac was just about 8 years old and getting too slow... The MacBook Pro Screen is great... So im just looking of something of similar quality... not too big... and just think dual screening would be good also.

I'd also look for something around the £300 price tag.. Any recommendations? Im completely clueless with this element of photography really. If I just can't get good quality at that price id prob just leave it... and keep going with the MacBook Pro Screen only.

 

[Jelster]

The problem I have with my Macbook is than none of the 3 screens I have giver a similar colour rendition. The screen on the Mac is very good, and I would think you need to be looking at around £500 to get the quality you need at 24".

I love dual screening though, and I've even run 3 screens before.

 

[Andrew Moore]

Buy an IPS panel with a decent SRGB profile and a spider to calibrate the monitor. What you will find is that the screen on the max may look great because you don’t have anything that is genuinely correct to compare it to. If the screen is miles off of the Mac colouration does it matter if it’s perfect? Not really no. My concern at that point would be the Mac and from there I would be conscious to make sure any final grading was done on the screen at home before finalising work.

As for what works.

Eizo, benq, iiyama.

Expensive to cheaper.

I personally use an Benq SW271. It costs about £1k but is a be all and end all monitor.

ILM use eizo (the people behind star wars) and some of the entry 24” 1080p jobbies are 100% sRGB which is the important bit (same standard as the net, most printing companies use that space too rather than adobe rgb) and they can be had for about £250 and up wards.


The questions you need to ask yourself are as follows.

What size do you need? 24 / 24 / 27 / 32
Resolution 1080p / 1440p / 2160p
Inputs ie DP, miniDP, HDMI ????
Budget £300


So with that in mind your looking at above in bold as a solid performer and the above in italics as possible but risky or outside of budget. The underlined is outside of budget potentially but may be worth the extra to dip in to.

My recommendation would come in with the following.

24”
Eizo CS230 - £400ish 1080p - Pro grade
Eizo EV2450 - £250ish 1080p - ametuer grade
Dell P2415Q - £350ish 2160p - ametuer grade

27”
Benq SW2700PT - £550ish 1440p - Pro grade
Dell U2717D - £370ish 1440p - ametuer grade


Out of all those the CS230 and SW2700PT are the best two units.

The cheaper Eizo is likely a better unit than either of the Dells but the Dells do offer good value for money with the 27” and if you like to pixel peep and need the sharpness you get with your Mac, the 24” 2160p will probably do a good job of keeping colour reasonably accurate and you happy as the resolution gives the perception of better quality even if it isn’t.

 

[captures.in.time]

Buy an IPS panel with a decent SRGB profile and a spider to calibrate the monitor. What you will find is that the screen on the max may look great because you don’t have anything that is genuinely correct to compare it to. If the screen is miles off of the Mac colouration does it matter if it’s perfect? Not really no. My concern at that point would be the Mac and from there I would be conscious to make sure any final grading was done on the screen at home before finalising work.

As for what works.

Eizo, benq, iiyama.

Expensive to cheaper.

I personally use an Benq SW271. It costs about £1k but is a be all and end all monitor.

ILM use eizo (the people behind star wars) and some of the entry 24” 1080p jobbies are 100% sRGB which is the important bit (same standard as the net, most printing companies use that space too rather than adobe rgb) and they can be had for about £250 and up wards.


The questions you need to ask yourself are as follows.

What size do you need? 24 / 24 / 27 / 32
Resolution 1080p / 1440p / 2160p
Inputs ie DP, miniDP, HDMI ????
Budget £300


So with that in mind your looking at above in bold as a solid performer and the above in italics as possible but risky or outside of budget. The underlined is outside of budget potentially but may be worth the extra to dip in to.

My recommendation would come in with the following.

24”
Eizo CS230 - £400ish 1080p - Pro grade
Eizo EV2450 - £250ish 1080p - ametuer grade
Dell P2415Q - £350ish 2160p - ametuer grade

27”
Benq SW2700PT - £550ish 1440p - Pro grade
Dell U2717D - £370ish 1440p - ametuer grade


Out of all those the CS230 and SW2700PT are the best two units.

The cheaper Eizo is likely a better unit than either of the Dells but the Dells do offer good value for money with the 27” and if you like to pixel peep and need the sharpness you get with your Mac, the 24” 2160p will probably do a good job of keeping colour reasonably accurate and you happy as the resolution gives the perception of better quality even if it isn’t.

Wow... thanks for your detailed response. For me whilst I think colour rendition and quality is important... im not selling or doing much printing ... so im after something that looks HD i guess similar to my mac! I wont pixel peep and 27” far to big... looking for something more 21” even rather than 24” is there much out there?

 

[Jelster]

I have a 22" LG which is VDI, and I use that from time to time, or if I just want something big, I have a 27" Samsung TV that I connect via HDMI. Colours on the LG are better than the Samsung, but the latter is a Smart TV and not meant to be a monitor.

The Samsung cost me £220 about 2 years ago, the LG I've had even longer. I bought the Samsung as I used to be in to playing Civ5 which really needed a bigger screen.

If you're not overly worried about colours, drop into Dixons/PC World, they have loads of them....

 

[Andrew Moore]

Wow... thanks for your detailed response. For me whilst I think colour rendition and quality is important... im not selling or doing much printing ... so im after something that looks HD i guess similar to my mac! I wont pixel peep and 27” far to big... looking for something more 21” even rather than 24” is there much out there?

In that case you can’t go far wrong with a 4k dell as mentioned above. It’ll give that “retina” experience you are used to on the Mac and the and at £350-370 is a little out of budget but it’ll be a push that’ll be worth it in the long run.