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20" & 23" Aluminum Displays Now Shipping
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Corrupted
macrumors member
20-inch vs 23-inch
I'm a 3D-Animation Major and I seem to have trouble making my decision on whether to get the 20-inch or the 23-inch Apple display. I work with Maya, Photoshop and Illustrator.
I can purchase the 23-inch for $1799 or the 20-inch for $1169 through my eductational discount.
My question is should I get the 20-inch or would I be better off with the 23-inch?
I'm a 3D-Animation Major and I seem to have trouble making my decision on whether to get the 20-inch or the 23-inch Apple display. I work with Maya, Photoshop and Illustrator.
I can purchase the 23-inch for $1799 or the 20-inch for $1169 through my eductational discount.
My question is should I get the 20-inch or would I be better off with the 23-inch?
aljawad
macrumors regular
wdlove said:
I second that opinion, one can't be too thin, rich or have a large enough display. I work with video and still images (apps include FCE, PS, Motion ... etc), and you can't go wrong with a display as large as you can afford.
Unless: you happen to prefer working with two monitors (I do). Then buy the 20", and use that $630 for another display (LCD or CRT, with ADC adapter if needed, and again as large as possible).
wdlove said:
Yeah but is the 3 inchs really worth the price difference for just screen real estate. I could understand if HD really meant something to your work but even then you would need a top quality video card and that can be the difference in price when you are comparing a 20 and 23 inch. I don't know to me I would save my money and get a smoking vid card and the 20 inch if money was an issue. But since its not I went with the 30inch myself and waiting on the Nvidia 6800. Right now I am using a Samsung Synchmaster 240T which I will put on ebay as soon as my 30 arrives! My 2 cents... 😀
aljawad
macrumors regular
Ahhh, my friend, it might be an extra 3" for an additional $600. But that translates to an addition of 31% in terms of area per display, or an additional width of 240 pixels, hight of 150 pixels more. If your work has lotsa tiny windows - or apps - cluttering the desktop, that additional real-estate can be helpful.cedsim said:
Regarding dedicating the price difference towards a screaming top notch video card, yes that might be helpful if the user was a gamer - or maybe for certain apps like Motion or 3D renderings. For video and still image editing apps its not worth the upgrade, but it remains to be seen what the core technology in Tiger will do to such demanding applications.
Congratulations on your choice of the 30" and the 6800. Let us know about it when you receive it - with pictures please! 🙂
Bye Bye Baby
macrumors 65816
Viridiana
macrumors newbie
Any peep about the 30" Display?
I guess the last I heard was that it was due to arrive 10/25, but I'm dying for an update. This is what's keeping me from the intense joy of blowing a huge wad on a new G5 system. Anyone else in the same boat, and are there cooler heads out there who are going to wait a few weeks for the reviews before reeling in this whale of a monitor?
I guess the last I heard was that it was due to arrive 10/25, but I'm dying for an update. This is what's keeping me from the intense joy of blowing a huge wad on a new G5 system. Anyone else in the same boat, and are there cooler heads out there who are going to wait a few weeks for the reviews before reeling in this whale of a monitor?
Photorun
macrumors 65816
sorry Apple
I'd been vexing on whether to get the 23" Apple Cinema Display for just under $2000 with my edu discount plus shipping and taxes or get the HP 2335 for $500 less, both use the LG Philips display (essentially identical). Apple has the two Firewire and USB ports plus the beautiful aluminum casing, a work of art, the HP 2335, on the other hand, has S-Video, two DVI, VGA and is vaguely HDTV ready, even has PIP. Both are sight unseen to me so either investment would be a risk. A long time Apple fan, owner of almost a dozen of their computers including a G5 2.0 DP unit, it's hard to NOT buy their stuff... except this time, did I mention $500 difference in price?
I got my brand spanking new 23" HP 2335 through eBuyer.com for about $1500 WITH shipping. In a word? Awesome!!! There was some trepidation mind you but all fears were laid to rest upon hooking it up. Just stunning, it practically fills my field of view.
I watched a DVD on it (the Matrix, the first and ONLY good one) with no ghosting, blacks were sure and true and whites didn't get too hot and create hot spots. Played UT4 and Halo (the first) on it, both looked simply stunning at 1900X1200. I've checked it out using various means and it has no dead pixels, no stuck pixels, no hanging pixels, 0.
Created a perfectly white, perfectly black, red, green, and blue (R, G, and B) backgrounds to see if there was any flaws in color, etc. Not really, or not enough to matter and I'm a VERY anal graphic designer for a large college, I'd send it back if it was off more than my eyes would care to calibrate for. I love having Illustrator open with all the palettes and still have enough room for Mail, iChat, iTunes, and my time tracking software going, all visible on screen at the same time.
Further up thread someone commented how the plastic wasn't sturdy on the HP 2335, not so, it's some of the thickest plastics I've seen on a casing, sure it's not aluminum like the Apple display, but it's actually got a good luster and matches my G5, my Wacom 9X12 tablet, and my JPB creatures speakers incredibly well. This isn't like that craptacular plastic that Dull (Dell) or ChumpPact (Compaq) uses in their third world poor quality crap they shovel like chum on the masses. HP doesn't usually skimp on quality anyways, and I wasn't expecting them to start now.
It's MORE than exceeded my expectations, I've been grinning at it all weekend, simply great!
Sooo if there's someone out there dying for a 23" monitor and is too poor for an Apple CD display (or wants to be able to hook S-Video into their monitor, I'm doing it from a Time Warner HDTV tuner perfectly, no need for EyeTV) the HP is the next best thing!
I'd been vexing on whether to get the 23" Apple Cinema Display for just under $2000 with my edu discount plus shipping and taxes or get the HP 2335 for $500 less, both use the LG Philips display (essentially identical). Apple has the two Firewire and USB ports plus the beautiful aluminum casing, a work of art, the HP 2335, on the other hand, has S-Video, two DVI, VGA and is vaguely HDTV ready, even has PIP. Both are sight unseen to me so either investment would be a risk. A long time Apple fan, owner of almost a dozen of their computers including a G5 2.0 DP unit, it's hard to NOT buy their stuff... except this time, did I mention $500 difference in price?
I got my brand spanking new 23" HP 2335 through eBuyer.com for about $1500 WITH shipping. In a word? Awesome!!! There was some trepidation mind you but all fears were laid to rest upon hooking it up. Just stunning, it practically fills my field of view.
I watched a DVD on it (the Matrix, the first and ONLY good one) with no ghosting, blacks were sure and true and whites didn't get too hot and create hot spots. Played UT4 and Halo (the first) on it, both looked simply stunning at 1900X1200. I've checked it out using various means and it has no dead pixels, no stuck pixels, no hanging pixels, 0.
Created a perfectly white, perfectly black, red, green, and blue (R, G, and B) backgrounds to see if there was any flaws in color, etc. Not really, or not enough to matter and I'm a VERY anal graphic designer for a large college, I'd send it back if it was off more than my eyes would care to calibrate for. I love having Illustrator open with all the palettes and still have enough room for Mail, iChat, iTunes, and my time tracking software going, all visible on screen at the same time.
Further up thread someone commented how the plastic wasn't sturdy on the HP 2335, not so, it's some of the thickest plastics I've seen on a casing, sure it's not aluminum like the Apple display, but it's actually got a good luster and matches my G5, my Wacom 9X12 tablet, and my JPB creatures speakers incredibly well. This isn't like that craptacular plastic that Dull (Dell) or ChumpPact (Compaq) uses in their third world poor quality crap they shovel like chum on the masses. HP doesn't usually skimp on quality anyways, and I wasn't expecting them to start now.
It's MORE than exceeded my expectations, I've been grinning at it all weekend, simply great!
Sooo if there's someone out there dying for a 23" monitor and is too poor for an Apple CD display (or wants to be able to hook S-Video into their monitor, I'm doing it from a Time Warner HDTV tuner perfectly, no need for EyeTV) the HP is the next best thing!
I've also got the new 23" display, and looking at your test image in Safari I could see the same as the others have mentioned (250,251,252 & 555,444)BaCeK said:
However, opening the image in Photoshop with the RGB color settings set to sRGB I could see: 250,251,252 and 253 & 555, 444, and 333, 222. So if you work in the sRGB color-space you can virtually see the entire color-space.
I also used the advanced color calibration from the systems prefs.
Photorun
macrumors 65816
Ditto Mac-Xpert except I'm on the 23" HP 2335 using the same LG Philips display. I could barely make out 333, but see 444 and 555. 252, 251, and 250 I could see, others I couldn't. Repeated Mac-Xpert's idea of opening it in Photoshop and could see everything but 111,000 and 254 and 255. Went a step further and funked around with the monitor calibratio settings to sRGB and I could make out almost all the bars, but I'm curious if this test really is real world or just a test for tests (i.e. doesn't really mean squat in the end).
I think the dynamic range is good enough for most user, except if your obsessed with the very white grays or very deep blacks, and you have to be absolutely sure you can see every gradation in all possible color-spaces. 😛Photorun said:
I also read in your previous post that you tested your screen with pure R G B colors to check for unevenness and dead pixels, and that your screen has no real flaws when you did these tests.
I find with the screen I have here, that with even grays or pure R G B the screen is reasonably even in its color reproduction, the left side does show a very slight pinkish deviation with some grays, but not too serious. However, I found that certain purple/blue colors show a rather big color deviation at both sides of the screen.
Could you look at your screen and tell me if the color R175 G0 B255 gives you a solid, even color over the whole screen.
Colors in this range have a very noticeable unevenness on my screen here.
I'm not so happy with that.
However with normal images, I don't see any deviations.
Photorun
macrumors 65816
Mac-Xpert said:
Wow, that was enlightening... or frustrating. I'll admit with my R G B test (above) I saw an almost perfectly smooth color tonality (yes, almost, it was incredibly minor, maybe 1% by my eye's perception, can't quibble). However, using your R175/G0/B255 yikes! Not horrible but considering I'm a graphic designer, I hope I never have to retouch purple cubes! The color to the middle of the screen is slightly darker than the the side ends and slight splotches top and bottom. The best way to explain it is if you went into Photoshop and rendered Clouds between two almost identical purple hues in all but the middle portion of the monitor.
Thanks for depressing me.
Interestingly it's not something I'm picking up in images... yet.
Thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll go buy a CRT as a back up, just in case, my last one caught on fire, hence the replacement. CRTS are cheap anyways and day to day the 2335 will do fine, save purple objects.
Hi Photorun, thanks for taking the time to check this out on your screen. I'm also a graphic designer/desktop publisher, so just like you I'm quite critical on color reproduction of the screens I work with. When I noticed the slight deviation in the grays on mostly the left side of my screen, I started to test the screen with different colors, the purples are indeed the worst case scenario for this screen, and are outside the normal CMYK color-space that I usually work in.Photorun said:
From your description, it sounds like your screen performs very similar to mine, so I guess this is a common flaw with the LG screens. I also now realize that trying to get a replacement for my current screen, wouldn't do me any good, because it will very likely be the same with that one.
I'm really sorry, that I somewhat spoiled your happiness with your screen. I just wanted to make sure that this was not a problem isolated to my screen, but was indeed a common problem with the new cinema display / LG screens.Photorun said:
Well I don't think it will be a major issue with the average image. But unfortunately it does show that LCD screens still have some catching up to do, when it comes to precise color reproduction.Photorun said:
I've always worked with CRT screens, and although they have there own limitations, I do still think they're the best choice for accurate color reproduction. I was hoping that LCDs would already be up to the standards of CRT-screens when we choose to buy the cinema display, but I guess it does still have its limitations, at least for certain colors.
If other people here with a cinema display or LG (HP/Philips) 23" widescreen good also look at this color (R175 G0 B255) and tell me if it looks like a even/solid color on their screen, we might be able to get a even better view (no pun intended) of the scale of this problem.
Photorun
macrumors 65816
Mac-Xpert said:
Actually one other thing Mac-X, there is this very faint darker area to both the left and right sides (may appear as gray on lighter colors), running maybe two inches in on both sides. I remember reading people posting about their Cinema Displays having this and that they, at the time, felt maybe it was some type of backing or support in the display (behind it) causing this strange condition. However I can attest that the HP 2335 has the exact same thing. Wondering if you noticed sometehing similar, it's very faint, so much I don't even see it right now but know it's there (hiding). I'm thinking this is an LG Philips issue.
I did us the favor of checking one of the 23" Cinema Displays the college I work for has. It CPU isn't hooked to the internet and I didn't write down your RGB #s (d'oh!) so I could quite remember to duplicate your test but I did experiment with purples and, yes, it too had some noticeable dissimilar areas to others in a very similar pattern to what mine, and perhaps yours, does. (sigh)
Mac-Xpert said:
Agreed. I was hoping the same which is why I made the $1500 leap. I've a friend who's a high-end professional retoucher (he needs the color more than you and I do) and he was curious about going LCD, did some tests, and reported there was no way he was going the LCD route, not yet, and bought 22" LaCie ($750-ish)... still, the thing is the size of small auto and probably would crush most particle board desks with it's weight, he's not a small guy and needed help getting it into, and out of his car. I'm old enough to remember when a monitor like that cost more than our LCDs.
Mac-Xpert said:
Same here, that's why I'll probably go out and get a 19" NEC DiamondPro ($300) or some such but not hook it up (why take up the desk real estate!) unless I need to. Day to day for my job of design and illustrating (Wacom baby!) the 2335 will do fine, just when I need nitty gritty color accuracy I'll have something to double check things.
Thanks again for your help and why I like the MacRumors community! I hope someone else with an Apple Cinema Display, or any monitor made with the 23" LG Philips (includes my HP 2335, the Philips 230WSVS, and a newcomer BenQ) chimes in with their experience with color.
Yes, I can confirm that as well. There is also a hint of that at the top and bottom of my screen. It is mostly visible with pure white or very light grays (less than 10% black in CMYK color-space) on my screen. But its all very subtle, and although not perfect, It doesn't bother me al that much.Photorun said:
Yes, checking it again, I can say that the problem is mostly there in a limited range of purple colors, the worst area seems to be the colors in the range R120 G0 B255 - R210 G0 B255, with the hotspot around the R175 G0 B255 that I mentioned earlier. Luckily these colors are all outside the CMYK color-space, so retouching purple cubes should not be a real problem 😉 Running through the different color ranges, I can now quite savvily say that there are no other color ranges where the screen has any major flaws.Photorun said:
Well the G4 that we use with the scanner here (this is all at my work) still has a decent 21" Storm CRT connected to it, so I will keep on using that machine to do critical color corrections. But for general photoshop and layout work, the cinema display will be good enough I think. But I also have to say that after working for about 10 years now as a professional desktop publisher, I've learned that any screen, no matter how good and well calibrated, will always have certain deviations from printed material. So it always remains the safest option to make a color-proof on our Epson 2100 printer.Photorun said:
😛 Yeah, me too. 10 years back a good 20/21" screen would cost about 2500+ dollars, and than where not even talking about the rest of the system. A fully loaded Quadra 800 would certainly set you back quite a few bucks, with the memory costing maybe twice as much as the whole machine. 🙄 and me being happy with a 500 Mb hard-disk 😛Photorun said:
Thank you too! This has certainly been a interesting little investigation. Although it is somewhat disappointing to find that this is a common problem with these screens. Oh well, we'll just have to live with it I guess 😱Photorun said:
I'm looking to live with a 23" when the new G5 powerbook is released sometime in '05. Chicks dig the 23"
Ok, you guys are depressing me. 🙁Photorun said:
All this time I thought I had a perfect new Apple 23" Cinema (purchased in July). Then I start reading the last several posts in this thread as well as a similar thread in another forum elsewhere. So I do the recommended "tests" to see if indeed my display has problems. Holy moly! The R175 G0 B255 test makes my display look really sad. I'm seeing the same red/blue cloud effect mentioned above with a distinct redness on the left 20 percent of the screen. The right third of the screen is also reddish but not as much.
I edit photos all the time for the web; not for print work. Fortunately my work is not too color critical but I'll be strongly considering returning this display before the warranty is up. Problem is, I might get a new one that has dead pixels and more problems than this one has. As I mentioned above, I had not noticed the problems until these recent tests. I should probably just pretend I never made the tests and try to forget about it.
Thanks for the input though. 😕
I'm sorry to hear your screen has identical flaws to mine and Photoruns screen (and probably most or every other new 23" Cinema Display / LG screen owner) Obviously it was never my intention to make people feel bad about their purchase, or to bash the Cinema Display. But when I found this rather serious flaw in my screen, I just had to share this with you guys, to make sure that I wasn't alone with this.iDave said:
Actually I was kind of hoping it was limited to my screen, because then I would've had a good reason to return it and demand a new one. Now I'm not so sure. Since it really starts to look like a issue inherent with the LG screens, returning it wouldn't do me any good, because there is no similar display available (as far as I know) with the same features but not the flawed LG screen. 😕
So as I said before, it probably just has to do. Although I certainly understand why you would like to return it, and maybe buy something else.
I would also really like to know if this is limited to the 23" alone, or if the 20" and 30" also show this behavior.
At the risk of disappointing people with these screen as well 😱 I would like to ask owners of the 20" (maybe also iMac G5 users if your reading this) and 30" screens to look at this color (again: R175 G0 B255) and tell us if it looks like a solid even color on your screen. (Try it at your own risk, I can't take responsibility for feeling sad afterwards 😱 )
Additional input from 23" owners is of course also much appreciated.
Photorun
macrumors 65816
iDave said:
Ditto Mac-X that this is probably a consistent problem with LCD, perhaps more than just LG Philips (though I'd love someone else to chime in). Getting another may not (or probably wont) solve any problem. Mac-X and I tested this on two newer gen 23" CDs with fairly similar results which matched my 23" HP 2335 (same internals). Until we get more feedback from 23" owners using Mac-X's test specs I'd hold tight iDave.
Additionally as Mac-X and I mentioned overall color in a photo with a large gamut of variations isn't too bad, the areas of slight color hue differentiation probably wouldn't make a difference for all but extreme Photoshop retouchers who make their livelihood on the upmost perfection and even then, the reality, and maybe Mac-X would agree, the average person who looks at our work scans it for five seconds and really notice very little of what us anal designers spend sometimes hours trying to do. I'm not saying don't strive for perfection, I'm saying pick your battles and honestly the slight color variation isn't really enough to totally get into a huff about. It is something in future LCDs will probably be taken care of, so the question is do you want to wait for 1-3 or more years to enjoy the space saving technology or enjoy it now as an early adopter (not to mention bragging rights).
An addendum of sorts, I tested the 175/0/255 (RGB) on my 2001 first white gen 12" iBook (2 USB, one FW) and it was perfect across with exception the two very lower extreme corners has a moray but that's there all the time in any color test (I think the LCD is being pinched in the frame). My girlfriend owns a 17" iMac G5, I'll test it on hers for poops and grins shortly.
The 23" is a great monitor for 95% of the users out there though iDave, and you got no dead pixels, that's great! My advice is keep it.
Which video card is recommended with the Apple cinema 23"?
Which video card is recommended with the Apple cinema 23"?
Which video card is recommended with the Apple cinema 23"?