Help with using MBA and desktop monitor

[hyewarrior]

Hi all! Joined this forum in hoping to get some insight on an issue I've come across.

So I have a 13" MBA, and I've recently gotten a little more immersed into my photography hobby. I began editing pictures using Lightroom, and everything was going well, but I decided I needed a larger display, so I bought this monitor from best buy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/23"+Wid...84&skuId=4979838&st=acer 23 monitor&cp=1&lp=1

It seemed like a good deal since it was on sale for $140, and the specs seemed great too. But I've run into a problem. The image quality is not that great at all when I have my MBA hooked up via Thunderbolt to HDMI. I've tried an Xbox and the image quality was great! So I'm a bit confused as to why the image quality isn't that sharp or crisp. I've tried the calibration methods with the system preferences, but it still isn't that great. When I'm running two displays, one on the monitor and one on the laptop, the colors are drastically different as well, and this is a nightmare when it comes to editing photos. What else could the issue be? I wasn't expecting as clear of a picture as the actual Mac displays, but I figured this would be close enough for someone on a budget...

Any ideas? Thanks for any input people!

 

[Apple fanboy]

It seemed like a good deal since it was on sale for $140,

When I'm running two displays, one on the monitor and one on the laptop, the colors are drastically different as well, and this is a nightmare when it comes to editing photos.

I suspect the main issue is the colour space each monitor is able to show. I suspect the cheap monitor has quite a narrow colour space so is only able to show 'some' of the colours the Air screen produces. This is a common fault with cheaper screens, especially when used by photographers.

In terms of why the screen performs better for the xBox than for the Air I couldn't say, but I assume you have tried adjusting the resolution up and down to see if it gets better?

 

[mfram]

There are many other threads on this. But the crux of it is that your MBA is probably treating the monitor as a "TV". And TVs use a different color space than monitors. So your colors are probably all weird. There are various solutions that are discussed in 100+ page threads on these forums if you look for it.