It's called
8-bit vs 6-bit. Most of the Dell Ultrasharps are using 8-bit, but apparently they snuck 6-bit panels into one or two along the line. If you are worried, call Dell! Otherwise, as long as it's an 8-bit panel the color reproduction should be
IDENTICAL with contrast and brightness being the only varying factors.
Trust me when I say that Apple doesn't do enough business for LG/Samsung to be making 8-bit panels just for them. I swear, people think that just because they slap a damn apple logo on the thing that it is blessed with pixy dust.
I wouldnt say its blessed with pixy dust since the ACD is the superior monitor.
You can take the same lcd that Eizo uses and use cheaper circuitry/chip/backlighting/glass and how backlighting is implemented/installed and end up with a worse monitor.
Just to give you an example with both Dell 30"and Apple 30" with the same lcd panel yet different components inside that drives the lcd and I know this is a bit outdated but still fair dell 30" and Apple 30" (and today 2008 I'm sure they both got modest updates as well):
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7...7.html?tag=btn
quote from the site:
"Apple trumped the Dell in our DVD-playback test, displaying less digital noise and more-realistic skin tones, and it won the more technical rounds, with more-vivid colors and better grayscale differentiation. This is the monitor of choice, especially if you own an Apple computer, since the Apple OS provides additional configuration options."
And I know this is an apple support site but I found this real quick from just googling in just seconds:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....36508&tstart=0
This guy is talking about the 2408WFP and he saids:
"After having one of these monitors for a couple of days now i wish i had payed the extra and got an Apple display. After hardware colour calibration the colours looked good in Lightroom, but still over saturated in everything else. The brightness is just insane, i had to turn it right down as my eyeballs were getting fried.
I could live with all that, but the big problem for me is the 'sharpness' setting. It defaults to 50% and the only other settings are 0%-25%-50%-75%-100%. 50% is too much and causes fonts to have a halo effect around them and 25% is too little and fonts are blurred. It is at it's worst with black text on a white background. So reading this forum looks awful. I've tried all the settings on the 'font smoothing but that doesn't help."
But in the end he tweaked it to where he was able to read the forums without the headache.. but then the apple monitor is just so perfectly calibrated right out of the box and for professionals I'm sure even better to calibrate it with spyder2 or whatever your using.
The dell monitors are not horrible and if your not a graphics designer or anything to do with graphics its more than good enough for use but for me around that range to pay for an external monitor I'd buy the apple cinema display 23" or the 30" in a heartbeat.
And I'd do it again if I needed another external monitor for use (and I have and got myself a 20" ACD just a few days ago and its very nice.. I went to best buy to look at all the samsung/lg/hp/gateway/dell and just tweaking it for 2 hours at best buy.. they all dont look as good and at the mall I saw the dell 2408WFP and played around with it for an hour and was a nice monitor.. but the colors.. just look way too oversaturated on some colors such as red and some other colors not as saturated and didnt have that vivid/pop natural colors. I tried tweaking it for an hour and I couldnt get near of what I wanted and annoyed the dell stand guy. =D
Just comparing the 24" 2407WFP I had to the 23" ACD.. the 23" ACD just overall looks better in color rendition/realistic/web surfing, and just looks that much natural without it being overly bright or overly saturated and "just right." I use the 23" ACD with its brightness only at 4-6 notches out of the whole 16 and thats still more than bright enough for me and when I'm in the darkness I use it maybe even 2-3 notches. I know someone who uses it at 1 notch.
IMHO, I think dell monitors arent all bad and some uses the same S-IPS lcds but the way its built/circuitry/chip/glass that it uses is not on par with Apple/Eizos. Thats where you see the big difference. I notice the glass on the ACD makes a huge difference as well as to the dell. When I look at the dell or samsung or LG monitors just the feel and look of the glass is a cheaper material and it to me the glass is important because the better the glass the better colors from the lcd will show through the glass (and of course accounting to the circuitry that drives the lcd as well has to be better too)... every little components takes account into making a good display and Apple has done a great job.
Final note: I also remember few years back reading a tech article about Apple using the same components as Eizos to making the ACDs. And alot of people were saying that buying an apple monitor is the cheap way of getting an Eizo quality screen.
Oh well, I'm quite open minded when it comes to hardware/software in general so I'll keep my eye on them (and all the other brands / models out there) and use/recommend them if/when they are better value / product then the competition.
