LCD monitor offers tools for colour professionals

The NEC MultiSync LCD2690WUXiSV is a 26-inch wide-screen LCD monitor, the largest in NEC’s 90 series of professional displays. A similar version of this monitor (without software and colourimeter) earned a Best of Show award at the Macworld 2007 Expo, due largely to its high-end features. The SV model includes a bundled colourimeter, a programmable 12-bit colour lookup table for smooth colour transitions and gradients, the ability to display up to 94 percent of the Adobe RGB colour space, and X-light Pro technology to keep brightness and colour consistent over the life of the display (it measures performance and automatically compensates for changes over time). And though it also carries a high-end price tag, this feature-packed display should appeal to colour-savvy professionals.

Design and usability
The display sports a simple but elegant design with a thin black bezel — helpful if you need to position two or more displays together in a relatively seamless array. The display’s menu system is easy to follow, and the on-screen descriptions that appear just above the navigation buttons whenever you touch them make things even easier.

Seeing eye to eye with this display should be no problem; you can adjust its height, tilt it forward and back, and even rotate it into a portrait orientation.

You can connect it to your Mac digitally via two DVI ports, or run it in analog mode via a VGA cable connected to the monitor’s VGA port. (The Macworld Lab tests all displays using DVI.)

Using the both the bundled colourimeter and the SpectraView II software, you can calibrate the monitor to a large number of presets or countless custom options. The software is not as elegant or slick as GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One Pro, but colour pros should appreciate the myriad available settings. The bundled colourimeter and software calibrate the display itself, not the signal coming out of the graphics card. A version without the SpectraView software and the colourimeter is available for about US$300 less if you already have a colourimeter or don’t want to spend the extra cash for this feature.

Performance
O
ut of the box, the display was bright but a little washed out. Once calibrated, though, the monitor looked great. Its side-angle viewing wasn’t quite as good as that of other NEC 90 series displays I’ve tested, such as the NEC MultiSync 2190UXi, but it was still very good, losing just a little bit of contrast as I moved away from the center of the screen. Text was clear, crisp, and legible at small point sizes. The colours on our test photo really popped, with saturated but accurate representations of the food, skin tones, and textures. The photo had depth, thanks to the image’s shadow details. I found no stuck or dead pixels, and brightness appeared consistent across the screen when I viewed a variety of solid white and colour full-screen test images.

Buying advice
For professional photographers and designers, accurate colour is a necessity. Though this big, bright 26-inch display costs a pretty penny, its colour calibration features — as well as for managing backlight and colour consistency over time — make the MultiSync LCD2690WUXiSV a tool all serious colour geeks should consider.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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