Dell 2707 WFP first glance.

All the hype. Dell's new 27" LCD with 92% NTSC. Is it all worth it? Here are the specs. As a photographer, color gamut and accuracy are one of our greatest bane especially in today's world of flat screen LCDs. In the past, good colour gamuts were always there in CRTs but the latest technologies and demand for flat and small footprint displays have made these a hard thing to come by. So we have to settle with LCDs. What is there out there for us?

Till today, most LCDs could only display up to the sRGB gamut which is much smaller than the industry standard Adobe RGB color space. The exception was a $6000 NEC LED display (NEC MultiSync 2180WG-LED http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/10/28/a_revolution/ ). Not quite affordable. Then Lacie's 321 which is essentially an NEC display rebranded (I've got one of these). The Lacie is an excellent display capable of displaying a slightly larger gamut (72% ntsc) than most LCDs and hardware calibrated rather than software.

This year, Dell, comes out with the 2707. A 1920x1200 .33 dot pitch (vs Lacie's 1920x1200 @ 2.7 dp) but capable of displaying a whooping 92% ntsc at 2/3rd the price. Too good to be true? I bought one. My old trusty Sony G520 was due for upgrade (though still displaying wonderful colours) and I needed a much bigger workspace. So I ordered one from a local reseller (Bilster) in Kiulap and within 2 weeks it was here. How does it compare?

Here are my pros and cons:

For:
27" is a big space to work with :)
Pixels are slightly larger but these are the limitations of single link DVI and our graphics adapters. SL-DVI can only support up to 1920x1200 where to go 2560x1600 e.g. Apple's or Dell's 30" LCD, we will need a graphics adapter capable of running dual link..
Multiple inputs - component, composite, vga, dvi-d etc with all sorts of gimmicks (to me, of course). See full specs.
The gamut is really much bigger than my Lacie 321 in the greens and blues.
Cool shiny brushed aluminium with glass-based stand.

Against:
Color consistency. And a really bad one at that.

See below (Dell 2707 PC Mode):

As you can see here, this was a calibration report from my Lacie Blue Eye Pro. Compare it with the Lacie below:

From these two charts, clearly, the Dell does have the bigger gamut BUT the variations/consistency of color display is huge compared to the Lacie. I've done several of these test and they are all the same. Dell 2707 WFP does NOT produce consistent colours. In fact, I found this out not by looking at these charts BUT VISUALLY. At the moment, my Dell has a slight magenta hue compared with the unshifting white of the Lacie 321. When I saw this difference this morning, I immediately set out to test my theories with the calibration reports. Everytime I calibrate the Dell, the color shifts would be corrected but after some time, the colors shift again. Whilst this is noy yet conclusive, I will be testing a few more settings on the Dell. There is a PC and MAC mode which I will be re-calibrating and testing.

I will update this after doing a final set of calibration on the other modes to make sure this is not an error on my part. Stay tuned for more.

Update (Dell 2707 Mac Mode):
Test 1

Test 2 (immediately after test 1)

Slightly better than in PC more but still a significant difference against the Lacie's 321 Delta E.

Conclusions:
A sweet large workspace with large color gamuts that are not super consistent like the Lacie. At about 2/3rds the price of the Lacie 321 for 6" more real estate, can we really complain? For myself, I'm happy with the larger gamut BUT I have my Lacie 321 to do my color sensitive work hence I have no issues. I cannot really recommend it to others who are depending on this for color consistent work because clearly, the colors are NOT consistent. Maybe this is a defective screen or maybe it was made that way.. either way, these are the results I have so far.

Feel free to ask questions or comments.