UKH

I would like to spend some more time and effort on photo editing. The 13 inch screen on my Dell XPS laptop is good quality but rather small for use of Lightroom. I am thinking of getting a good desktop monitor, say 24 inch for photo editing and general use. There is a bewildering choice out there and it's hard to get an idea of the sweet point of price vs performance.

The more expensive monitors boast of things I don't fully understand the benefit of like different colour gammuts etc. My old A3+ photo printers is dead and drivers not available for current Windows, I will get a good replacement sometime in the future, so although ability to colour match is not needed now it will be later.

My laptop will display 1920x1080 but can support monitors with much higher resolutions - Will these higher resolutions be beneficial on a 24 inch monitor?

Budget anything from £150 to £500 (if I really have to) but best value is important.

Most of my photography is with a 20Mp APS-C dslr.

Any help, guidance, experience would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

In reply to kevin stephens:

very pleased with this
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-dell-u2412m-monitor-ips-panel-1920x1200-...
image stay the same at very big angles so no change in brightness/colour when you move your head around.

In reply to kevin stephens:

I've got the same monitor as Mikkel mentions, the Dell U2412, and I'm also very happy with it. I calibrated / profiled it with a spider-device-thingy, so my prints look just how they do on the monitor.
Anthony

In reply to kevin stephens:

thanks folks

In reply to kevin stephens:
I too, have a Dell monitor after getting advice from people on these forums and reading various reviews. As with anything in the tech field, things move fast and my choice of monitor may now be a thing of the past.

However I have had my Dell U2715H for almost a year and I can not fault it. In landscape mode you can physically view and read two A4 size documents side by side at 100%. And pixel peeping images in Lightroom is a pleasure with so much real estate of a 27 inch display.

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-27-inch-monitor/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Monitors/Dell-U2715H-27-Inch-Widescreen-IPS-LED-...

And Dell state that they will replace the monitor if there is just one dead pixel. Now that is confidence in their product. All my images, provided I got the focus right, look stunningly pin-sharp.

I also use the monitor as my main TV in the front room. It may not be as big as some of the behemoth 1 million inch TV's available from Curries but is is certainly bigger than my first CTR telly, and that thing weighed a tonne. What is even better, is that the viewing angle means that you can virtually look at the screen fro 180 degrees and not get any image distortion, other than perspective.

You may get a better monitor, especially as my model is a year old, but I highly recommend anything from the Dell product range.

In reply to The Lemming:

Hi Kevin. It depends what colour gamut you want and how accurate you want the colours to be. Most monitors are sRGB (more restricted, but more "universal") colour gamut which can give problems with some greens. The internet runs on sRGB images.

However to use a wide gamut (aRGB) monitor effectively it is very helpful to calibrate it, and it is essential to use a fully colour managed workflow (for which you need something like Lightroom).

So steer away from wide gamut monitors unless you are prepared to make that investment (in money and time!). Your Pentax (like most DLSRs) has a wider colour gamut than either sRGB or aRGB but you probably won't notice unless you take photos of highly saturated subjects. Especially if you then send them for print, when the prints may not look quite "right" for some colours.

If you shoot RAW your images have the full colour gamut available, so you can always go back and produce wider gamut versions at a later stage if you like.

Cheers

Paul

In reply to kevin stephens:

http://www.photospecialist.co.uk/eizo-coloredge-cs2420?channable=e13528.RUl...
Ezio have introduced a budget range, calibration tool required for monitors

In reply to kevin stephens:

As others have said, the Dell Ultrasharp range is excellent value for money (I'm on a U2715H). Don't worry about wide gamut monitors, you'll only have to convert everything to sRGB when it comes to publishing unless you're doing something special.