2 monitors dell 2408 not the same color

[David Roth weiss]

I had the same exact issue when I bought my two Dell 2408s last year. Of the first two, the one that was yellow turned out to be the bad one. I wound up having five different monitors shipped here at Dell’s expense before I found two that matched.

Here are two things to be aware of:

1. Make sure that the Apple presets you choose, the settings on the monitors, and the display card are absolutely identical between the monitors before throwing up your hands in desperation.

2. If you do have to call Dell, be absolutely 100% clear to the person you speak with in Mumbai, that you know Dell has a special unit here in the states who deal with these monitors, and that you absolutely, positively will not accept a refurb as a replacement.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Drazen Stader]

David hi

Thanks for the precious reply….the yellowish monitor will be soon on its way to the vendor…hopefully the next one will have the same default callibration as the one I’ve kept…will keep you posted…

best regards

Drazen

drazen

[David Roth weiss]

Good luck to you Drazen. I hope the replacement you get is a better match. Once you do get two that match you will be quite happy with the 2408s. They are a little tough to setup for proper color rendition initially, but I’ve found that using one of RGB presets works pretty well. Try them all out with color bars and with flesh tones until you find something you like. And, consider calibrating with a Spyder.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Andreas Kiel]

Drazen,

No monitor will look like the other – even if from the same vendor and is same type.
With high end monitors you will get some calibration tools and a a better production selection of the actual panel.
The Dell ones are some kind of “middle class” monitors which may look with some luck pretty much the same.
In any case you have to do some color calibration to match the monitors.
You can use the Apple tools to do it manually – if you have good color sensitive eyes. Better is to buy a professional calibration set which will do this stuff for you.
To have a more or less reliable color you should do the calibration every other month.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Drazen Stader]

Andreas hi

I realize that is the difficult to completely match two monitors….but when you buy 2 same monitors from the same vendor the least you can expect is that 2 monitors will match for at least 95percent in lumina chroma values. What I got was far from it…i had an apple sign on both…on one monitor the white was white and on the other one it looked more of a lemon…for me this is just unaccepetable and erases the meaning of buying same monitors….and I dont see the purpose of trying to fix it with extensive calibration something that was supposed to be same from the get go or at least very close….

drazen

[Walter Biscardi]

[drazen Stader] “.and I dont see the purpose of trying to fix it with extensive calibration something that was supposed to be same from the get go or at least very close…. “

All monitors have to be calibrated no matter if they are the exact same model or not. No two monitors ever come out of the box perfectly the same.

It’s up to you to calibrate them. Those monitors are quite easy to calibrate, though using the white Apple logos screen is certainly not the way to do it. The proper way would be to turn them on and wait about 30 minutes before doing any calibration. Then set them.

Even there, for the first 30 minutes of use, those monitors will most likely not match when you turn them on.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!

[David Roth weiss]

Drazen,

Don’t listen to them. If they haven’t seen a bad Dell 2408 in action they can’t begin to know what you and I have both encountered.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Andreas Kiel]

David, Drazen,

I didn’t say that I’ve not seen a bad 2408 – I’ve seen too many.
And so I agree it’s a good idea to send them back as often as you can.

Drazen:
You did not mention what model of the 2408 you got, the more expensive 2408WFP or the consumer 2408. The consumer 2408 is a cheap model, there is no real quality control on those panels. Those consumer models in many cases do have even color differences over the screen like a blurred checker board.
The more professional 2408WFP does have a better quality control and the color differences over the screen are way less, though they still tend to have a color shift from left to right.
It’s always difficult to say where your monitor comes from. Dell as all the other big players do produce their monitors in different countries all over the world by different companies. So the same model may come from different countries and companies – even though all are Dell branded.
You won’t see this happen with the “upper middle class” monitors from HP or Quatto. They do a fine selection of the actual panels they use which will result a pretty good match – and they deliver tools to make the match perfect. But you have to pay 3000 bugs or more.
And as Walter said the calibaration is up to you. And you should do it.

I know what I’m talking about. I got many 2408WFP and Dell confirmed that they not able to make them as good as 2407WFP.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Drazen Stader]

Andreas hi,

I have themore expensive 2408WFP and it still aint working as it supposed to.

drazen

[Drazen Stader]

HI everyone

every story should have a closing chapter and here one for this story. After insisting that I need to have two indentical dell 2408 monitors, I had my yellowish monitor be changed for 3 times around. Only on the third try my mission was accomplished…I now have two identical 2408 monitor that completely match each other the way they should of have been matched since the day I bought them. David thanks very much for the constructive input it really helped me when trying to get a new proper one instead of the yellowish tinted one…

best regards

Drazen

drazen