I realize this topic has been beat to death in this forum, but I'm curious about the response from non-professional advanced amateurs. I have a Lacie 19" Electron Blue that is on it's way out and I have no choice but to upgrade to an LCD. I have a Revision A Eye-One photo package that automatically profiles my monitor and I get almost perfect monitor to print matches from my Epson 2200 with the profiles I created. All of these are attached to a Apple Dual G5 Tower. I bought all of the above at great discount (Eye-One) or refurbished (Epson, Lacie, Mac) so while I enjoy using professional equipment, I don't always have the latitude to purchase it and sometimes need to wait for newer products to make the price points lower. This is my hobby, and although I'm passionate about it, I do not make money from it nor do I intend to.
Sorry for the preamble, but after pouring through this forum and others, it seems in order for me to match my Lacie I need to get either an Eizo or NEC LCD both going for over a $1,000. I want a 21" monitor so I'm looking at the CE210W or the 2190UXI. I'm toying with the Samsung 214T, Apple Cinema 20" (Government Discount) or Dell 2007FPW which is considerably less at the expense of color accuracy. I know the Eizo and NEC can be hardware calibrated which is a plus and the NEC seems to be the monitor of choice on this forum. My question is what am I really giving up by looking at the lower cost monitors? How much less color accurate are they? Will Eye-One calibration get me 90-95% there with the lower cost solutions? Is there another monitor that I've overlooked?
Thanks in advance for you responses.
--Joel Turner