I just received my PA271w with Spectraview hardware/software. It replaces my last, trusty Sony Artisan. It's connected to a MacPro with a dedicated nVidia GeForce GT 120 card via DVI (10-bit display isn't ready for prime time on yet).
My initial reaction is positive. It produces a very clear image. The push-button settings for colorspaces is too easy, making it hard for me to believe that it's accurate.
Photographs of vividly colored objects finally get their color appropriately crushed when soft-proofing. What a relief as most of my work ends up in CMYK. Before, with the Artisan, I'd see the difference but the color/tonal change wasn't nearly as dramatic as it should have been.
As an excuse to sip a few beers, I used both my Spyder 3 and the modified i1 puck that came with the monitor for a little fun. The difference is very apparent. The profile created by the Spyder produces a warmer gray than that of the i1 puck. Both color plots seem to be about the same area/volume. See attached. The colored area is the profile, the yellow triangle is the Adobe 1998 colorspace. The "x" in the middle is the white point, and in both cases they mate perfectly with the white point of Adobe '98 RGB. The Spectraview software is one of the nicest profiling programs I've used.
While flipping through several dozen images, shadow detail and highlight separation seem very nice. Contrast is definitely higher than the Artisan. The jury's still out until I get a few projects proofed by clients' prepress departments, and I see the stuff in print, but so far I'm liking this monitor package.