We finished measuring a range of monitors with over 60 different sensors. A synopsis is
here on LuLa while the full article is
on our site. As part of this exercise, we looked at 10 i1-Pro units. Four were UV-cut, six were not. There was no statistically significant difference between them in terms of emissive measurements. That is what you would expect, since the UV-cut model adds a yellow filter in front of the measurement lamp to cut the UV component of the light.
On the question of which version to buy for printer profiling, it depends on the software you use. Neither Monaco Profiler nor i1Profiler have software-based optical brightener algorithms for general measurements. i1Profiler has the OBC module, but this only works with the i1iSis. Profiles made from many papers with high levels of optical brighteners using either i1Profiler or Monaco can exhibit yellow casts to highlight areas where the software attempts to compensate for the blue paper tint read by the spectro. For either of these products, your best bet is to use the UV-cut i1.
Now, if you use either iMatch, ProfileMaker, BasICColor Print, Argyll, or any other profiling software that has fluorescent brightener compensation algorithms, I would opt for the normal, no-cut version of i1. All these products usually do a good job of detecting and compensating for optical brighteners. I do not understand why X-Rite dropped these algorithms from i1Profiler. Perhaps they felt the iSis provided the correct way of handling UV - and it does - and did not want to settle for an approximation that only worked 95+% of the time.
Another problem that crops up occasionally with the UV-cut i1-Pro is that X-Rite's software reports measurement values for wavelengths below 400nm. Who knows where these readings come from. The lamp filter effectively cuts off all light emission below 400nm. Nevertheless, a CGATS measurement file contains readings at 380 and 390nm. Most of the time these values are a fairly flat line from 400nm and down. Occasionally, however, you see huge spikes in the 380 or 390nm readings. This behavior appears with most legacy GMB instruments - files from a UV-cut icColor show the same thing. If the short-wavelength readings are sufficiently high, the profiling software happily introduces a color cast to highlight areas.
Making matters worse, this behavior is unpredictable. The instrument is measuring sensor noise at these wavelengths and the data files contain the results of X-Rite's extrapolation algorithms. Why X-Rite does not cut all data below 400nm for UV-cut instruments I can't say. I also do not know if this problem continues to i1Profiler. Measurement data files still show bogus short-wavelength readings but I do not know if the software ignores these data.