Which calibration tool?

[robdickinson]

I know, asked a million times already.

Looks like a toss up between the Spyder pro 5 in SpyderStudio form for monitor, printer and on the go WB or 'something' xrite.

Its hard to know what xrite I want/need.

I dont really need printer calibration but would like the ability.

I have a dell u2711 monitor and a viewsonic tn panel 22" secondary i dont really care about.


The reason I am asking now is I am adding a Dell XPS 15 with the 4k screen that really needs to be calibrated for on the road processing

Budget? flexible but lets keep it realistinc, no $1k+ options! The spyderStudio is $299 at B&H.

Cheers!

[digitaldog]

If you don't really need printer profiles, you can spend less and get an instrument better suited for the display. So i1Display-Pro IMHO.

[robdickinson]

I currently get my paid prints done externally

I have a Canon pixma pro 1 , cant see me getting anything bigger, and the prints look fine so far.

I could borrow some tools from locals had plenty of offers but it seems like I should get my own !

[Some Guy]

I have a couple of Spyders but never that impressed with them for what they do.  I got into some go-round with Datacolor over them when the last one wanted to do some auto-update to the latest version than the CD I was loading and I allowed that.  Then it would not work for a week until they issued me a new serial number since the one on the disk I had wasn't compatible with the new downloaded update.  (Shade of Windows 8.0 to 8.1 too!).

So I bought a ColorMunki Photo.  And now I see they added the ColorChecker Mini to the box and you can profile your camera now too, as well as a monitor, projector, and printer too.  On sale for $409 from B&H too:  http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/550833-REG/X_Rite_CMUNPH_ColorMunki_Photo_Color_Management.html

I have their expensive i1 PhotoPro2 (~$1,500 back then, and now down to $1,247 I see.) and the ColorMunki is pretty close in gamut to it, and the Munki is faster, more fun, and easier to use too.

Their i1 DisplayPro will do tablets and some phones with an app that the above won't do since it takes the battery juice of the device to run it off the device's USB cable.  The Munki takes more juice to run so it won't work for those handhelds.  Trade off is it won't do printers or camera calibration.

SG