Dell XPS 15 w/ 4K screen. Adding second monitor questions . . . UPDATE

[Rand47]

OK,

For those of you who may remember the old "Our Gang" comedy serials... all I can say is that, "I don't want to show my igorance to no'body…."  But here goes, anyway..... 

I have a nice shiny new Dell XPS 15 w/ 4K screen that I've calibrated successfully using Dell's profiling software, and my i1 Display Pro.

I bought a nice little BenQ 240, 24" wide gamut monitor for "taking on the road" with me for reviewing and some preliminary editing, etc.  The BenQ has its own "Pallete Master" profiling software.  When I went to use it, it said it needed the BenQ drivers installed first.

Here's my ignorant question:  If I install the BenQ device drivers on my XPS, is there any chance it would/could mess up the 4K Dell display?  I know ZIPPO about how such things actually work in computer-land.

Any insight would be a great help.

By the way, BenQ's factory AdobeRGB profile looks pretty good, but I'd still like to calibrate it myself.  It can store 3 user profiles in the monitor.

Thanks,
Rand

[nemophoto]

The short answer is "Yes", it will screw up your calibration of your XPS. (BTW, I have the XPS15 2-in-1 and love the 4k display.)

Now the long answer. to calibrate both, you must use a third party calibration software such as i1 or Datacolor Spyder, etc. (There are a few others on the market.) This is because each of your devices is using it's own custom calibration software and won't play nice with other hardware. Third party doesn't care. I have used i1, Dell's profiling and SpyderCal on my laptop. I found the results least good on the Dell software, so disabled that. Currently, I'm using the Datacolor because I felt I got slightly weird results with the i1 Profiler. Anyway, you want to use the i1 software for both displays and ignore the Dell and BenQ software (disable).

[Rand47]

Nemo,

Thanks!

Rand

[Rand47]

UPDATE:

Since the BenQ SW 240 writes it’s calibration profiles directly to the monitor, (via USB cable from computer to monitor in addition to being driven via HDMI or DisplayPort) one can, indeed, calibrate/profile it using BenQ’s Palette Master software w/o impacting the Dell XPS’s calibration for its 4K screen, via its own calibration software.

The BenQ SW 240 (and I suspect other models) have a “hot key” button that can have up to 3 custom profiles stored “in the monitor” that are hot switchable. 

Just FYI for anyone in a similar situation.  I normally edit on a desktop + NEC PA monitor, so was completely unfamiliar with portable solutions of laptop + external monitor and calibration norms/issues.  I’m setting up a traveling system which led to the need to figure this out.  Also I’ll mention that while the little BenQ certainly “isn’t” my NEC PA302 w/ SVII - it’s not a bad little wide gamut monitor and calibrates nicely.  As a drag-around solution it is SO MUCH BETTER than having only the laptop’s sparse real estate available for editing.   With LR you can have the image being edited on the monitor and then expand the develop module panel width as large (granular) as you’d like on the laptop screen.  With Photoshop, I have all the tools on the laptop screen w/ the image on the BenQ.  Most likely old news to many of you, but thought it worth posting for some who may, like me, be a real neophyte in this arena.  I purchased this carrying case for the monitor:  https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JW42GGC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



The BenQ’s hood and stand detach quite easily, so the screen itself fits nicely in this case for travel.

Rand