In terms of measuring color, especially if you end up with a wider gamut display (or an LED) yes. Not as good at measuring darker colors but the tool you’d want if you ever decide to build printer profiles.
Andrew, thank you so much for the response. I really appreciate hearing from an expert in the field.
So the 2010 iMac is LED backlit, which leads me to conclude that the colormunki is more appropriate than the spyder 3.
But in my reading I've stumbled across
this white paper from x-rite which suggests colorimeters are far better for our amateur purposes. X-Rite makes the colormunki too so I can't believe they are just biased toward colorimeters. This author explains the point you raised earlier about measuring darker colors being problematic due to signal-to-noise issues.
I also see
this post on curtpalme.com that goes out of the way to recommend avoiding the spyder 3. I've seen similar reports of spyder 3 inconsistencies elsewhere.
So with the colormunki out, and with the spyder 3 out, I look at the i1display2. And then I come across numerous anecdotes of it not playing nicely with LED displays.
Oy vey. Back to square one: colormunki.
How bad are the shadows with colormunki-generated profiles? Or is this a non-issue in everyday amateur use on narrow-gamut displays?
Thanks again. I'll buy your book, I swear.