# Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde - the Apple Cinema 27"



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Grabbed some 27" Cinema displays that clients wanted and have been playing with one on the desktop since my own Dell 27" went out as a pair for a whole lotta workspace for a client.

First off the Cinema is a lovely monitor visually and in a dark room is a very sweet experience. Images are vivid and text easy to read tho many including myself will pull the monitor in closer with the high dot pitch ( effectively a 30" tucked into a 27" space - Dell is the same )










I had briefly played with one hooked up to my laptop and on a stand beside the bed - having 5 million pixels ( including lappie ) available while lounging in bed giving the sciatica a rest is a treat.
Movies and photos jump out big time.
The hook up to a laptop which is a primary target for this screen is exceptionally elegant..tho the short cable has some limits - especially with a tower.
It's easy to forget you actually have to plug it into the wall as the fat cable looks to supply power as well. One of the staff trying one with his video rig was scratching his head today wondering how to turn it on.

The built in charger for the laptop is nicely done and the whole rig has sex appeal for the power portable user......big real estate when in the office with an elegant look - 2 seconds to grab the portable and run.

For the MacMini user it adds Eyesite tho one wonders about the sense of this with a MacMini when the 27" iMac is faster and more elegant.

The Dell u2711 looks downright dowdy in comparison tho the "industrial" look has some appeal.



















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Precise, Industry-Standard Color Right Out of the Box

Click to expand...

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> PremierColor technology allows the Dell U2711 Monitor to deliver reliable, true-to-life color without the need for extensive calibration.
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But - when the rubber meets the road for colour work...and for ergonomics the Dell is really the better choice for the design professional in my view tho many may choose the Apple.

Why the title??

When the daylight comes the glossy screen on the Apple is a reflection magnet even tho the very powerful backlight over powers much of the glare.
In addition there is no way to turn off the monitor power - only sleep it tho it will go down pretty far with the brightness controls.

Both these monitors to a degree try to be all things to all people.

The Apple far and away has consumer appeal in looks and such as gaming and home theatre application. Even for pro video editors ( who like dark rooms anyway ) the Apple is vivid and impressive.

The more expensive Dell tho is the winner in color control with a serious set of controls and presets and the "must have" for many designers and others like myself that want a matte screen.
The Dell also has a slew of inputs - the Dell may not quite be up to an NEC 90 series, Eizo or LaCie but certainly treads in their turf while offering the non- pro user a very solid set of performance parameters and super deep blacks which I value enormously.

$1249 is retail in my view perhaps too much against the Apple. Getting down as low as $899 and $999 it's a very viable choice for those that don't like the glare.

Apple seems in conflict with itself - calling the matte anti-glare - implying glare IS an issue.
Then marketing the non-matte as "glossy".....

Pro clients with few exceptions have opted for the anti-glare portables.

One wished a similar choice in desktop monitor from Apple.

Apple seems conflicted as to the colour pro market....sitting between consumer glitter and glitz and pro feature set.

For the colour and design Pro in my view Dell is the better choice.
Video and web may like the vibrancy of the glossy Apple. Some of course like the integrated Apple brand to impress their clients and the Cinema delivers eye candy even when off.

Ergonomics - the lack of height adjustment on the Apple is just plain wrong. All the other pro monitors offer superb height control including the Dell so you can drop it to just above the desktop and despite it's 4 million pixels - the monitor is not overwhelming and you can look down into the screen . Much easier on the neck.

The Apple is in your face and you are pretty much forced to tilt your neck back to read the top of the screen and there is no looking over it for most people.

At night, in a dark room.....the Apple is a thriller....windows and light and the glare is annoying...gaming would be very immersive.

The Dell is very vibrant but not as "jump out" as the Apple but in the day is superb.
The extra controls, colour depth and inputs makes it far more versatile. It is VERY bright and has to be taken down into the 10-15% range in a dark room. In a bright room that extra range is very welcome.

With a laptop tho....the Apple 27 rules for sheer elegance and ease of use.
The Dell tho can plug in via a single MiniDisplay cable...in some ways even easier.

Interested in hearing others choices, picks and pans and why.


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## Guest (Dec 23, 2010)

> One wished a similar choice in desktop monitor from Apple.


:clap: Anti-glare seems a no-brainer to me. Maybe it's a "green" issue, but they do it on their 17" MBP's ...

About the only thing that Apple has left in their lineups for pro hardware is the mac pro and the higher end MBP's at the end of the day. Dropping X-Serve's in favour of Mac Mini servers tells the story of where our market is going.

I have to say that now that I have a NEC 90 series on my desk it's hard to look back to anything Apple is offering currently.


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## Paul82 (Sep 19, 2007)

For me glare is totally not an issue, I much prefer the glossy. But then my primary use is at home and has a home theater where it is drop dead gorgeous.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

No question for home theatre it is stunning - as long as it's dark.
I was watching the travel photos on it last night in screen saver mode...very nice across the room while I was reading....vivid

The NEC 2490 beside it tho had a different "stunning" aspect.....and once you get hooked on a 12 bit it is hard to look at anything else...plus no ambient light issues.

For instance working right now- the window behind me shows up in the corner of my eye on the Apple in detail - like the mirror it is, which makes it distracting where the NEC diffuses any light so it's not noticeable - my guess is you just can't have it both ways


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## boukman2 (Apr 6, 2009)

just got a 27" imac, so my choice is made... but when i was comparing it to the dell (not exactly the same, since the dell doesn't come with a computer...) was that the apple screen has LED lighting, which i assumed would be more stable over time. not a deal breaker probably, but i am wondering if this is true?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

There is a lot of controversy in the colour community about LED back lighting....

some covered here

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> The latest offering in the U-series is the U2711, a 27" beauty sporting extremely impressive features. For starters, it has an IPS panel, but this isn't your granddad's IPS panel. The U2711 has an extremely high resolution 2560x1440 panel - similar to the panel that's used in the Apple 27" iMac. Notice that we highlighted the word similar? That's because the two panels aren't identical; the glass might be the same, but there are definitely differences.
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> For one, Apple uses LED backlighting whereas the U2711 sticks with CCFL technology. But isn't CCFL worse? That depends on what you're after; the iMac 27 offers a 72% color gamut while the U2711 has a 102% color gamut (based on the CIE 1931 standard). Using RGB LEDs, it would be possible to get a similarly high color gamut, but our experience with RGB LEDs to date is that they cost more and consume more power than regular LEDs, so we can understand Dell's interest in sticking with the "older" technology. (We've only seen RGB LEDs in a few laptops so far, and as one example it's a $175 upgrade on the Dell Studio XPS 16 compared to a regular white LED display.)
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Dell UltraSharp U2711: Quality has a Price - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

From the same article this is a issue I've had trouble getting across to clients with the high dpi of the new screens...



> Third, there's the issue of dot pitch. I personally use a 30" LCD at the native 2560x1600 resolution. That gives the display a dot pitch of 0.251mm. You know what? It's too small for me when I'm working with text, so I ended up setting the Windows DPI to 120 instead of the default 96. That works well for some applications, but there are a few oddities. More to the point, even at 120 DPI I still feel a lot of text is too small, so I end up running Word and my web browser with 125% magnification a lot of the time. On the other hand, working with images is great with the high resolution - there's no beating Photoshop on a 30" LCD in my view (unless you have two 30" displays….) As you can imagine, if a 30" LCD with a .251mm dot pitch can strain my eyes, the U2711 with its .233mm pitch can be even worse. If you've got great eyes, you'll love the U2711; if you're like me and have less than perfect eyesight, you'll probably need to run at a lower resolution (or with magnification).


They've been falling for the crisp image without realizing the implications for text. Apple needs to address that in Lion.

We've found the Dell 24" backlit very nice for text and well priced.

Dell also has address the cost effect iSPS field with a 24 well below the competition..
We were running out of NEC refurbs in the sub $500 range so this came as a welcome addition.

The NEC 2490 dropped to $749 which is brilliant price for a 12 bit very accurate screen.
MacMini with 8 gigs and that screen comes wel under $2k for sterling print and intermediate photo work.
Even sneaks the MacBook Pro 2.4 with the NEC 24 into $2k.
That's even accessible for the serious amateur.

They've truly never seen their photos.

With the high capture detail of the modern digital camera's, it's nice to be able to get affordable great colour to view them.....pro or pro-sumer.

Choice is good


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## Dennis Nedry (Sep 20, 2007)

[deleted]


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

15" Hirez antiglare is THE hot ticket for pro clients for us - both the 2.4 and 2.66.
Apple effectively revived a moribund category by offering 36% more workspace on the 15" platform with a modestly priced anti-glare.

I truly wish there was an AG for the 13" MPB.


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## jimbotelecom (May 29, 2009)

I'm using a 24" cinema display that I bought refurbed. I love it. I'd consider the 27" when it hits the refurb store. 

One question I've had for a while - is it possible to have a dual monitor set up with a 27" iMac and a 27" cinema display?

Great review Doc. 

Yeah the cables are too short. I love using it in a dark room. I'm not a pro user and these cinema displays suit my needs nicely and they're easy to resell too.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yeah - you can use both AFAIK. They are sweet and for pro-sumers the I arrived "status symbol"
I'm running both the 27 ACD and will set up the 27" Dell ( my new one arrived today ) and see side by each.

The down side is that short cable making it awkward to swing the ADC away from window reflections.

I'll advise others as my friend/associate discovered.....you'll likely want to pull any of the 27"s in closer to you.

This is a useful calculator I use to explain the differences to clients ( it is an ongoing battle to explain that physically larger may not be easier to read. )

DPI Calculator / PPI Calculator

So aging eyes used to a 20" Cinema at 99 dpi may have to adjust a bit on the 109 for the 27" and a wopping 130 on the 17" MacBook Pro....only topped by the 11" MacBook Air at 135.

Crisp photos....pretty small print. of course the iPhone 4 is at 330 :yikes:

Client tonight opted for the 27" ADC with 15.4 hi-rez matte...his own holiday treat. That combo is REALLY slick.
Funny our pro clients are using that little 100% write off to justify some pretty big treats 

•••

There is some good stuff here on both 27"

Apple 27-inch LED Cinema Display Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

and a longer review of the U2711

Dell UltraSharp U2711: Quality has a Price - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News


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## Dennis Nedry (Sep 20, 2007)

[deleted]


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Well even the mattes benefit from getting direct sun away from them and this time of year it's low and in windows.
Not all live in caves 

Brutal on the Apple, just tolerable on the NEC.

Apple needs a longer cable for a variety of reasons.


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## boukman2 (Apr 6, 2009)

*reviews*

thanks for the review links. learned a lot about displays! i shot a couple of films last year on a HD camera with really terrible metering (panasonic P2, stay away from it...). i kept looking at the images on different computers and tvs and began to realize how different all the screens were. the two reviews have the best information i have read about how screens differ. had a brief moment of panic when i read the first review describing the better gamut of the dell, but was relieved to see that it mostly applies to high end imaging and that to get the max you actually need specialized software... phew... (moral should be: don't read reviews after you buy things! he he...)
but to continue my learning curve... in one review he mentions that his apple 30" with CCFL has been changing colours as it aged (one reason i liked the apple LED source). but is this a big problem (not for me clearly, just thinking) and at what point does calibration become obligatory, and at how is the lifespan for CCFL? i assume they become unusable at some point?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

All monitors will age and so will LEDs tho perhaps in different manner. Some high end screens actually took that into account ( don't ask me how - it's been a while ).

We generally feel 3 years is life for professional use on a LCD but I can't back that up with a concrete assessment.
As the tech progresses the older screens dim and go off their colour balance.

Good info here

Backlight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Snip



> There are several challenges with LED backlights. Good uniformity is harder to achieve, especially as the LEDs age, with each LED possibly aging at a different rate. Also, the use of three separate light sources for red, green, and blue means that the white point of the display can move as the LEDs age at different rates. Aging also occurs with White LEDs, with changes of several 100K being recorded. White LEDs also suffer from blue shifts at higher temperatures varying from 3141K to 3222K for 10°C to 80°C respectively.[2] Power efficiency also can be a challenge. First generation implementations could use the same or more power as their CCFL counterparts, though it is possible for an LED display to be more power efficient.[citation needed] In 2010, current generation LED displays can have significant power consumption advantages. For example, the non-LED version of the 24" Benq G2420HBD[3] consumer display has a 49W consumption compared to the 24W of the LED version of the same display (G2420HBDL[4]).


There is good reason NEC ranks in the top range for colour

there is a paper here describing their technology

www.necdisplay.com/medical/X-LightPaper_0505.pdf

tho it is dated - it as good info.

here is a 2008 review

snip



> NEC has a ton of technology built into the display to keep this monitor looking great over the years, including X-Light Pro, which uses an internal backlight sensor to monitor and correct light output over the life of the display. Other interesting features include its programmable Look Up Table. Though the monitor can display 16.7 million colors (8 bits), it boasts a 12-bit Look Up Table that gives the NEC a palette of 68.5 billion colors.


Review: NEC MultiSync 3090WQXi - PCWorld

Gives you a hint why Mark up above is now hooked ( as I am ) on the NEC 90 series.....there is a ton of colour tech under that rather industrial looking screen.


> NEC has a ton of technology built into the display to keep this monitor looking great over the years, including X-Light Pro, which uses an internal backlight sensor to monitor and correct light output over the life of the display. Other interesting features include its programmable Look Up Table. Though the monitor can display 16.7 million colors (8 bits), it boasts a 12-bit Look Up Table that gives the NEC a palette of 68.5 billion colors.


Review: NEC MultiSync 3090WQXi - PCWorld

There is a lot of controversy over LED versus CCFL in the colour community. I'd not be too concerned in your circumstances....the ADC has high head room for brightness as does the Dell.
The missing part for Apple is any meaningful colour controls on the monitor itself.

Maybe one of the colour pros can comment on Apple's approach to calibration.


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