I used to work with the apple cinema 30 some time ago, and I have the Dell 27 now too, I also bought a Nec multisync 26 that I use in another location (don’t remember the exact model now, but it is not the scientific oriented model, but the design/photograph one).
Avoid the ‘old’ fluorescent bluish backlight like the apple cinema (unless they upgraded their models, dunno). Whenever you get to try the newer backlights that reproduce 95% of the AdobeRGB color spectrum, you may develop fluorescent photophobia and leave your expensive 30 inches monitor behind, it feels like an omnipresent invasive shadow when not in use.
There are 3-5 brands that offer 30 inches, most of them with this new backlight (don’t remember the name of the backlight technology, but if it reads something like 95% of the AdobeRGB color reproduction or similar, is that one, compared with 75-80%).
Samsung, NEC (high quality), Dell too I think, maybe EIZO, have 30" models.
Although relative with your personal eye fitness, I’ve felt that unless you are specifically working on a big and complex project, a 30" inches screen may produce a hunchback over time, or at least it won’t let you completely relax your back and head on the chair, draining your resistance to those long fruitful touch sessions. Touch font size is pixel based (not DATs though) and probably not very rescalable like in Houdini (maybe yes, not sure). The searching for ops in the tab menu will require an effort for example.
Yes, 30" is impressive and delivers a great working space with higher res, but in the current phase of touch exploration where our projects are still young and medium-sized, I would recommend the bigger dot pitch of the 27-26†models, is more central oriented, comfortable, and dynamic at the end. 30†was for sure the best choice for touch 17 or Houdini where each component type required a different desktop panel, but with 0xx you stay more in the center of the screen.
Another advantage of the 1920x1200 res is the direct compatibility with those laptops where touch runs at its best. Keep in mind that you will be riding on the noticeable slower frame rate lane of the road, a space-time conflict I guess. We might postpone the higher resolution options until their dot pitch grows a little bigger, and until computers speed up to cope with the frame rate loss, more GPU mem will help too, probably in 1.x years.
The NEC is in theory a very high quality option (26â€), you might just want to spend more hours with touch, but also hypnotize you and make you feel that your projects look great all the time. Although is better than the Dell 27â€, it’s much more expensive and doesn’t win over Dell in every aspect. It has some internal post filter of the image that is a little bit noticeable, it would be better not to feel its presence. It also has a very little bit smaller dot pitch that might make the difference on whether you can lay back and work with your feet crossed on top of the desk or not.
The Dell 27†has an excellent picture quality and feels extremely comfortable and dynamic to work with. The smaller res might protect our projects from entropy and chaos, “keep it simple†as greg usually remind us.
There are various brands offering 27†I think. I think there was a great comparison and reviews of ‘almost’ every 27†models in Tom’s Hardware web page (or where they 30� again, I don’t remember exactly).
Yah, not a very compact post of mine but basically, now that I’ve switched into the higher-dot-pitch-matrix, I find hard to imagine life without olive oil.
By the way, did you bought one already?
felix