Datacolor Spyder4Elite S4EL100 Colorimeter for Display Calibration

I calibrate my monitor quite often to ensure great quality and consistent colors between pictures. In the past I used a competing brand simply because at that time that brand was less expensive and I thought.. well why not! This was several years ago. When the Spider 4 Elite came out, I decided to replace my other brand for a couple of reasons. 1) Way easier to use and 2) it came with a stand to stand next to my monitor at a very easy reach. Now, to elaborate on some of these that were to me important:1) Easier to use: it is really easy to use. As the other brand, the Spider 4 Elite also comes with an ambient light measure. The difference however is that the other brand measures it and tells you whereas the Spider 4 Elite measures, tells you, AND adjusts the monitor accordingly. I have tested this such that I had my shades pulled open and closed and anywhere in between where I thought the light was to my liking. The Spider 4 Elite told me that forget about opening the shades because the light is out of control! I loved that! Now I know precisely where to keep my shades to be comfortable for me to see my keyboard without interfering with my monitor! LOVE that!2) The stand... you'd think "no big deal" but yes, it is! The other brand had to sit either on top of the monitor--which made it fall on several occasions--or just lay on the top of my computer desk, in which case it often had things end up on it or knocking it off the desk all together. The Spider 4 Elite comes with its own stand, which places the measuring unit vertically suspended and out of the way but next to the monitor, making it very easy to attach to the monitor and re-calibrate in one second. It also has a blue flashing light letting you know that it is "alive" and is monitoring your ambient light, making adjustments to your monitor such that even if your ambient light changes (within limit), the calibration "follows" to set your monitor brighter or dimmer in response to what light you have in your office. This is great for ongoing minor adjustments so I can keep on working and have consistent results even with some changes in my room light.And although I did not list a 3rd point earlier, I must add a 3rd: the price has come down to the point where I find the Spider 4 Elite a better deal given the other 2 points I just listed. It can also calibrate my printer, which I have not yet done since I normally send my work to a professional printing lab rather than printing at home.

I calibrated 2 screens using Spyder 4 colorimeter and datacolor provided software, then I did something I won't do normally: I returned everything!First I calibrated my high gamut ASUS PA279Q 27" set in standard mode, result was rather good which means that calibration removed a slight green cast and whites were neutral maybe slightly on the warm side (expected). Profiling result was quite good too when in Photoshop, correcting the wide gamut over saturation. To be honest though, the ASUS provided factory profile was OK too besides the minimal green cast (which I could have corrected by hand).So encouraged by this first result, not spectacular but at least showing some progress, I then calibrated my Surface Pro first generation (Samsung?) display. To put this in context one can download a couple profiles for the Surface Pro from the Internet made with the X-Rite instrument which are just fine. So what was my surprise when my screen looked like being transported on the Planet Mars when using the Spyder 4. I tried all the spectral profiles provided by Datacolor for LED screen technologies... with the same horrible result: a strong and totally unacceptable red cast.I then installed Argyll software with DispCalGUI to see if there was any improvement. To my surprise (again) the results were very similar (reddish). This proves in my opinion the Spyder 4 is very consistent but not capable of dealing accurately with some screens color spectrum. It was also apparent in DispCal GUI that the red channel - when doing the white point - was measured as very dark explaining the subsequent red boost in the calibration LUT curves.OK so maybe I got a defective instrument or maybe I made a mistake. Or maybe the technology of Spyder 4 needs some refreshing. One of the reasons I bought Spyder 4 was the 7 filters that are advertised. After looking further, I read their patent and realized that they use edge filters with multiple sensors, so it not a direct measure. Maybe the reconstruction of the CIE filter curves is not so good with production units, maybe the provided profiles are outdated. I don't know really what is going on but no one should have to guess or go though such complications!

I purchased the Spyder4Elite with the main purpose of calibrating a triple monitor setup (1x BenQ XL2420TX and 2x BenQ XL2420T) via NVIDIA Surround on Windows 7 Ultimate x64. The calibration process went fairly smoothly - with just a couple hiccups with buggy software (this software, although it works, is pretty much a piece of crap - you can tell color calibration is their game, not software - it crashes fairly frequently) and a calibration unit that you pretty much have to hold up the entire time. The difference is night and day. And I feel it is worth the cost, especially because I can calibrate my other computers (2013 11" Apple MacBook Air for one - not as dramatic of a difference after calibration, but still improved).The software only asked me to adjust the brightness on my monitor - once that was done, I adjusted the two flanking monitors to the same number and the software did the rest (using Windows color profiles to set the color).None of the hiccups were big enough to warrant the knocking off of a star. It is a bit expensive, but I feel the capability to use this on multiple setups makes it OK. In fact, I'm traveling with it this weekend to calibrate a friends monitor. I suppose if you were an enterprising individual, you could charge some bucks for the service and pay back the cost of the unit. Heh.