What qualities are you looking for that you're not getting from Epson and Ilford papers?

It's either Color Management or ColorMunki.



That NEC is an incredibly good monitor.  Many steps beyond the Dell.


I'm not a pro photographer either, but I edit real estate photos for a magazine and color accuracy is important.  Text rendering is also important as I create advertising materials for print.

Roma, perhaps it's just a language thing, but Adam did not "reach" 30 and 50 for Brightness and Contrast.  He PRESET the monitor to these settings BEFORE running the software and he did not touch the Brightness  and Contrast controls again.  I agree with Adam when he says

I still own, use, and love the 2209WA for what it is:  A great value in an ENTRY LEVEL photo editing monitor.  If you're making your living from photography, or plan to, I would think you'd want to invest in more professional equipment.  On another forum I contribute to, I'm always amused by members who list their other equipment-- tens of thousands of dollars/euros in lenses and camera bodies, but edit photos with the cheapest quality monitors.

Yeah...  NEC is introducing several new models (PA series) so I expect to see some special pricing on discontinued models.

A little afterthought inspired by a discussion I read on another forum.  Regarding Contrast settings... when these calibration devices instruct you to set monitor Contrast to 100%, that should should NOT be taken literally.  The INTENT is 100% of the factory default value, which may be 100%, 75%, 50%, or whatever.  On my personal monitor, that setting is 75%, so I keep Contrast at full factory setting-- 75%.  Even 1% higher than this starts to clip highlight tones.

For the money, I don't think there is a better LCD monitor for photo editing.  It calibrates easily, with only minor OSD adjustments needed, with DataColor/Spyder or X-Rite products.  The thing to be aware of is this monitor is an sRGB display, NOT wide gamut.

Honestly, I had full intentions of stepping up to a high end NEC monitor, but I'm facing some unanticipated medical expenses and I'm quite content to continue using the 2209WA.

Yeah... I actually owned and used an iOne Display 2 for a while before I sold it to buy my DTP-94 puck.  All these mainstream monitor calibration packages are very much alike, differing mainly in their GUIs.

Roma--  I agree with Terry...  Set your Brightness to 30%, your Contrast to 50%, than LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!  Forgive me for yelling but I do website tech support for my company and I often have to tell our employees, "Listen to my words and instructions only and not the demonic voices in your head telling you to do something else!"

Only adjust the RGBs as needed to to get "CLOSE TO" 6500k.  Don't try for perfection as the software will take up the slack.  The point of adjusting the RGBs is so that less color correction work is put upon your video card.  The reason I recommend MINIMAL RGB adjustment from the default settings, is that the more you deviate from the factory settings, the more color tones you are throwing away, and the more likelihood of causing "banding" or "posterization" on your display.

I see it more as the device patting itself on the back for doing such a good job for such a low purchase price.

Yeah... And their review of the ColorEyes Display Pro software that I use is flawed.  They omitted the key step of setting the white balance.  I think they are in bed with LaCie BlueEye as they use that software as their reference standard.  It's excellent software but no better then many other software packages available.

I'm in a similar boat... physically challenged and soon to retire on disability income.  Suddenly I've become very frugal.

Raising the RGB gains will only raise your luminance further!  You should only adjust the RGBs (minimally) to white balance and hit a "color temperature" such as 6500k.  Use your Brightness and Contrast controls to achieve a luminance value such as 120cd/m2.  And don't confuse the monitors Brightness setting with a luminance value.

120cd/m2 Luminance should be easy as cake to reach on the Dell U2410.   Read this review:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2410.htm

They used a Brightness setting of 30% and Contrast 50%.

Roma, if the factory default settings for RGB is 50%, you don't want to raise them any higher.  Lowering them slightly to white balance the monitor is acceptable and should not cause any noticeable banding.

Sorry... I just assumed you were using a ColorEdge series monitor.  My bad for assuming.