What Colour / Screen Settings Do You Use On Your Xl2420t / Xl2720t?

Visual Hudson · April 30, 2013

So after you guys helping me to pick my new monitor, my XL2720T arrived yesterday. It's awesome, & ridiculously huge in comparison to my old monitor, but [as everyone says] out of the box the colours were noticably "off" a little. I spent a little while tweaking some of the settings, trying to use some online screen calibrators & stuff, but without a real spectrophotometer or whatever they're actually called, I'm never going to get it perfect. Not only that, but I don't really know what I'm messing with when I'm changing things like Sharpness, Gamma, Hue, etc etc. So, I was wondering what sorts of settings do you guys use for your monitors? Maybe do you use the different profiles for different settings, like one for games, one for movies, one for something else?

Also, is it just my monitor, or is it normal that it appears I'm stuck in Lightboost mode even though I'm not using nVidia 3D? I'm not really complaining, because it does make the screen brighter. However, I'm not able to change many of the screen settings currently. I'm sure I have read / heard about this problem whilst doing research on these monitors, but I'm not 100% sure. I think they said the fix was to restart the computer, but I shouldn't have to do that every time I come out of 3D? Though, I suppose once I've got a good set of settings, it won't really matter whether I'm in Lightboost or not. Right? It's not like continuously running in Lightboost would have a detrimental effect on the screen, would it?

GoodBytes · April 30, 2013

You have to remember that TN panel are limited in color reproduction.

Also, you really need a color calibrator. You want a color calibrator that support your monitor, and a monitor that support DDC/CI protocol, for the calibrator to be able to adjust for you the monitor settings.

That is, if you want color accuracy.

If you want the monitor to just look ok... you just need to continue to play with settings. It will take time.

What I recommend is to NOT use software to adjust your colors. Doing so, creates banding, and your gradients will look wrong and in steps, making viewing pictures like the sky and stuff, look like your monitor is missing colors. It's fine for fine adjustement as you will not notice the banding that much as it will be little, but it's best to use the monitor on screen menu to adjust them.

I dont' have the monitor, so I can't help you out, just informing you about the above.

Visual Hudson · April 30, 2013

Oh yeah, I'm not expecting uber amazing colours. I know it's never going to be to the level of IPS or PLS or whatever, but it's certainly wasn't right out of the box. After my own tweaks, as I think I said, it is alot better. Not quite perfect, maybe, but definitely better. And it's not like I'm even comparing it to IPS or anything; I've never [knowingly] in-person seen one of those screens, so I'm just kinda going from other TN panels.

And yeah, I'm not adjusting any of the colours or whatever using software, or Windows software, or even nVidia Control Panel. Any changes I'm making are directly through the screen's OSD. What I meant was, was that I was using those websites that show you the patterns & stuff, & you have to adjust your screen settings accordingly. That's what I was trying to use.