Planar PX2611W 26"

My Planar arrived last Friday from Provantage. Being as obsessive compulsive as any of you, I was part of the silent majority that waited patiently for the DoubleSight "lottery" to resolve itself for two months. That is, I feared the dreaded "white glow." I then waited another two months for arrival of the DS 265 W which replaced the DS 263N. Then, when the initial reviews of the DS "W" proved disappointing, I jumped ship and bought the Planar instead. During all that time, I enjoyed the benefit of reading all your posts. Thank you so much! I joined the forum today so I can share with you my experiences with both the retailer and the monitor itself.

Provantage experience. Last week, I ordered it online on Monday morning and received it Friday afternoon. Provantage shipped it from its California warehouse to my home in DC via FedEx. Arrived in good condition. With shipping charges, I paid the same amount discussed by others in recent posts (a total of 820).

Monitor's performance. The Planar I received is simply stunning, as has been said before by many members of this forum. Before reaching that conclusion, however, I spent several hours putting it through the many stages of the Lagom LCD Monitor Test. The result is that I ended up setting brightness at 20%, contrast at 51%, and sharpness at 40% (apparently the neutral position for shapness). I was unable to find any stuck or dead pixels even though I spent about 40 minutes staring at red, green, yellow, white, and black screens (from PhotoShop) and multicolored screens (from Lagom).

White glow not a problem for me. I can see a small amount of the white glow that ToastyX found so offensive on his Planar monitor. On mine, I rarely notice it unless the screen is nearly black. Then I see a bit of glow, particularly when I darken the entire room. But I don't notice it much. And, when room lights are on, the light scattered by the mild matt finish seems more noticeable than the white glow on my particular monitor. Perhaps I am just not sensitive to the glow. In any event, in normal usage I do not notice it or see any other light leakage problems.

Wide gamut color not a problem for me. I am fully persuaded by ToastyX's argument that all SRGB colors must be inaccurate on this monitor because the wide gamut results in a slightly overstated color intensity for each SRGB color value. Hence, every single color value within that space is reproduced incorrectly. At issue, however, is whether such slight inaccuracies are noticeable, much less objectionable, given the less-than-perfect results produced by color calibration -- and given the offsetting advantages of being able to see a green no longer restricted to yellow-green -- and a red no longer restricted to orange-red.

My subjective experience is that the color inaccuracies created by wide gamut usage are not objectionable and (to my 63-year-old eyes) not even noticeable. But, of course, ToastyX is correct that it would be even better to obtain such wonderful greens and reds with a normal gamut monitor that reproduces all of the SRGB color space without the distortions -- if you can find such a monitor in an industry that is embracing wide gamut.

Unfortunately, I cannot address that "color intensity" issue objectively without first color calibrating the monitor. I do not intend to do that because I use this monitor only for gaming and web surfing. For those purposes, its colors appear excellent (to my eyes) after I reduced brightness and contrast to the values cited above. Although all the colors probably are too intense, as ToastyX claims, my subjective experience is that they do not appear that way when the backlight is reduced to a non-scorching level. Perhaps the color intensity is offset, at a lower light level, by the eye's reduced ability to detect color when luminosity is reduced (which is why everything looks grey in moonlight). I don't know.

Yet, as a graphic designer, I can say subjectively that the colors compare favorably with those of the monitor I use at work (an expensive Lacie) and the monitor I use at home -- a Wacom Cintiq 21UX which costs three times what the Planar costs because it has a touch-sensitive screen on which to draw. Hence, I am a happy camper. My only regret with this purchase is that I did not do it four months ago. Being obsessive compulsive, you see, is not without its costs.
 
Downtown, thanks for the review. I'm contemplating purchasing this monitor this weekend and your input is greatly appreciated!
 
What about a refurbished DS263N? Sacrifice a 3 year warranty for $200 in savings. Would it be worth it? They are essentially the same thing after all.
 
Provantage experience for me:

Absolutely horrible, they shipped my returned NEC LCD2690 using FedEx freight, and the package is damaged, which I believe is what's causing the 8 problem pixels I had on the screen when I turned it on.

Guess what? if you need to return your monitor, and if you are lucky to have one of the monitor that comes with their 30 day return policy, you'd have to wait for your money to get returned in like... forever... 20 days passed since I returned the montior as they instruced, I still haven't seen my refund, basically they got my freaking money and they got their monitor back... So careful when you shop there and if there is a problem, it's gonna get solved real slow... Still waitting on my money
 
I ordered from cost central and it got here fast and in great shape.

I'm tagging this thread to come back later and figure out calibration procedures. A quick thanks to Downtown for his Lagom link. I'll try and get to that in the next few days when I can spend more time with the monitor.
 
I have my Planar PX2611 and DS263 side by side and have been very happy with both of them. Got the DoubleSight as an open box from Newegg at a fraction of the cost. It has no dead pixels or any other defects.

IMHO the white glow is really blown out of proportion. If you didnt read this board you wouldnt even know that it existed. The picture quality on these displays is beautiful!!!
 
thanks for the feedback Downtown. Maybe I'll be looking for one of these by the end of the month.
 
Hey great photo's , not quite the picture i wanted though... turn the light on and take pics of the actual monitors on your desk! LOL ... sorry for being picky. just that I havnt seen any pictures of the monitor on someones desk stand alones.
 
Ok so here is my official warning regarding ordering from CDW for this monitor.

* Costs more than it does anywhere else.
* Shipping is not free, like it is for a ton of other places.
* I have been waiting weeks and it is still not here.
* You will not know if they have it in stock unless you call, you can't trust their website.
* It's Wednesday night, I asked them if there was any way that since I have been waiting for a while now for a monitor that was supposedly in stock, if I could receive faster shipping. They replied back, and told me it would be, and I quote:

"To increase the shipping speed on the item will cost twice the current shipping rate"

And now I feel stupid, because I called the CSR I'm dealing with, and told him the only reason I'm keeping my order (EVEN THOUGH their site says the item is available but in actuality it is backordered), is because I had heard they had excellent customer service, and that is the sole reason I kept that order.

....So much for that.

If it doesn't get here by Friday, I'm considering refusing shipment, just to do it. We'll see.

Anyway, great reviews that everyone posted. I actually have decent eyes, so judging by the pictures, that panel is seriously bright. It is also like 1 or 2 clicks above normal colors but that is more than alright. People actually bump up their saturation to do that sort of thing on purpose. Not that I wouldn't prefer normal colors, but from what I was hearing, I was seriously expecting blinding bright neon blues from neutral blues.
 
The CDW retailer problems reported above by Potential and Quantum are not surprising in light of CDW's poor showing at Reseller Ratings. CDW customers gave it an average lifetime rating of only 5.00 on a 10 point scale (119 reviews submitted over three years). Similarly, NextWarehouse was rated only 5.48 (26 reviews) although, on this thread, Vidmar reports having had an excellent experience with them. CDW Canada is not rated because it does not register with Reseller Ratings.

In contrast, the ratings are much higher for the two other retailers that our forum members have used recently to buy this Planar: CoastCentral is 8.95 (235 reviews) and Provantage is 8.54 (536 reviews) when averaged over the past three years. Over the past 6 months, however, Provantage (8.54 from 82 reviewers) exceeded CoastCentral (7.50 from 8 reviewers). When you go to the website, you will find that Reseller Ratings gives you the scores broken down into five different evaluations, e.g., packing quality, delivery, and customer service.
 
Nice pics Solaris. Although as soon as I saw that close up pic of that the Earth, I thought to myself: "Why do the colors look so saturated and pastel like?". The colors look way different than they do on my own monitor. Then I remembered the wide gamut.

Looks like I have no choiced but to plunk down $1100 for the 2490 now.
 
Armatoste said:
Nice pics Solaris. Although as soon as I saw that close up pic of that the Earth, I thought to myself: "Why do the colors look so saturated and pastel like?". The colors look way different than they do on my own monitor. Then I remembered the wide gamut.

Looks like I have no choiced but to plunk down $1100 for the 2490 now.
Click to expand...

The pictures were posted for the white glow problem with no tw-polarizer to show that at direct angles it is not that bad. They were not posted for determining color accuracies.
You would find that looking at the colors in the pictures versus looking at the monitors in person are completely different.
 
so i got my monitor and have been using it for a couple of days. so far it's great. one problem that i am having though is that i am getting these red little dots around dark images on the display. they look like little red sparkles. they move WITH the image if i drag it around the screen. anyone ever see these before? i'm powering the display with the 8800gt in my 8 core mac pro. i'm trying to figure out if this is the display or the video card. i read this... "those are most often referred to as sparkles. The fixes include the following.

Tweaking of a few of the voltages on the Y sustain board. These adjustments are often only a temporary fix.

Replacement of the X and Y sustain boards along with the Logic board.

Finally, if these do not solve the issue you'll have to replace the PDP panel itself. Not cost effective in most instances. "

but i'm not sure if this applies to my display because that was from a plasma tv forum but it sounds exactly like the problem i'm having. any suggestions.

here is a link to a photo i took of my display...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3066/2888551285_bf583f7fe9_b.jpg

it's not specific to one portion of the display either. it can happen top, left, right, bottom, center. and it's usually in the area where darker colors are being displayed on the monitor. i did an LCD tester, solid black, white, red, green, blue and it's not visible there. only on mixed color images, webpages, content
 
If anyone has input on the following gaming question, I would definitely appreciate it:

I'm looking to purchase this monitor but am having a difficult time understanding how well it performs with games. For reference, I'm looking to play Warhammer and Empire:Total War along with FPS' thrown in, as well as Blizzard's new games.

I keep reading that it has 5m/s and 12m/s response times - how good/bad are these? I'm coming from a 2004 laptop so I'm not up-to-date on current rating systems. Is 12 m/s noticeable? (From using others' comps, I think I'm pretty anal about these sorts of things, so I'm hesitant on going through with the purchase)
 
Surferp said:
so i got my monitor and have been using it for a couple of days. so far it's great. one problem that i am having though is that i am getting these red little dots around dark images on the display. they look like little red sparkles. they move WITH the image if i drag it around the screen. anyone ever see these before? i'm powering the display with the 8800gt in my 8 core mac pro. i'm trying to figure out if this is the display or the video card. i read this... "those are most often referred to as sparkles. The fixes include the following.

Tweaking of a few of the voltages on the Y sustain board. These adjustments are often only a temporary fix.

Replacement of the X and Y sustain boards along with the Logic board.

Finally, if these do not solve the issue you'll have to replace the PDP panel itself. Not cost effective in most instances. "

but i'm not sure if this applies to my display because that was from a plasma tv forum but it sounds exactly like the problem i'm having. any suggestions.

here is a link to a photo i took of my display...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3066/2888551285_bf583f7fe9_b.jpg

it's not specific to one portion of the display either. it can happen top, left, right, bottom, center. and it's usually in the area where darker colors are being displayed on the monitor. i did an LCD tester, solid black, white, red, green, blue and it's not visible there. only on mixed color images, webpages, content
Click to expand...

I have not seen anything like that on my PX2611W (8800GTX SLI) and if you still can I would return it or call Planar support first.
 
Thordred said:
If anyone has input on the following gaming question, I would definitely appreciate it:

I'm looking to purchase this monitor but am having a difficult time understanding how well it performs with games. For reference, I'm looking to play Warhammer and Empire:Total War along with FPS' thrown in, as well as Blizzard's new games.

I keep reading that it has 5m/s and 12m/s response times - how good/bad are these? I'm coming from a 2004 laptop so I'm not up-to-date on current rating systems. Is 12 m/s noticeable? (From using others' comps, I think I'm pretty anal about these sorts of things, so I'm hesitant on going through with the purchase)
Click to expand...

AFAIK, 5ms gtg/12ms is fast for an IPS. The NEC 20WMGX2 was 6ms, and the 2490 and 2690 are 8ms gtg/16ms.
 
Thordred said:
...I keep reading that it has 5m/s and 12m/s response times - how good/bad are these? I'm coming from a 2004 laptop so I'm not up-to-date on current rating systems. Is 12 m/s noticeable? (From using others' comps, I think I'm pretty anal about these sorts of things, so I'm hesitant on going through with the purchase)
Click to expand...

For the average gamer you want even notice it. We talking about one frame of lag. This would not effect any of the game types you mentioned except FPS and even then it would only affect a fraction of 1% of the players out there. I don't want to rain on anyone's delusions but even the really good players probably aren't good enough to notice. Most players that think they are elite are just above average.:D

Also it probably makes more sense to adapt, get used to LCDs because they are pretty much the standard now.
 
Luthorcrow said:
For the average gamer you want even notice it. We talking about one frame of lag. This would not effect any of the game types you mentioned except FPS and even then it would only affect a fraction of 1% of the players out there. I don't want to rain on anyone's delusions but even the really good players probably aren't good enough to notice. Most players that think they are elite are just above average.:D

Also it probably makes more sense to adapt, get used to LCDs because they are pretty much the standard now.
Click to expand...

He meant response time, not input lag. ;)
 
So how do I color calibrate this monitor so that it shows colors "correctly"?
Maybe it's not the monitor, but the display settings and gamma correction that needs to be adjusted.

I barely got my Planar PX2611W a few days ago. I am running it on an old nVidia GeForce 6200, which is rather unpleasing to the eye. I connected the Planar monitor to a much better computer at my work for an hour and thought it looked really slick (GeForce 8800 GT). So I know that the monitor is good, but I need to adjust something and I'm not sure what. As one more side note, I'll be upgrading my system as soon as it arrives and going to a Radeon 4870. So who knows how much of this is moot. Maybe this video card just can't handle this monitor very well.

My settings right now for brightness, contrast, and sharpness are 40, 50 and 40. No matter what I set them too, either the white are too gray or it's a little too bright to look at. Colors like reds and yellows do seem just a little too intense.

I've tried the nVidia color correction wizard that comes with these display drivers, but that only made it 100x worse. All the mids and darks turned to black so it looked really wrong.
 
Where in the hell do you plug in the USB cable? My USB cable has 1 square end and 1 flat, standard end. All I see are the flat, standard sized inputs in the monitor, and my computer only has the flat, standard-sized inputs as well. Did it come with the wrong USB cable?
 
kvcrawford said:
Where in the hell do you plug in the USB cable? My USB cable has 1 square end and 1 flat, standard end. All I see are the flat, standard sized inputs in the monitor, and my computer only has the flat, standard-sized inputs as well. Did it come with the wrong USB cable?
Click to expand...
I gotcha covered here.

You plug the square end in the back by the other VGA and DVI inputs. It's underneath with them, and just a little off to the side. It's hard to see because of that back panel that covers up the inputs. You can gently pull off the back panel (I'd start with the bottom edge) and see the inputs better.

The four standard USB inputs you see on the side will work after you plug the main square ended line into the monitor and then from there into a USB port on the main computer. The monitor essentially acts as a hub for USBs once it's hooked up.
 
EW27 said:
AFAIK, 5ms gtg/12ms is fast for an IPS. The NEC 20WMGX2 was 6ms, and the 2490 and 2690 are 8ms gtg/16ms.
Click to expand...
Those values mean nothing. I'm pretty sure the Planar doesn't have overdrive and that the 5 ms is a blatant lie like the 1000:1 contrast ratio.
 
Yoma44 said:
So how do I color calibrate this monitor so that it shows colors "correctly"?
Maybe it's not the monitor, but the display settings and gamma correction that needs to be adjusted.

I barely got my Planar PX2611W a few days ago. I am running it on an old nVidia GeForce 6200, which is rather unpleasing to the eye. I connected the Planar monitor to a much better computer at my work for an hour and thought it looked really slick (GeForce 8800 GT). So I know that the monitor is good, but I need to adjust something and I'm not sure what. As one more side note, I'll be upgrading my system as soon as it arrives and going to a Radeon 4870. So who knows how much of this is moot. Maybe this video card just can't handle this monitor very well.

My settings right now for brightness, contrast, and sharpness are 40, 50 and 40. No matter what I set them too, either the white are too gray or it's a little too bright to look at. Colors like reds and yellows do seem just a little too intense.

I've tried the nVidia color correction wizard that comes with these display drivers, but that only made it 100x worse. All the mids and darks turned to black so it looked really wrong.
Click to expand...
I'd really appreciate an answer to this question.

Would it be better if I started a new thread w this question instead?
 
Yoma44 said:
I'd really appreciate an answer to this question.

Would it be better if I started a new thread w this question instead?
Click to expand...

The wide gamut is going to make colors in any non-color-aware application terrible, regardless of calibration.

Calibrating mine with the OS X calibration tool and then turning on color management in Firefox 3 (and setting the color profile to the one I calibrated) was a big improvement for websites. But still, small things like desktop icons and and some parts of applications look horrid.

I guess to get it looking at its best you need to buy a hardware calibrator. The Eye One Display 2 was recommended to me.
 
Hey Guys,

I am trying to evaluate this monitor against HP LP2475w and the DS-265 on this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1033096632#post1033096632 . If anyone has seen this monitor side by side, or compared it, to any of these other two monitors I would appreciate your opinion, especially why you think this monitor is a better or worse choice than either of these two. I have tried to read each individual thread (really I have) but people are posting faster than I can catch up, and at 50+ pages each its very daunting.:confused: You can leave comments here, or preferably, on the thread linked above. I would appreciate any insight anyone can share.:D

Kind Regards,

Mario
 
Ok, so I finally received the monitor from CDW. I was going to refuse the shipment, but my Mom signed for the package while I was out, thinking she was doing a favor for me.

Great.

I will go into details later, but I'll give a quick rundown of what I notice right off the bat. I was waken up by this package so I apologize if any of my observations are "lazy".

First off, the monitor is adjustable. And although I appreciate the fact that the adjustments are tight, wow oh wow is this thing hard to adjust. When I opened it up in the box, it was collapsed to save space. I tried pushing the monitor up and then simply gave up, I thought there had to be some sort of locking mechanism on it, but lo and behold, the manual says to just adjust it. So I finally put enough elbow grease in it, and this thing finally budges. I carried it up 3 flights of stairs conversely with no problems, if that means anything to you.

Second, the inputs are at the bottom of the monitor. Combine a small working space to put plugs into this place, and the fact that adjusting the monitor so you can actually get to these things is a PITA, and you have a project on your hands.

Third, about the Wide Gamut.....I definitely see it. The easiest way to see it, is to go to a webpage that has flash, because Flash cannot be color managed. Is it an issue? Completely objective and I'm going to need time to decide that. I'm on Mac OS X, and I think I should be able to get farther with calibration than most people, if what I have read on these forums is correct.

Fourth......color banding....this is definitely what I do not want to see. You can see it whenever there are similar colors, gradients for example show completely obvious banding. And this is right out of the box with no adjustments, and this is for all DV Modes, including the fan favorite, text. Oh and the source is a Blu-Ray so it is a top notch source I see this on. Since this banding exists, for things like movies, it appears as though a lot of noise is going on (but it's actually the banding), and it makes the movie look like a grain filter was applied over it. So yeah this is a problem. I'll have to take some more time and figure out if I can fix these problems before I can hope to give at least a somewhat accurate representation/review of this thing.

Edit: To clarify, I am seeing the banding everywhere, but I said Blu-ray to stress the fact that it is not merely a poor res wallpaper/icon/etc. I have the monitor set up on 1920 x 1200 which is what I believe is the monitor's native res, and I'm playing the movie at actual size. I can see the banding in pretty much any other res I configure on my Mac. I don't know what you mean by REAL if I haven't answered your question yet. I'll go through the options more meticulously tomorrow, let me know if you want me to do anything, take pictures of anything, etc.
 
potential, are you using 1080p with 1:1 (REAL) scaling for the blu-ray? REAL at 1080p introduces banding for some reason on this monitor.
 
potential, does your mac also see this monitor as a tv? the only way i can get the video to stretch edge to edge on this monitor and to look good is to turn overscan on. is this the same for you as well? i'm not 100% sure what overscan is but it sounds like i might be degrading the picture quality. anyone? should overscan be on for this monitor?

-as for my other issue with the red dots on my display i mentioned above. i've determined my mac pro with the 8800gt card to be the issue. seems as though the card is either on it's way out and the video ram is failing or the card is running too hot. either way, i'm getting a replacement from apple sent to me in a day or two. gotta love apple's support. they offered me overnight shipping or onsight repair, whichever i wanted. gotta take the overnight. who wants some stranger in their house working on their machine? no thanks
 
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