30 inch screens

[_Rick_]

Currently pondering getting a 30" screen and a 20" screen to replace my two 19" Eizos.
I'm currently focusing on the NEC PA301W and LCD2090UXi, for a combined €2080.49. That's quite a good deal (about 250 below recent price averages) that should be valid until Sunday or so.

Now, I'm wondering whether anyone has tested the NEC back-to-back with the Dell 3011, for example, and noticed subjective advantages, out of the box.

Also, the new Dell 3014 just launched early last week, apparently, with LED backlighting, and much lighter and thinner. I doubt anybody here has even seen one of those in the flesh, so I don't expect comments on that.

Also, do consider that I am coming from Eizo S1910s, that I had for over 8 years now. They're still working fine - I'm only upgrading because bigger is better. I plan to keep using those screens for close to a decade as well, hence, if anyone has had one in use since they came out, and can tell me how the backlight held up for the first two years, I'd appreciate that.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Well, what are you planning on doing with those monitors?

 

[_Rick_]

Everything!

From data exploration to editing my thesis, to gaming, to watching movies, to editing pics from my DSLR....The only thing I won't be doing is editing movies and probably CAD. Basically I want to have the impression, that whatever I do, my screens are up to it, much like my Eizos now.

Ideally without having to worry much about calibration, and not at all about uniformity issues. And with high longevity.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I haven't seen a 3014 in the flesh, but tftcentral has a good review:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u3014.htm

It sounds like an excellent all-around choice.

If you're going to be gaming on this, can your GPU handle the games you want to play, at the settings you like, with the frame rates that you find acceptable at this resolution?

 

[_Rick_]

I've been gaming on 2560x1024 a bit.
But I'm looking at a GPU-upgrade eventually (currently on a GTX560Ti @ 950 Mhz), at worst I'll just up-scale from 1280x800 or something like that. Current GPU prices are still obscene, for the performance gain on that card, so I think I'll hold back until next year, unless performance suffers too badly.
I'm not playing too many "heavy" games anyway. The worst offender is Shogun 2, which I haven't touched in ages. I expect to be fine playing some Dota2...

I think I'm sold on the NEC now though. Price has further dropped by 50 euros on the combination, and the NEC is only 400 euros more expensive than the 3014, but features proper hardware calibration. I don't really believe in software calibration, as you're losing color resolution, and optimizing delta-E of some colors at the cost of others, and risk getting banding. While this can be mitigated a bit using 10-bit color, it's still much more effective to calibrate directly against the 14 bit LUT.

 

[vbuggy]

I may be late to the thread, but doesn't the Dell offer hardware calibration as well?

I'm about to begin a wholesale update of my oldest 30"s which are still operational (ACD 30, 3008) and was looking into the Dell. I have an i1 Pro already (and I also have an S4Elite, but anyway), and they're extending the panel warranty to an optional 5 years (which would have saved me a lot of grief on the die/glitch-prone crApples) so I didn't think I could go wrong with the U3014.

Would I be better off picking something else (general purpose use)?