X-Rite Eye-One Display LT
by Xrite
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Our Price: $149.89 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $115.99 (click here) Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of X-Rite Eye-One Display LT
Customer Review: Excellent Price, Excellent Product
Summary: 4 Stars
The Eye one does exactly what it says - calibrate your monitor so what you see is what you get when you make prints. I would have given it 5 stars if the directions were a bit clearer. But just using the defaults brings you very close to perfect prints. Note: you must download the paper/printer profile from the manufacturer of the paper to get excellent quality prints to match your monitor.Customer Review: X-Rite Eye-One Good Value
Summary: 4 Stars
The X-Rite Eye-One works well for calibrating displays and is much less than competing options. It is not a "one click" deal - you have to setup the screen properly to get a calibration, but it is workable. This unit calibrates monitors only, you have to buy more stuff if you want to calibrate printers, scanners, etc.Customer Review: Doesn't work on macbook
Summary: 4 Stars
I tried to use it on my macbook and i kept getting washed out colors. I called xrite and they said that you have to upgrade the software for another $99.
I was amazed with amazon's streamlined return process. 2 thumbs up!
I will try later the xrite pro .
Customer Review: Mixed review (now with Windows 7 update)
Summary: 3 Stars
(Reviewed in August 2008)
First, the good part. I have a hopelessly old monitor whose color was completely off and all my prints were coming out greenish. This unit didn't make the monitor good-as-new, but it did bring about a noticeable improvement that I had been unable to produce by tinkering with the controls and Adobe Gamma for hours.
Now the bad part: There is a quick start guide that is, basically, useless. There is no manual or help menu or any sort of guidance provided either in or on the box or in the software cd. If you visit the manufacturer's site, and search for "manual" or "user guide" or any term for that matter, you get "no results".
There are times, during the calibration (especially the manual one), that the process seems to stall, nothing seems to be happening for long periods. There is no guidance as to what you're supposed to be doing and no way of knowing if something is wrong and you should press the "stop" button or not. (The stop button is the only control on the screen other than a scale with green shading that never seems to change).
Once you have completed the process and saved your profile, there is no guidance as to whether you're supposed to leave the unit plugged in w/the ambient top on (for continuous calibration?) or if you can unplug it and put it away until next time. (This is a lid that has the double purpose of protecting the unit and filtering ambient light during the calibration process). There is no way to find an answer to this stupid question on the website.
When you start the program there is a button to click on for updates. By all means, get the update as it is more efficient (but equally uninstructive) than the cd contents. However, it takes rebooting and a couple of tries before the upgrade installs.
I was fortunate that, during an analysis early in the process, my monitor passed the test as one of those that can be calibrated "automatically" (w/o my having to fiddle with contrast and brightness controls on my monitor). Not all monitors qualify. The first time I tried, I didn't know this and the non-automated process is very prone to stalling and leaving you with a blank screen and an equally blank stare.
During my first attempt to calibrate manually (before I realized that I qualified for automatic) the process seemed to stall, windows flashed a message about a corrupted file, then another message that windows was shutting down the program due to a conflict with the system, then a blue screen memory dump, then a diagnostic re-boot. All in all, not a pleasant experience.
Still, I tried again and it worked (or I guessed right) I got what I paid for. This is probably not the best calibrator out there, but it was the best I could afford right now and it did as well as I had hoped within the limitations of an old monitor.
UPDATE, January 2010: First, the good news: there are now updated drivers that make this software compatible with W7. You can download them here. I'm entering the link because I couldn't find it in the X-rite site, and the page I've been checking since October 2009 says they are still working on the new driver. This link was provided by customer service via e-mail: [...]
Now the not so good: Since my new monitor was not among the select monitors that is eligible for the automated system I used above, I had to go through the manual calibration which tested my patience to no small extent. The first screen RGB something, had me stalled there for well over two hours, almost three, before I pressed stop. It was doing something, but I don't know what because a slider would move forward another would move backwards and the total amount in the bottom also went back and forth, never showing more than a 10% improvement over the beginning number. I pressed the stop button since we were getting nowhere slowly. The second screen (white balance, I think)--same thing. I stopped this one after one hour. (This incarnation of the software does have visual progress references and stop buttons, at least). I proceeded to the final part called measuring, in which color blocks keep appearing under the probe. That part completed within a few minutes. A profile (based on two aborted processes and one completed one) was created and saved. The monitor looks pretty good, the colors seem fine (but they weren't too bad before on this monitor).
I really can't recommend this system with a clear conscience. There has to be something better out there.
Customer Review: Good results, once you figure out how to use it
Summary: 3 Stars
I give this three stars because it does work well, but the "out of the box" experience is poor and it takes a fair amount of work plus trial-and-error to figure out how to use it properly.
The Eye-One display LT can be used to calibrate CRT and LCD monitors. Inside the box there is the calibration "dongle" (looks a bit like a mouse), counterweight (clips onto the USB cord), ambient light cover, CD with software, and a brief, multi-lingual "getting started" guide.
The getting started guide is pretty much useless because it has errors and doesn't provide enough detail: it tells you to connect the dongle and then install the software, for example. Clearly, this has led enough astray that the manufacturers have added a luminous pink sticker on the internal packaging saying "Install software before connecting!" Missing is a key piece of information: which of the six programs on the CD to install -- and it isn't obvious (you actually want Eye-One Match -- the "calibration" program doesn't do what you'd think)
I highly recommend watching the training video on the CD as it gives you a much better set of instructions and it's far clearer what to do. The software does actually work quite well, but you have to know what you're doing -- you won't be able to figure it out completely unless you've seen the video.
Getting the dongle to lie flat on my LCD screen was a real challenge, because the thick plastic coated USB cord won't bend around the sharp top edge of my screen; it tends to lift it off. In the end I used the counterweight (supplied) to hang the cord down flat. And thus, after two false starts, on my third calibration attempt I got a good result.
So, now that I am fully trained, the device works as advertised and I have a properly calibrated monitor. Prior to calibration, the screen was over-bright with highlights blown out and with way too much contrast. Now it matches color-managed prints I've made.