Digital Home Thoughts: Pantone Huey - You Have No Idea What You're Missing

Image 1: New monitor, new toy. The Pantone Huey sits there quiety, making sure that what you see is what you get.

Last weekend I finally replaced my dying 17" LCD monitor, with a 22" widescreen Acer LCD. Let me tell you, I should have done it ALOT sooner. This new Acer is so much bigger, brighter, and more colorful, I had no idea how bad the old one was until I replaced it. Out of the box the Acer was too bright, and the contrast was too high. On top of that, everything had a blue tint, with a hint of green. The toolbars in Internet Explorer and iTunes had a steel blue color to them, when they should have been neutral grey. Pure white looked like it had a hint of robin egg blue. I played with the manual adjustments myself, and while it looked better than it did out of the box, I still wasn't very happy.

So I went down to J&R here in New York City, and picked up a Pantone Huey [Low Price Search]. It was a toss-up between the Huey and ColorVision's Spyder2Express. The reviews I've read rate them pretty evenly, with very few real differences between the two. Supposedly the Spyder2 sensor is "better" than the Huey, but the Huey gives nearly identical results, and the Huey software has a few more options than the Spyder2Express. In the end though, I only had one choice, as J&R was out of the Spyder2Express.

I raced home, ripped open the box, installed the software (I had to download an updated Vista-compatible version from Pantone's website), plugged in the Huey, and followed the onscreen instructions to calibrate my new Acer monitor. Just about the easiest user experience I've ever had. Less than 60 seconds later and WOW. Just, wow. The before and after was shocking.



Image 2: The before shot. Out of the box, default settings. iTunes menus had a distinctly blueish tint to them, and blacks are slightly washed out.



Image 3: The after shot. As you can see, the blue cast is gone, greys are much more natural, and the contrast is spot on.

The above shots were taken with my digital camera. I fixed the white balance (rather than using the "auto" setting which may have tainted the results), and left the EV value at 0.0. Other than resizing, these images are un-retouched.

To my eyes the brightness, color, and contrast are perfect. Greys are now totally neutral (no tone to them whatsoever), and flesh tones look completely natural. Contrast is very linear, and I can see more details in dark blacks and near-whites than I ever could before. This is how every monitor should look.

The Huey also has a built-in light sensor, and can adjust for ambient lighting conditions at set intervals (the default is every minute), to ensure that the image onscreen looks the same regardless of how many lights you have on, or what time of day it is.

The benefits to having a calibrated monitor go beyond what you see on-screen. If you order prints, what you get back will match what you see on your monitor much more closely. Nearly every print house uses calibrated equipment. In addition, most major printer manufacturers use calibrated color profiles with their printers. No more wasted paper or unusable prints.

When I get a second monitor sometime in the next few months, I'll drop the $40 for the Huey Pro upgrade. You get an expanded set of test patches for even better accuracy, and support for multiple monitors, so all of your monitors will look the same.

To sum up: buy it. You'll have no idea what you're missing until you see the results. This may be the best money you spend on technology all year.

Jeremy Charette is a Contributing Editor at Digital Media Thoughts, and also works in Procurement for one of the world’s largest banks. He enjoys reading, cooking, and racing in the SpecForza league. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, USA. He's going to be really tired on Tuesday after the Halo 3 launch.