For the last couple of years I’ve been using a Dell 24″ LCD alongside an Apple 23″ Cinema Display because I liked the flexibility and control available to me with two monitors. About a month ago, I heard Robert Scoble on TWiT talk about how he used two displays, one in portrait mode and one in landscape mode. So I tried that, rotating the Dell 24″ by 90 degrees. It had a powerful positive impact on my workflow.

BUT, every time I’m in an Apple Store I invariably drift over to the 30″ Cinema Display and remind myself how usable all that screen real estate would be for audio, photographic and video editing, not just for the editor window but for all the palettes I use. So on Father’s Day, I went to Dell’s site and ordered up their 30″ UltraSharp. I admit that I did it via phone because I wanted to ask a couple of questions and check for specials. Syed was very helpful and I got the order placed. The device showed up in five business days.

While the instructions say installation takes two people, it really doesn’t as the screen is not heavy. (those 21″ CRTs were HEAVY). Connections are easy to make and in addition to DVI-D and power, there is a USB 2 connection and a built-in USB hub as well as a memory card reader. The reader supports Compact Flash, SM/SD/MS/MMC so covers pretty much everything.

The screen has no contrast controls and rudimentary brightness capability. There is an OSD, but the manual instructions to launch it don’t work for me and the software provided only works with Windows (BAD DELL!!) Max resolution is 2560 x 1600 and requires a dual link DVI connection. I recently upgraded to the nVidia GTX 285 in the Mac Pro and it has two dual link DVI connections on the back. The card drives both the 30″ at 2560 x 1600 and the 24″ in portrait mode at 1920x 1200 without issue.

The colour at first was a bit wonky and using the OS X built in calibration made decent corrections in advanced mode but the lack of a contrast adjustment throws off the Apple calibration a bit. I have been using a Pantone Huey Pro for a while because of its size and my expectation that if anyone understood colour it would be Pantone, and after running the calibration on the new screen, I am very happy with the outcome. I set the Huey Pro software to do automatic roomlight compensation and that helps more than you might expect.

The display goes to sleep from a power perspective when the Mac Pro sleeps the screen and restarts pretty much immediately. Several days in I’ve noticed that the colours have settled and are even better than when I first set the display up. Fonts are smaller of course because I sit further back now, and the only real downside is that I find myself punching up the font size in browsers and the zoom in applications, but I am loving the increased space.

As noted, I kept the Dell 24″ in play and in portrait mode, the only change is moving it from the left side to the right side, mostly to make fitting into the desk layout easier. I use Hyperspaces to manage Spaces and backgrounds and find running Word or NeoOffice Write in portrait so much more efficient. It’s also perfect to stack BusyCal above Things for workflow management.

When it comes to working with Aperture, or any of the Adobe CS5 apps, the increased space is incredibly empowering and I think I’m more productive although that could really be subjective justification for the expense.

And that’s the only downside. 27″ displays of very good quality (I really like the Samsung) are now under $500 where I live, but the jump to 30″ significantly reduces the option pool and more than doubles the price of entry. If the past is any indicator, expect prices for 30″ displays to plummet now that I’ve bought one. The Dell unit has a richer contrast ratio than the Apple Cinema Display according to specifications. The Apple unit has not changed in years and is still nearly $2,000, still too much for me. Would I have preferred that Apple display? So far I am very happy with my Dell purchase. The display is height and angle adjustable, where the Apple is only angle adjustable. The height adjustment is important to me as I want to have the upper third sightline in line with my eyes and as I have a longer torso the Apple display would be angled up for me, whereas the Dell is exactly parallel to my face (or pretty darn close). Kudos to the Dell monitor guys because adjusting the height is finger strength easy with no goofy latches or slippage or any of the other annoyances found in some other vendor’s height adjusters; this one is brilliant.

For a 30″ LCD display that does excellent 2560×1600 for around $1,200 the Dell UltraSharp cannot be beat.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED