NEC SpectraView 2180WG-LED

As some of you know, I use a Sony Artisan CRT monitor for my photography work. I would really much rather use a LCD of some sort to save desktop real estate — especially with a few friends getting the drool-inspiring 30″ Apple Cinema Display — but at the moment there is simply no matching a good CRT for color fidelity and range.

A few days ago, I read about the NEC SpectraView 2180WG-LED on Tom’s Hardware Guide, the first display that uses LEDs to backlight the LCD, giving the monitor the added advantage of software-controllable backlight color (color temperature). The SpectraView is capable of displaying the entire AdobeRGB color space, which is what many of us use for our images. I think I read that the price of the monitor will be something like $6,500 — too expensive, and the moment, but definitely a sign of things to come.

One of my friends has two 23″ Viewsonic VP2290b LCDs, which feature a resolution of 3,840 x 2,400 pixels each — insane, really. Modern operating systems don’t properly support such high density displays yet, but I’ve heard that such support is coming. Combined with good color reproduction, we’re looking at the future of display technology!