Well, my HP ZBook 15 G5 arrived today, and the BenQ 2420PT monitor arrived yesterday. I just got round to setting everything up this evening, and I'll admit to being rather pleased based on initial impressions
The ZBook is lovely, and the DreamColor 4K screen really is marvellous - though
not perfect, since at maximum brightness (600 nits!!) there is a little light bleed noticeable in the corners and edges, but this disappears at more realistic settings. Interesting to note that Windows 10 scaling was set to 250% (!!) by default in order to give decent sized icons, text and application windows. I haven't changed it, as it looks good to me. Nor have I installed any photo processing software, and that will be the acid test in usability for me (I suspect I have some adapting to do
). One strange thing... The DreamColor calibration software came with factory calibrated sRGB, AdobeRGB and various other profiles, but I notice that sRGB and AdobeRGB profiles had been calibrated at 500cd/m
2 luminance, which seems a strange choice
... clearly not intended for photographic use, at any rate. Anyway, I've calibrated an sRGB D65 profile at 160cd/m
2 (probably too high, but it's what I've been working with thus far), and everything looks good... exactly as I'd expect, but with a much nicer looking screen than I'm used to. I'll create sRGB D50, AdobeRGB D65 and D50 at appropriate luminance settings tomorrow...
The BenQ is, if anything, even more satisfying than the ZBook. The ZBook was quite an investment for me, and by anyone's standards not an inexpensive laptop. But the BenQ monitor was, in contrast, a very inexpensive bit of kit... yet despite that, the design and build quality is great. It's really very sturdy and ergonomically pleasing to use. I might have preferred "real" buttons instead of touch sensitive ones for accessing and navigating the menus and settings, but that's a minor gripe and subjective on my part. And the display itself is *beautiful*. I haven't calibrated it yet, but using the built-in, factory-calibrated sRGB profile (again, one of several on offer for different purposes), it's indistinguishable from my ZBook's new sRGB profile - at least, to my eyes, once brightness is adjusted. I will, however, install DisplayCAL and Argyll CMS tomorrow, and - as with the zBook - create D65 and D50 profiles at appropriate luminance settings, as I'm sure in reality there are differences versus the ZBook, even if I don't notice them.
Thanks again for all the feedback and help, folks. I'll report back once I've got everything calibrated, photo processing apps installed, and tried my hand at some post-processing