By Aaron Westgate

In addition to calibrating displays, X-Rite’s (http://www.xrite.com) i1Display Pro (US$269) also calibrates projectors, measures ambient light, and corrects for glare (for displays lacking a hood). The i1Display Pro comes with X-Rite’s new i1Profiler software.

The i1Display Pro instrument is faster and with better quality than the i1Display 2 or any other colorimeter in the same price range. It has a lens sitting in front of the sensor (like X-Rite’s multi-thousand dollar Hubble system) and a moveable arm that holds the ambient diffuser. The bottom reveals a tripod thread for calibrating projectors. When measuring, a blue LED flashes.

The i1Profiler software auto-detects any type of LCD screen or projector in Basic mode. The user can overrule the software’s choice in Advanced mode, which also enables more features, such as quality control, automatic ambient light adjustment, and testing uniformity of your display.

Our test in Basic mode resulted in calibration settings that were too bright. (Apparently, this is done to open up shadows but happens at the cost of overexposing bright areas.) Using the largest patch number in Advanced mode, the calibration and profile were much better—delta-E of less than 4 (in Basic it was less than 6); however, it took more time (10 minutes instead of 4) to finish calibration. The software erroneously detected Automatic Display Control (ADC) support on my system.

With i1Profiler software, the user enjoys automatic correction (or notification) of luminance levels to changing ambient light at three different time intervals. The ADC support and compensation for glare can be enabled during calibration. For quality checks, you can use a color target, an image, or a Pantone color swatch.

Rating: 8 out of 10