Good Budget Colour Monitor?

[Riadnasla]

Good morning! Starting my day editing a kids' teaser at a far too noisy coffeeshop.....joys of working on the road. Screenshot for kicks. 

 

With my work starting to lean away from editing and more into camera operation, and with clients who sometimes don't understand DPX sequences, S-Log, etc., I'm starting to offer colour-correction and export for more friendly file types as part of the package. That said, I'm currently editing on a Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming. Powerful enough, but terrible colour accuracy. 

 

I'd like to keep a colour accurate monitor at my desk specifically for prepping files for delivery. I am hoping to find a good used one or a less expensive new one as budget is pretty low atm. (My main show starts late July). Only one catch though.....my laptop can only send video via HDMI. 

 

Any suggestions? 

[Ryan Moser]

I recommend purchasing a Flanders Scientific monitor. If your budget allows I highly recommend a 10-bit monitor however there 8-bit monitors can be even more reasonably priced. You'll need to get an output device to send a proper video signal to your hypothetical monitor. Blackmagic Design's Decklink MiniMonitor is a very reasonable and affordable solution.

[HockeyFan12]

The absolute cheapest solution I found is the new (the old model is better, but it doesn't accept HDMI correctly from inexpensive cards) Z24X from HP and a Black Magic Intensity card (I don't trust most computers' HDMI out). Total of about $600. Not as good as a Flanders, but the color seems pretty trustworthy. Not a bad set up for a day rate of color. The reflective coating results in a weird poor viewing angle but as a SUPER budget option, this is the very very poor man's Flanders. I'm not saying it's good. But from what I've seen I trust it.

Above that, the Flanders is really nice. Same idea, just better.

I talked with a talented/experienced colorist (graded an Academy Award winning film) and he said monitor doesn't really matter to him as much as you'd think. He knows his scopes and can grade on a monitor that's fairly inaccurate and still know what he's getting, though he'll check it on a calibrated monitor before final delivery. If you are very experienced with you scopes, you can get by with just a decent monitor. Or your laptop.

There are also some monitors out there (the old Sony HDTV CRTs) and the series 9 or 10 I think Panasonic plasmas that need to be calibrated, but can be found used dirt cheap because they're so big. And they are more than good enough, too.

[Riadnasla]

Thanks both of you for your recommendations! Once I get a moment of downtime I'm going to look into both options and figure out what I can afford.