Electronics : X-Rite Eye-One Display LT

Rating: - Good results, once you figure out how to use it
I give this three stars because it does work well, but the "out of the box" experience is poor and it takes a fair amount of work plus trial-and-error to figure out how to use it properly.

The Eye-One display LT can be used to calibrate CRT and LCD monitors. Inside the box there is the calibration "dongle" (looks a bit like a mouse), counterweight (clips onto the USB cord), ambient light cover, CD with software, and a brief, multi-lingual "getting started" guide.

The getting started guide is pretty much useless because it has errors and doesn't provide enough detail: it tells you to connect the dongle and then install the software, for example. Clesrly, this has led enough astray that the manufacturers have added a luminous pink sticker on the internal packaging saying "Install software before connecting!" Missing is a key piece of information: which of the six programs on the CD to install -- and it isn't obvious (you actually want Eye-One Match -- the "calibration" program doesn't do what you'd think)

I highly recommend watching the training video on the CD as it gives you a much better set of instructions and it's far clearer what to do. The software does actually work quite well, but you have to know what you're doing -- you won't be able to figure it out completely unless you've seen the video.

Getting the dongle to lie flat on my LCD screen was a real challenge, because the thick plastic coated USB cord won't bend around the sharp top edge of my screen; it tends to lift it off. In the end I used the counterweight (supplied) to hang the cord down flat. And thus, after two false starts, on my third calibration attempt I got a good result.

So, now that I am fully trained, the device works as advertised and I have a properly calibrated monitor. Prior to calibration, the screen was over-bright with highlights blown out and with way too much contrast. Now it matches color-managed prints I've made.

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Rating: - Waste of time - useless product made screen worse
I spent too much time with this product as it continued to make my screen colors worse than when I started. Little documentation, weak bloated software and 5 tries, even with different computer screens (I have 5 I wanted to match). This product is a waste. I noticed it's made by X-Rite, who also makes the Huey. Another weak product. When will there be a GOOD color/screen calibration product??

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Rating: - Caution
Be careful with this one. Little documentation, and not all monitors can take advantage of the automatic calibration feature, one of the reasons I bought it. My monitor was not one of the supported monitors.

It was cumbersome to manually do the configuraton, and in the end simply returned to Amazon which promptly refunded my purchase

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Rating: - Downright Horrible for and LCD screen
I suspect that this device was optimized for a CRT screen and not and LCD screen because it was absolutely a nightmare to get to work and even when it finally finished, the effect was horrible.

First of all, other reviewers who say that the documentation included with the product is useless, well, that is just the tip of the ice-berg. Yes, the little pamphlet that comes with it doesn't even give you enough information to understand that the proper way to install the software, which thanks to the amazingly unintuitive CD software has to be some of the worst software installation I've ever experienced. There are 4 components, each with a separate install (and none of which actually say install). Funny thing is, after you install them, you only show 3 items in the programs files.

Second, once you've installed and look at the on-line tutorials, it seems that the process is potentially easy. The only problem is that the software provided doesn't match what they show in the tutorial! Most glaring is that the product claims to have an easy 1 click mode which seems to just not be there (this might not be available when calibrating LCDs, but again, nowhere does it state this, so I'm just guessing).

Third, the program takes you to a contrast adjustment step. Guess what? LCDs DON'T HAVE CONTRAST ADJUSTMENT! I was able to get a slider through the Nvidia tray to try to get past this step, but it wasn't until I trudged through their horrible support site that I found that they just expect you to skip this step. The most basic question is: if you click the button for LCD, why the heck does it even take you to this step if they expect you to SKIP IT?

Which brings me to their support site. Talk about horrible. It is next to impossible to find the product to begin with because it doesn't recognize the complete name of the product in the search engine. They have truncated the name and if you actually type it out AS IT APPEARS ON THE PRODUCT it doesn't recognize it! Wow... just wow... Phone support consists of leaving a message. Email support consists of filling out a form which doesn't even seem to be oriented toward product support (it kept asking me if I was planning on investing in the company... YEAH RIGHT).

So after almost three hours of playing around with it, I finally got it to a point where it seemed to run through some sort of calibration, when the program finished, it made the screen look like utter crap. There is NO way that the product of that process was anywhere near where it should have been.

Needless to say, this is getting returned tomorrow.

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Rating: - You need this but Amazon might not be best
Absolutely necessary if you edit images digitally and one of the cheapest ways to do it. Suggested by Scott Kelby who has some of the best photoshop books around. I've had the best experiences with Amazon in the past but this time the box was very beat up so either the shipping was too rough or it was used. On the bright side, Amazon made it extremely easy to return- giving like a month for return and all you have to do is print a ups return form that amazon paid for. Not the best experience but Amazon made it easy enough and you won't lose a cent going through them.