|
- Poor quality and inaccurateI used my Pantone huey Pro with the latest software version (hueyPro 1.5) to calibrate my Dell 2001FP LCD monitor and ended up with a reddish/pinkish tint. My monitor was clean and I tried multiple times with varying ambient lighting but the tint remained. I thought maybe this *was* accurate and that I just needed to get used to it. Unfortunately, the tint was just too severe to get used to. Plain white, for instance, just didn't look white at all. And reading the other reviews, it seems I'm not the only one who had this problem. I eventually game up and returned the Pantone huey Pro. I bought a ColorVision Spyder2 Express Win/Mac instead. The resulting calibration has been much more reasonable. Rating: - Good, but could be betterYou can find quite excellent, detailed reviews for this product on the web. I found them to be wholly accurate. Briefly, this does a very good (not excellent) job of color-correcting multiple monitor setups (most products are not designed for multiple monitors). The problems: the setup for contrast / brightness seems very imprecise. My monitors are *not* identical, and I feel that they could be with the proper adjustments (I had to fiddle with brightness / contrast to achieve similar, but not identical, white levels). However, the color correction itself is excellent, and I find that I am much more confident in my color selection and photo and scan editing. Works on CRTs or flat screen monitors equally well. So, briefly Color correction: 5 stars Brightness / contrast setting: 3 stars Rating: - Think PinkI've been using the Monaco OPTIX XR colorimeter for a couple of years to successfully calibrate several monitors for my photography studio. When I happened to read about the Pantone Huey Pro I thought it might be a good option for a light weight, travel colorimeter for my location jobs. I purchased one at the end of December and tried to calibrate two different monitors. In each case the monitors suffered from the same pink cast as described in many of these reviews. I created new profiles with my Monaco OPTIX XR to have a basis of comparison and yes the Huey Pro was definitely biased towards a pink cast. After contacting Pantone technical support they did indeed admit to a manufacturing problem and promised that they would replace my colorimeter after a delay of two weeks while they filled backorders. After three weeks (and one telephone call to remind them) I did receive the replacement Huey Pro. I installed the software on a clean OS, plugged in the new unit and guess what... exactly the same pink color cast. I once again created a new profile with my Monaco OPTIX and the monitor was back to normal. Obviously this product is relatively inexpensive for a good reason - It doesn't work! Rating: - Avoid This At All Costs!Be warned. Do not purchase this product until Pantone fixes it. That should be enough of a statement, but let me elaborate: I purchased this item to calibrate my brand new monitor. I followed every direction to a T. The first time it calibrated the monitor, the monitor tunred PINK! I backtracked and redid every step a second, third and even a fourth time. EVery time I did it, I had a PINK monitor. Ok, I read some reviews that said this is a problem so I went to Pantone's Website and guess what, there are steps to follow if you have this problem. Ok, I waited a week for this POS to arrive and it doesn't work so let me follow their instructions to have a replacement sent to me. I filled out their customer request form and waited. A week later I hadn't heard anythign from the company regarding this POS I purchased, so I called. First time I called I received a friendly, "We are not open at this time please call back during our normal business hours mesage." GRRRR. I called back during their normal hours and got ahold of the most unfriendly tech support guy I have talked to in a long time. I explained what happened and he asked for my reference number. I gave it to him and he said, "Well you provided all of the required information, we will send you a new one in 7 to 10 business days." Me being the professional A-hole that I am, asked why it would take so long. He says, "becuase of the number of incidents before yours." Hmm, I say, if there are that many incidents, then why haven't you recalled your product because it is defective. At this point he tells me there is nothing wrong with the product. Consider me confused...if there is nothing wrong with their product, then why are they sending out replacement units? Now in order to get this replacement sent they require you to download some software and get the serial number of the unit you purchased in order for them to determine if you have a defective product or not. I ended my conversation by asking how much longer until I receive confirmation that I will be receiving a new unit. He said within an hour. Here is what the email I received said: Response (Stanzione, John) - 01/31/2008 08:36 AM Dear Benjamin: Thank you for your update. You should expect delivery of your replacement within 7 - 10 working days. In the interim, please reset your copy of PANTONE huey/hueyPRO to remove the calibration that was done. Here's how to do this: Macintosh users - click the icon in your menu bar, and select 'huey preferences' or hueyPRO preferences' as applicable. On the Preferences window, click 'reset huey' or 'reset hueyPRO'. Click 'yes' to the prompt. The calibration will be discarded, and the software will reset so that it runs as if it was first installed. Windows users - click the icon located in the Windows system tray. Select 'reset huey' or 'reset hueyPRO' as applicable. Click 'yes' to the prompt. The calibration will be discarded, and the software will reset so that it runs as if it was first installed. Once you receive your device, connect it to the computer, launch the software and calibrate as usual, and let us know the results. Best regards, John Stanzione Manager - Technical Support Pantone, Inc. I said in the beginning of this thread, avoid this product at all costs. Consider yourself forewarned that this product is defective and you should not waste your time or money on it. Rating: - well done, but...the installation of the huey pro is realy simple. the calibration is easy with going. the wizard works fine. the huey pro works realy fast and it supports dual-screen. it takes about 5 min/screen. after calibrating my screens (1CRT,1TFT,1notebook) are kind of reddish. first i thought i did something wrong. after trying to calibrate some more times the result was even the same. for that reason i registered at the pantone help forum, where i posted the problem. the reaction of the pantone support in the help forum was not realy quick (20 days). because i purchased the huey pro from germany i decided to call the pantone europe support in germany. the german support told me, that there might be a problem with one of the color sensors - seems that the problem occures sometimes and they know about it. so i sent the huey pro to the support, two days after that i had a brandnew huey pro. calibrated my monitors and... they are reddish. now i'm going to sent the huey pro in for one last chance...
|