Originally posted by: TopRamen37
Do many people have a monitor calibration tool like the Spyder2 Express?
Here? I really doubt it, unless they're into amateur/professional graphics/video editing.
For most home users it's probably better to spend more money on a better monitor and then just do manual calibration, which is "free" and relatively "easy."
Would you recommend them to a gamer/home office person with only 2 monitors in the whole house?
No, definitely not.
My Viewsonic VX2025wm is not exactly the most expensive display in its class, but the improvement from my amateur, manual calibration was remarkable. My darkest discernable gray level dropped from 8 to 2, making shadows much more realistic.
Spend 30 minutes looking up calibration websites (with test patterns), and adjust the brightness, contrast, etc. controls yourself. You'll get maybe 70% of the improvement for "free." I would pay close attention to the dark grayscale (1-15) and gamma tests.
The exact procedure for calibration depends greatly on your display type, but I would recommend: (a) turning brightness contrast down to 50% or slightly below, (b) changing the color setting to 6500K (ok) or SRGB (better), and (c) using your video card's desktop and video color settings to make display adjustments with several types of test patterns on the screen at once.