For a photographer or videographer, color accuracy of a display is extremely important. If your display screen does not produce accurate colors, what you perceive as beautiful may actually be crappy on other monitors. Vice versa. It becomes very difficult to perform adjustments and corrections on your shots. That’s why you need to have a calibration tool like X Rite ColorMunki or Spyder 4. Both of these two items are very popular on the market. They are used by professionals to calibrate display screens to have the right, accurate colors as well as brightness, ambient light, and a bunch of other settings. So, should you get X Rite ColorMunki or Spyder 4? Find out below!
X Rite ColorMunki
X Rite ColorMunki is coming in a very compact and lightweight housing. With the compact body, X Rite ColorMunki becomes very easy to place. It does not require too much surface area. It is compatible with various display devices, including iOS and Android mobile devices. It incorporates the exclusive X-Rite technology with Flare Correct, which measures and adjusts the display profile to reduce the contrast ratio caused by flare or glare falling on the surface of the display. The Intelligent Iterative Profiling measures and analyzes the color capabilities of each individual display, ensuring precise and correct colors that can actually be produced by that specific display. Plus, there is also the Ambient Light Smart Control that makes ongoing measurement, monitoring, and compensation of ambient light conditions. However, the maximum time frame is only one month prior to the calibration notification. X Rite ColorMunki also does not have charting capabilities to determine the current gamut and gamma levels.
Spyder 4
On the other hand, Spyder 4 has a distinctive three-legged body. It is also compact, lightweight, and portable. Spyder 4 is actually available in three variants: basic, pro, and elite. The basic one does not have the ambient light compensation feature, but the pro and elite versions do have this feature. There are various time frames available, up to six months prior to the calibration notification. More importantly, Spyder 4 offers charting capabilities that enable you to determine the current gamut and gamma levels to make the precise adjustments. It also has the colorimeter, a display that informs you about the various things that need to be measured and calibrated on a monitor.
Conclusion
Both models work very well in making calibrations. Spyder 4, especially the higher versions of it, seems to have more functions and features than X Rite ColorMunki. Therefore, we recommend you to choose Spyder 4.
