Apps to calibrate colours on my VDUs

I have two Benq monitors, a EW278Q and a PD2770U.
I used to have (still have in fact) a Spider calibrator but it is totally outdate and a replacement would be in excess of £100.
I've Googled for alternatives but if anything, found too much!
I am not looking for something that is top of the range. I am just wanting to a) Match the colours of the two monitors as best as I can, and b) generally improve the quality of the colour. As I have cataracts which will need doing sooner or later there is little point at present in spending a lot on this.
Any suggestions for free or relatively low cost apps to help?

I've always used Calman, but even the limited home/monitor versions are pretty expensive. The free one is DisplayCAL:


Assuming your meter is supported, and I think it will be, and you have a pattern generator or set of image files such as are included in the free AVS HD 709, the remaining question is the correction file for the displays you have. I don't know how DisplayCAL does it. Calman comes with generic corrections for my i1D3 meter than have worked very well for my IPS monitors and OLED (and earlier tech) TVs. The gold standard would be to profile your meter on your actual displays with a reference spectrophotometer, but those instruments cost $$$ thousands. I wouldn't try to rent one unless it came with documentation of when it was last certified, and even renting will cost $$. I've seen concerns that colorimeters can drift, but my i1D3, at least, has drifted very little if at all in the 10 years I've had it. (I've concluded that based on comparison of current measurements to past calibrations, and as for accuracy, measuring the OOTB settings of my Sony OLED against the Judd alternate whitepoint they were using at the time; the Sony was reported to be very accurately calibrated at the factory, and my meter confirmed that. I also have tried a couple of Calman-certified monitors from Dell and Asus in the last year or two, and it measured them OOTB as accurate against standard sRGB. However, the latter were worse than my 10 y/o HP Z24i, so I returned them both. The 24" Asus had a whine that varied with brightness, and the 27" Dell had poor color uniformity and was bigger than I was comfortable with. 24" 16:10 is my endgame.)

Sigurd said:

I have two Benq monitors, a EW278Q and a PD2770U.
I used to have (still have in fact) a Spider calibrator but it is totally outdate and a replacement would be in excess of £100.
I've Googled for alternatives but if anything, found too much!
I am not looking for something that is top of the range. I am just wanting to a) Match the colours of the two monitors as best as I can, and b) generally improve the quality of the colour. As I have cataracts which will need doing sooner or later there is little point at present in spending a lot on this.
Any suggestions for free or relatively low cost apps to help?

Click to expand...

I still use my 10 year old Spyder 4 for monitor calibration which works fine. Why not keep using the Spyder you have?

Thank you both for your replies.
barreleye - I think you response is aiming at a much higher level of calibration than I had in mind, I used to have a Spyder, probably more than 10 years ago, but it was a Spyder 3 and if I recall correctly it didn't work with Windows 10/11. I must have had some reason for stopping its use! If I can find it I may have another look at it.

Sigurd said:

barreleye - I think you response is aiming at a much higher level of calibration than I had in mind, I used to have a Spyder, probably more than 10 years ago, but it was a Spyder 3 and if I recall correctly it didn't work with Windows 10/11. I must have had some reason for stopping its use! If I can find it I may have another look at it.

Click to expand...

I talked about the things you have to know about to use software with a colorimeter. If you don't want to use a meter, just use the calibration tools built into Windows 11. You could also go to lagom.nl and use their patterns. This isn't really "calibration" but basically adjusting brightness and contrast by eye, which is half the battle:


If you want to replace your meter, I would go here and ask about the best option for basic calibration if you can't find any recent discussion:


I would guess Calibrite Display Pro is still a top choice, but there are several models now, and you must also consider the software you're going to use as an equally important consideration.

Thanks for the additional advice.

Sigurd said:

I have two Benq monitors, a EW278Q and a PD2770U.
I used to have (still have in fact) a Spider calibrator but it is totally outdate and a replacement would be in excess of £100.
I've Googled for alternatives but if anything, found too much!
I am not looking for something that is top of the range. I am just wanting to a) Match the colours of the two monitors as best as I can, and b) generally improve the quality of the colour. As I have cataracts which will need doing sooner or later there is little point at present in spending a lot on this.
Any suggestions for free or relatively low cost apps to help?

Click to expand...

I've had good success with QuickMonitorProfile and QuickGamma.


QuickMontitorProfile reads the chromaticity values stored in your monitor and creates a custom profile for the monitor that you can then use with Windows Color Management.

In the past, I've bought monitors with bad color casts, and the profiles generated by QuickMonitorProfile corrected the color casts instantly. There's a companion app called QuickGamma which does a similar thing for gamma.