Which is better, a colorimeter or spectrophotometer such as the X-Rite iOne Pro?
In general a spectrophotometer provides more accurate color measurements than a “generic” colorimeter does when measuring most displays. However a colorimeter can be specifically calibrated against a lab grade instrument to match a particular type of display, and thus provide extremely accurate color measurements. This approach was taken with the new custom calibrated MDSVSENSOR2 (NEC branded X-Rite iOne Display V2) included in the SVII-PRO-KIT. A spectrophotometer can suffer from drift and low luminance noise issues that can cause problems – specifically when measuring and calibrating near black. In general colorimeters provide superior low luminance measurements than spectrophotometer .
