REVIEW: hueyPRO Makes Monitor Calibration Easy

I have had the hueyPRO for a long while now, playing and working with the device as well as troubleshooting a few things (more on that later), and I’ve realized it has become one of my “must-have” pieces of equipment at my office. The hueyPRO has its own place beside my monitor and I use it every three days to build profiles for my monitor and calibrate its color. I’ve tried it on three other monitors in different situations and it has performed very well. I think that, because its cost is relatively low, there’s lots of reasons to have one and no excuse not to.

The Design Is Excellent

I am not too familiar with PANTONE’s products other than PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM swatchbooks and the like, but if the hueyPRO is any indication then PANTONE’s products have the designer in mind. The hueyPRO is minimally designed, with a black casing and white face. It looks pretty good with the other equipment on my desktop, and I have had a couple people ask about it on sight. What I especially love is the hueyPRO’s stand, which is not only collapsible (the bracket that holds the hueyPRO can fold down onto the base) but the base has a groove to wrap the hueyPRO’s cord into. I do not like visible cords and try to hide them when I can—and other designers are similar, since we are all in the business of creating clarity and order with design. The hueyPRO is designed with those same sensibilities, and its cord wraps very nicely into the base. If you’re not plugging the hueyPRO into your USB port, you can even snap the USB connector into a slot on the base’s bottom after winding up the cord, hiding the entire thing. It’s obvious some thought went into the making of this product.

How hueyPRO Works

Using the hueyPRO is simple. It comes with an application (Mac or Windows) and a preference panel (Mac) or control panel (Windows). An icon also shows up in the menu bar (Mac) or toolbar (Windows) so it’s easy to access the application or controls. Installing is probably the hardest part of using hueyPRO. Once you are installed, just launch the application on your computer and follow the instructions. You will go through a step-by-step process where you specify your monitor type, measure room lighting, set brightness and contrast settings if necessary, and then attach the hueyPRO to your screen so it can measure a series of software-generated colors and grays. When that’s done you have a properly profiled monitor—hueyPRO even lets you compare the corrected monitor to its uncorrected state—and you can also specify what color temperature and gamma you want to use. I use a two-monitor setup, so I will calibrate both in succession; the hueyPRO software knows when its window is moved to another monitor.

The one thing that I don’t like about this process is when the application tests the monitor’s brightness and contrast. It does this by displaying a black and white disk with three different black values and two white values. It asks if you can see them all and, if not, how you should set your brightness and contrast on your monitor. The problem is that, out of four monitors tested, the only one that could display these values was an Eizo monitor. The other three monitors (a Dell LCD, Samsung LCD and MacBook Pro screen) couldn’t do it. And even after the brightness and contrast controls were set up according to the hueyPRO, the monitors still could not show all the values. I just blow by this step of the process during my calibration, because I’ve already set my brightness and contrast controls properly and there’s no sense in changing them despite the black and white test. My technical contact at Pantone says it doesn’t matter if a monitor fails the test as long as the brightness and contrast controls are set up as the application recommends, but if that’s the case why do the test in the first place?

Room Light Monitoring

hueyPRO does a great job of keeping a monitor accurately calibrated even after the application is done. One way it does this is with its active Room Light Monitoring: hueyPRO measures the light around it at regular intervals and adjusts the monitor accordingly. It can do this every few seconds, few minutes or even every few hours. I have mine set to check the light every ten seconds and it does a good job of keeping my monitor attuned to my studio lighting, though I believe that a consistently-lighted office environment is still paramount. hueyPRO also can be scheduled to calibrate regularly, giving you a reminder when it’s due. I welcome these reminders because, if they weren’t there, I probably wouldn’t be calibrating when I need to. I was taught to calibrate every day, but I usually calibrate three times a week or so.

Conclusion

hueyPRO is a welcome addition to my array of equipment. It’s small and well-designed, easy to use and effective. I do a lot of color correction and, even though I correct “by the numbers” and don’t rely on the monitor for color, having calibrated color really helps me in my work. The price is $129, which is not too bad for a device like this. PANTONE also produces a less robust version, the huey, but it is priced at $89 and the hueyPRO comes with a free 1GB Flash drive at the moment, so it makes sense to pay the extra $40 for more features and goodies.

hueyPRO
Rating: 8/10
Produced by PANTONE
Price $129