2 Monitors Calibrated and Still Different

Eia

I've just calibrated both laptop and desktop monitor. However, they both look different. My laptop monitor is brighter, my desktop is darker. I calibrated them at the same time, same spot, same light.

Is this common?
Should both monitors look the same?
How do I know which one is the correctly calibrated one...
does it matter if they are off?

I used Spyder Express. (even though they are different, the colors are much better than before calibration).

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

jdryan3

Eia wrote:

Is this common?
Should both monitors look the same?

Yes it is common, and no they should not look the same in most cases. You don't tell us what type of external monitor and laptop you have, but more than likely the laptop is using a TN panel and the external may be using an IPS (do a search on the forums to research the many threads on this).

Also, more than likely, your laptop is only able to use one profile at a time. So even though you have a separate profile for each monitor, most laptops have a video card (look up LUT) that can only handle one at a time. So if you load your laptop profile both monitors will use it and vice versa.