Monitor (hardware) calibration - which one?

Hi, I don't understand how I could live all those years without a color profile/calibration on my laptop + secondary screen. I just went to a friend who calibrated his notebook + secondary screen and it looks so awesome. And then I luckily found a guy who did a Spyder 3 Elite calibration on the same notebook as I have. Still I need one for my secondary screen and probably a few others. So I decided to buy some hardware calibration tool. But which one?

Spyder 3 Elite for ~140€
X-Rite Huey Pro for ~90€
X-Rite i1 Display Pro ~200€
X-Rite ColorMunki Display ~160€

I read a lot about the Spyder 3 Elite and it seems to be awesome.. so I guess this would be the most expensive one that I want to buy. How ever, the Huey Pro is much cheaper and I wonder if it will do the job? Will those tools work on all kind of screens (tft,ips,glossy,matte,led,plasma,....) ? I think this will be pretty much a "once-in-a-lifetime" investment ?

Thanks

 

I have used both a Pantone Huey Pro and a Spyder 2 for calibration. Honestly, they came so darned close with their results that I couldn't tell the difference. But then again, I am just a regular user, and not doing professional work (photo editing, video editing, or print).

And yes, they all work on any kind of display technology. They measure the color & light outputted by the screen, and don't care about the technology used to generate those colors & lights.

 

The core hardware will be practically identical if I'm not mistaken. I'm used to the Spyders now, but came originally from Gretagmacbeth (now X-rite) and the key difference with the Spyder3 versions is in terms of multimonitor calibration and ambient light compensation. If you need those attributes, pick the Pro. Otherwise go with Express. I don't think in your position you need the Elite.