Monitor Advice

[MJA]

Currently I use an Acer X241w and spyder 3 pro. When printing, the colors and brightness seem on par with what I see on the screen.
Then, I fire up my Toshiba Satellite U405D laptop and can see a definite difference in photos. Some edits on here I can actually see where parts were cloned or masks were incomplete. Overall the laptop is brighter too. I can see more shadow detail/colors.
Do I have a calibration problem or is my monitor just not suited for post processing? I don't have a problem upgrading if need be. Thanks for any input!

[tim]

Are both calibrated?

[MJA]

No the laptop is not calibrated...I use it mainly for surfing while in front of the TV. If I calibrated the laptop and it came out darker to match my X241W, I would be afraid they were both not calibrated correctly. So, I guess I am questioning the calibration or capability of my X241W..I ended ep with a contrast of 69 and a brightness of ZERO.

[tim]

Calibrate both otherwise you're flying blind. You can always just remove the new profile if you don't like it.

[René Damkot]

and a brightness of ZERO.

Well, since the Acer X241w is a blinding 500Cd/m^2 out of the box, that doesn't surprise me one bit...

If the prints match the screen, I'd say all is well.

Calibrate the laptop screen.

I find that on my (calibrated) laptop, I too see too much shadow detail, if I'm viewing the screen from just a bit too high...