The LaCie 321 is really good. For all practical purpse as good as the CG210. We just did a fairly comprehensive evealuation of the LaCie, Eizo and our Artisan. Were money no object we would have chosen the Eizo CG210. But the CG210 is $1200 more and definitely doesn’t provide $1200 more accuracy.
We got really good (not perfect) calibrations out of both monitors. The detail on either is staggering. Both also produced excellent gradations. We thought that the Eizo would have the edge here because of its 14 bits vs the LaCie’s 10. But, the LaCie actually edged out the Eizo in this regard. The Eizo was slightly less prone to color shift and uniformity issues. But neither monitor was very good in this regard. It’s VERY annoying to have yellow, cyan and magenta color casts on different areas of your monitor when you’re paying this much. To have the light areas on your image shift in color depending on where you place it on your screen is unacceptable. Will anyone ever fix this?
The hardware rotation on the Eizo is darned cool. Much better than a software rotation solution on the LaCie. The monitor hood on the LaCie is brain-dead. You have to completely take it off calibration and it definitely won’t stay on during rotation. The LaCie casing is a grey/blue color that looks pleasing, but a neutral color would make more sense. The LaCie doesn’t use a USB cable to talk to the computer so there’s a little less cable clutter.
Ultimately, in our comparison, both monitors were good. Both were clearly more accurate than our Artisan. The LaCie barely edged out the Eizo for gradations, but the Eizo had that cool hardware rotation. Were both monitores the same cost we might have chosen the Eizo. But, given the price difference, we returned the Eizo and ordered four more LaCies.
On a side note, we also tested the Eizo L997 with an Eye-one. The software calibration couldn’t touch the hardware calibration. The results were drastically inferior. We came to the conclusion that a nice, capable LCD with a good puck and software isn’t enough. You MUST have true hardware calibration.