The ColorMunki Smile is a basic monitor calibration tool that works with both LCD and LED monitors. Most monitors do not show colors accurately with their out of the box settings and this tool is used to configure monitors so that the colors shown on the display is as accurate as possible.

This is very important for people who work professionally with photos and video, such as professional photographers and video editors, as they need know exactly what the content they are working on looks like.

My interest in the ColorMunki Smile is for a slightly different reason, I use two 27-inch Dell monitors on my computer, the S2716DG and the SE2717H, and as they are positioned right next to each other the difference in their color calibration was very apparent and abrasive to look at.

Using the ColorMunki Smile is very simple, you plug the device’s cable into a USB port and then start the included software that guides you through the configuration process. The device has sensors on its one side that need to be placed in an area in the center of the screen (as indicated by the ColorMunki Software) and the USB cable is long enough and equipped with a counter weight, so it can easily be hung over the top of the screen and positioned correctly. The software will then start the calibration process that takes several minutes to complete and when done a reference image will be shown comparing the before and after results. This comparison showed me that one of my monitors leaned more into the yellow spectrum while the other leaned into the blue spectrum. This process completely rectified the color discrepancy between my monitors.

At the time of this post the ColorMunki Smile costs $85(USD), making it one of the least expensive monitor calibration tools. It is however a very basic and entry level solution that is most probably not appropriate for professionals who are extremely dependent on their monitors being perfectly calibrated, but for everyone else it greatly improves the color accuracy for most monitors compared to their default configuration.