Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

As a graphic designer you're 'rented' for advise in terms of design. If you show up with a laptop that uses a weird looking font for no reason it's hard to explain why your clients shouldn't use a random free font as a corporate font. I use an extra Keyboard most of the time so the laptop keyboard is visible. I'd say it's not a real problem too. I'd say choosing font for the keyboard is no problem at all. But why this? It looks like they only did the Capital letters and for punctuation the standard font.

The viewing angles are not good. The Colors change a lot. The test on notebookcheck.com Test Dell XPS 15 (9530, Late 2013) Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests (german, they tested xps 15) shows that the color gamut is average. In this thread somewhere is said the gamut would be great but its not better than most displays. I can confirm that after working with it.

It is blurry at 1600x900. Before ordering i considered the possibility that i might have to reduce resolution. Actually UI and stuff is too small for my taste with FHD so i thought 1600x900 would be great on a 15'' panel. But its blurry (causing headaches). I really tried to get it sharp but it is not. And this is the same with scaled Apps like Illustrator cs5. It's not as as sharp as you expect it to be when just doubling pixels.

I don know how well the CAD Programs scale but so far none of pro software profited from the high resolution and when lowering the resolution you might get headaches. My Advice is: If you dont care about the design flaw in front of the laptop and you want to start working with this now you should get the FHD Version.

You can wait for windows 8 getting real scaling and not just doubling pixels, and stand the headaches in the meantime.

 

Called Dell France to ask for a return. here is what they said. If you buy it for business and you buy this on the phone based on an invoice and if the price is over 600€ you cannot send it back !!!! Anybody returned a dell laptop in this situation?

 

That's an interesting observation. My guess would be that this may be related to the font-smoothing not working well for quad-pixel blocks. I wonder if you could improve things by adjusting ClearType settings.

 

Not to worry, since it looks like we will finally return back to sanity with the next iteration of Windows 8.2, with Microsoft bringing back the Start Menu, and, with the ability to run Metro apps on the desktop, essentially terminating the ill-fated and ill-advised experiment of the alternative Metro UI.

 

As a graphic designer my clients always seem confused when my laptop's lid color doesn't match their branding and become reluctant to stick to their corporate guidelines. One such event lead to a branding fiasco that cost my client millions (my laptop was gray at that time), so that's why I only use notebooks with exchangeable lids nowadays.

It's perfectly fine to not like the keyboard font, I'm not fond of it myself, but let's not invent reasons to not like it.

 

I tried adjusting cleartype. The readability gets better but the subtle blur was still on. I guess it has something to do with how the Intel Graphic scales the resolution. I noticed that after some resolution changes the desktop icons moved off screen a bit. Illustrator cs 5 uses the 8.1. scaling for example and mi had the impression that Illustrators user interface is less blurry when it is scaled to 3200x1800 px by windows in comparison to lowering the display resolution to 1600x900

I could live with that font. But whenever i opened the Lid somebody made a joke about it. "Looks like late 90ies" and i have to agree. What options are there for exchangeable lids for the m3800?

 

I don't have time to tinker with my built-in panel at the moment, but I can't imagine how you're having trouble at 1600x900. The rMBP can have third-party utilities installed to use regular-DPI graphics at 1440x900 and pixel double to its native 2880x1800 and it looks exactly like a non-Retina display, no bluriness whatsoever -- of course it's blurry compared to the sharpness of a Retina panel, but it's not blurry by regular LCD standards. I'll test my own XPS panel out later, but I can't imagine how it would be blurry if you have scaling set to 100% at that resolution AFTER logging off and back on after making that change.

Can't account for that review since it contradicts what others who have calibrated this display say, specifically that it covers 100% of sRGB. Viewing angles I'll agree aren't as good as some IPS panels, but they're far better than the average TN laptop panel, and honestly how much of your work do you do from off-angle anyway?

Umm, he was pulling your leg about that, dude.... He called you out for "inventing" reasons not to like the keyboard, so it's pretty clear he was being facetious and made up that story, merely pointing out that if your clients ding you for your keyboard font, which you can't customize yourself and which is hardly the most important factor when picking a laptop (or a dealbreaker when you've otherwise found the right machine), then maybe you need better clients. And if your clients are just commenting to joke around rather than actually disapproving, roll with it, or better yet come up with a clever reply. Lots of things in life have their quirks that people will call out; it doesn't mean they're judging you.

 

@jphughan: Thank's a lot, too, for your quick and informative answer. I got a phone call today from our DELL support guy who told me that none of his colleagues is aware of the NFC thing, but he told me that WiDi is working with Intel's 7260 card and that they have the unofficial information that the DELL 1601 WiGig card is working with the new DELL XPS 15 as well as Precision M3800. So, I'm fine with the notebook as there is a big change to upgrade WiGig maybe later.

Unfortunately, as this thread becomes longer and more people have an M3800 at home the negative posts become more, too. I have no problem with the keyboard font, but I hope that I can arrange the internal display with my 29" (2.560 x 1.080) external display? I'm giving me till tomorrow, maybe I should order the M3800 with FHD?

 

Good to know that the WiGig card is a direct swap. I wonder how the Wifi performance compares between the two cards though, especially since that WiGig card only supports 802.11n Wifi, not AC like the version of the 7260 included with these systems.

Keep in mind that forums will always be biased towards negative information. Very few people post here to say that everything is perfect, instead people are usually driven to post when they're experiencing a problem and are hoping to get answers.

As for FHD vs QHD+, there's no question that FHD is the safer and "it just works" option. QHD+ still has some growing pains due to incomplete support in Windows and even less complete support in third-party apps, but how much that will affect you depends entirely on what particular apps you use, how often you'll use the built-in panel, your resourcefulness in finding workarounds, and your tolerance for the bumps that are part of being an early adopter in exchange for being among the first to use new technology. As I've said before, I'm confident that the HiDPI growing pains will be sorted out long before I'm ready to replace this laptop, so I went QHD+ so that I'd be ready with the hardware once the software landscape sorts itself out (and still have a decent experience in the meantime) rather than going with FHD and then having to wait another laptop cycle before I got to check out HiDPI. But then again I don't heavily use Adobe apps, for example, most of which don't work very well in HiDPI (though Premiere and Lightroom seem to be exceptions). At the end of the day you have to balance how much utility or general enjoyment you'd get out of QHD+ vs the growing pains and of course the added cost.

 

Yes please! I'm very curious about this.

It sounds like you're including desktop monitors in your comparison. If the measurements in that review are correct, it's certainly better than most notebook displays. Just take a look at the alternatives linked on the right of that page.