MacBook Pro With Retina Display Review - A Superlative Experience

also given, samsungs gamer 7 screens are 120hz while the sagers are not. does this have a huge impact on the quality as well?

 

I dont see where the you got that results, its around 70% of sRGB, not aRGB, for the sammy screen, trusting on the notebookcheck numbers.

the dreamcolor2 is the best notebook screen right now, the auo panel that sager uses is good, but its a 8bit panel against a 10 bit panel, with TN against IPS, its a given that the dreamcolor2 costs a LOT more.

but yes that auo panel is still the second best notebook panel. If you care about color accuracy.

What is your purpose? gaming? if its only that, dont be that much concerned about it.

no that just means that the refresh rate is higher on the screen, meaning it will look great at 120fps

 

Not this again.

Color gamut is not the same thing as color accuracy.

Gamut = overall range of colors which can be displayed
Accuracy = deviation of the actual color output from the expected color, given a particular (R,G,B) value referenced to a particular color space

A larger color gamut does not imply greater color accuracy. In fact, with wide gamut screens the opposite is usually true.
Why? Because:

1. 99.9% of the content people view is intended for the sRGB color space, because sRGB is the standard for the internet, and because sRGB is equivalent to the ITU 709 standard color space used for HDTV, and because it's very close to the SMPTE and EBU color spaces used for NTSC and PAL video respectively (it splits the difference between the two). sRGB is not some antiquated irrelevant color space. It's the current standard, and since it shares primaries with the current broadcast standard, it's not likely to go away any time soon.

2. Relatively few applications outside of the image viewing & editing category are color managed. Being color managed means they can recognize the color space embedded in an image's metadata (i.e. sRGB) and use OS services to translate color values from the image's color space to the color space of the output device (i.e. your wide gamut screen). Anything that isn't color managed just sends color values straight to the screen without translation, which means you get distorted colors unless the screen is calibrated to the same color space the image uses. Things that aren't properly color managed include: all web browsers except Firefox with an add-in, most video players (including WMP and VLC), all games, the Windows desktop background, Windows UI elements and icons. That means that even if you calibrate your wide gamut display and install the resulting profile, most of time it isn't being used and you're looking at distorted colors. Note that more of OS X is color managed than Windows.

3. Many wide gamut monitors have an sRGB mode, so you can avoid color management issues most of the time and only use the wide gamut if you need it (which for most people, is never). However, wide gamut notebook screens don't seem to offer that option, so you're basically screwed unless you don't mind looking at distorted, inaccurate, oversaturated colors in anything that isn't properly color managed.

4. The are a fixed number of possible color values, i.e. red 0-255, green 0-255, blue 0-255 resulting in a fixed number of discrete colors. When you map the set of possible color values onto a wider color gamut, you get larger increments between discrete colors. You're effectively trading off color resolution (and thus accuracy) in the middle of the color space where it's most important in order to cover parts of the color space which are much rarer to find in real life. This becomes a moot point if you have 10-bit color values, but only if you have a 10-bit path all the way (application, OS, video driver, GPU, and panel) which is rare.

So suppose you have the holy grail: a 30-bit 100% AdobeRGB screen that is calibrated and matches the AdobeRGB standard perfectly, and you have ideal apps and an OS where everything is correctly color managed and there is a 10-bit color path all the way through. In that case, your display won't look any different than if you had a calibrated 24-bit 100% sRGB screen unless you're working with photos shot in AdobeRGB. For video, it would look the same. For web browsing, it would look the same. For games, the same. OS & application graphics and icons, the same.

The only people who have any legitimate use for a wide gamut screen are professionals in a print-based workflow, or maybe the occasional hobbyist photographer who shoots in AdobeRGB and only cares about how his photos look on his own computer screen. These people can go buy big expensive Eizo desktop monitors. Most everybody else looking for a wide gamut screen is either senselessly chasing numbers or prefers overblown neon colors to accurate colors (which I'm perfectly OK with as an aesthetic choice, just don't claim you want accuracy).

/rant

 

In other words, the Retina screen is perfectly fine.

 

Have you ever seen a 30-bit 100% ARGB panel side by side with a 24-bit or lower 100% sRGB panel, both calibrated and in sRGB mode? If you have and didn't notice any difference in games, video or photos - you probably missed a lot. It's not about "accuracy" or neon colors. It's about the color depth - the number of hues for every color.

You won't believe how many time I have heard "It should look all the same in games and browsers if calibrated properly and using the same mode - sRGB". And then these people would see my HP 8740w side by side with a calibrated M17x RGBLED and quickly change their mind to something like "Wow, how come it looks so much deeper in Crysis?!" Not oversaturated, deeper. Difference. It's like adding another dimension to the image, as if it's alive and not just "standard" or unnaturally vivid.

But then again, if you pursue a color accuracy for making web content - you don't even need 8-bit.

 

What does an Elitebook 8740w with Dreamcolor cost?
What does an Alienware M17x RGBLED cost?

 

You can probably get a new gen 8770w with DreamColor for about 2k but it will be fully upgradable (CPU/GPU/RAM/storage/wifi/etc) and have a 3 year next business day international warranty.

That was the older gen. The new AW's don't come with the RGBLED anymore.
I'd say, if you need extra color depth and wish to stay in the 15" sector, it's one of the 4 options:

1) HP Elitebook 8570w (30-bit IPS RGBLED Matte)
2) Dell Precision M4700 (30-bit IPS RGBLED Matte) - should be available this month
3) Lenovo W530 (TN 95% AdobeRGB)
4) A few Sager laptops that come with the TN 95% AdobeRGB as an option, same screen as the W530

 

8770w with DC2, 4 year NBD w/ accidental and discounts is about $2500 USD, I ordered a CTO last night but a tad bit upgraded to replace the 8740W. you can find refurb 8740W and 8760W with the DC for under 2K

 

One more? Are you collecting these, lol?

BTW, is it already available with Nvidia GPUs?

 

gaming is not the ONLY purpose. my main purpose is to design/photoshop/cs6. (trying to be a shoe designer) but also i want a beast laptop to be able to handle whatever i throw at it.
i am not spending 3k on a retina display mac. just cant do it. funds being a big issue but in the end i just would never spend that much.
so in the end it came down to the Sager 9150 w/95%ntsc or the Samsung Gamer 7.

Reading here, it does seems like the Sagers screen are very nice actually.
But also, reading reviews like notebookreview, the samsungs has a "953:1 which hardly any device reaches". So it must be nice right?
i am just trying to make a good buy since this was something ive been longgggggg waiting for (having multiple hobbies..1800 doesnt come easy)finally the time has come to give "someone" my money.
just trying to figure out who that "someone" is going to be loll. thanks for understanding.

edit: if for gaming purposes doesnt really require to have top of the line screens(video cards are more of a concern?), then "who" makes good screens relevant? a high end screen is more important to those of what purpose? and so in the end the samsungs screen doesnt compare to the sagers at all?

 

sorry youre right, i misplaced sRGB for aRGB.

 

the sammy screen aint good enough compared to what sager offers, the 90% aRGB screen on the 17 is also much better.

why dont you just get the 8570w and be done with it?

 

haha well im not just trying to get the best screen possible. i am looking to get the best screen within my category, which is either the sager 9150 or the samsung gamer 7.

im guessing the 8570w is best for people whos looking for one purpose and one purpose only, while what im looking for is a multiple of things.

beast laptop, portable, for design school, gaming. i "thought" i was set on getting the sager 9150, until i came across the samsung gamer 7. read plenty of reviews and all say the same thing. gorgeous screen. while i have read many sager reviews, they rarely mention anything about the screen (omg so beautiful etc), more of how it performs.

i just cant get over why people are so sprung over the samsung gamer 7 screen if it isnt even better than the sagers..120hz(samsung) vs 60hz(sager) and still the sagers screen is 2nd best behind the dc2. so in this case where does the samsungs screen fit?

 

You should move this discussion to another area or through PMs since it is no longer pertaining to the RMBP (or its review). There is a nice area called What Notebook Should I Buy? that has multiple contributors. I know we go off-topic a lot in these forums but it would free up some space in this particular thread. I could even move the posts pertaining to this discussion if you start a new one continuing the conversion. Just let me know.

 

oops ( 10 char )

 

yes im collecting them so is Chorus entertainment and Jim Pattison broadcasting.

I ordered with the Fire Pro for now and will swap in a quadro if I need it which is doubtful as its another unit for CS6

 

It would be perfectly fine, if it's gamut stays close to sRGB, color accuracy is good, black level and contrast are good, gamma & white point are reasonably close before calibration, etc. I think the jury is still out.

I don't think you're getting this. Games are not color managed. When you're playing Crysis, the color values are being calculated in the GPU without any regards to what display it's connected to. The color profile conversions provided by the operating system are completely out of the loop, so the display is showing them raw in its native gamut. Same for video. Same for any application or part of the OS which isn't color managed. What you are calling "deeper" is color distortion, stretching colors from the sRGB color space the game was created for into a larger color space. Regardless of your protests, it is over-saturation.

As I mentioned to you before, this isn't necessarily a bad thing for games. It's an aesthetic choice. I used to use a wide gamut monitor and I liked playing games in the wide (incorrect) gamut, but I used the monitor's sRGB mode for everything else.

Also, color depth is technically the same thing as bit depth for a computer display: the number of possible colors that can be displayed. That's independent of gamut. And as I explained in my previous post, the larger the gamut the larger the steps between discrete colors, so a larger gamut screen with the same color depth has fewer hues in a given area of the color space - not more.

And I've never seen a laptop whose screen had an sRGB mode. When external wide gamut monitors offer an sRGB mode, they are doing color space conversion in the monitor. With laptops, the color space conversion is only in the OS, so it only applies to color managed apps and only if you're using the right color profile for your panel.

???

 

PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscale images (with or without alpha channel), and full-color non-palette-based RGB[A] images (with or without alpha channel).

PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet. It was approved for this use by the Internet Engineering Steering Group on October 14, 1996. PNG was published as an ISO/IEC standard in 2004.

 

Precalibrated profiles, is that what you wanted to hear? It seems you never owned an Elitebook with a DreamColor panel. You can switch between pre-calibrated modes on the fly: Full Native, sRGB, ARGB, etc. I agree with the theory though, that's exactly what I was reading about before purchasing my first Elitebook but my opinion about real life color reproduction has changed since then. You will see more color hues even if the applications aren't color managed. Like I said, I've seen quite a few people who claimed what you state and yet changed their minds after seeing the screen in action. One of them said, there could be another conversion layer implemented by HP (using the Mobile Display Assistant software) which "forces" the colors in non-color managed apps. Can't say I agree to that, since I lack technical knowledge in this area, but I can tell when the colors look too vivid, oversaturated, bleak or real.