New 13" MBP uses 6-bit display, not 8-bit

yeah, like that $3000 sony.

edit: i want to know which graphic designers want to do their work on an 11" display but also absolutely need to be able to inspect each pixel accurately for subtle color variation. you will see more than the 250k colors on the 6 bit dithered display when looking at an image, or a movie or game, but not when inspecting individual pixels. this question can be expanded to the 13" macbook display. which graphic designer expects to inspect individual pixels on a 13" laptop for color accuracy?

i guess the real question is, do the 15" and 17" macbook pros actually have 8 bit panels? If they do, then I believe apple may be doing some misleading advertising. I expect that they all use 6 bit panels though. But who knows?

 

They're all 6 bit panels going by this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=396144

If you want 8-bit you'll need an RGB LED display or the Sony TT (the latter has some controversy around whether it's really 8-bit).

 

sony AW series also has a RGB LED

as far as color accuracy goes, laptop screens aren't going to match what NEC, LaCie, etc. anyways.

if the 13" mbp turns out really to be 6bit display, that resolve my understanding from observation that the 60% improvement in color space over at apple website is still reserved to their 17" monitor as i noted there wasn't too much difference in behavior of color between 13" and 15"(with obviously less viewing angle). the warmness of color might just be a switch from one set of color choice to another. remember that 6bit dithering to 8bit is still 6bit... it is no different from what the old mbp had.

aside from nikpicking, i am actually surprised to see people have little concern over monitor quality... -_-'

 

The 13" does have 60% higher color gamut than the old uMB, but this isn't the same thing as having more colors. I bet the 17" MBP is also just 6-bit.

 

i am not seeing the same colorful screen on 15" compared to 17"'s so i am certain to answer you the 15" and 17" are different. in fact, as i had posted above, 15" perform similar to 13" panel and not much discernible difference from previous generation mbp(15 unibody, i can't make a good comparison to the old penryn model i once had as it was a matte and without glass cover, i do however still prefer the more neutral color out of it). i created a post about it but i guess everyone else but me have their macbooks and chair glued to the desktop with 4points seatbelts when using it to even notice the problem with viewing angles...

if it isn't accurate the output will be off, you won't get your money like that. imagine your financial analyst tell you after losing your money and tell others if they are picky about being able to perform

 

the problem is that bit depth isn't directly related to quality.

another important monitor quality for content and games is refresh rate. apparently 8 bit color depth comes at the expense of refresh rate (25ms refresh time?).

you can count the number of laptops with 8 bit screens on one hand. apparently they are brand new and are a lot more expensive than apple's offerings. obviously apple will not be including these displays unless they either drastically hike their prices or the price of the display falls.

sure, i want high quality, but i am not going to be hard on apple for not including a component found in $3000 laptops in their $1199 laptop. its just silly.

being able to differentiate between 8 bits of color on the hardware level also says nothing about color accuracy. you could still have an 8 bit screen that doesn't look good or represent colors well, even if it distinguishes between them.

 

how is high color gamut not meaning more colors? care to explain further?

are you saying better color space not equate to more colors? i am lost here

dithering is like cheating, thanks but no thanks.

masterchef341:
calibration exist so better hardware will certainly produce better color accuracy, software resolution isn't an issue here anyways.
people require 8bit colors has less priority on refresh rate, as long as it doesn't strain my eyes while editing anything is all i careful, especially on still pictures.
gaming is another issue that color depth is meaningless beyond a point, and apparently 6bit is fine for them.

bottom line is, good screens are expensive but for apple to advertise all of their notebooks(pro implies that as they did not specified a product, they advertised their line of product here) being able to perform and meet professional need while it is not the case does result an issue.

 

"wide" color gamut does not mean more colors. the color gamut is the set of colors you can display.

since colors are represented as numbers in your computer, i will use a set of numbers to explain this.

lets take a set of numbers [-1 0 1].
now i am going to "widen" this set of numbers [-2 0 2].
i have not increased the count of numbers in the set of numbers that i can display, but i did widen my range.

i agree that a better color space is not exactly the same thing as having more colors.

but keep in mind when i discuss this i am not even talking about apple displays or hardware anymore, my motivation for this is just how ridiculous that guy was who expected an 8 bit 13" display for his serious graphics work. i stand by the fact that you will only notice a difference on serious inspection of individual pixels, and that is not something you will be doing on a tiny display.

dithering is not cheating. using human perception as a tool to display a greater range of colors than hardware is capable of displaying on the micro-level is perfectly valid. everything you see is muddied by perception anyway. as far as color, perception might as well be truth, because that is all we have. ultimately your eyes are going to have to see a color and you are going to use your brain to interpret that color. whether that color is perceived by you and exists in a point in space or is perceived by you and exists as a collection of small points in space is really a non-issue.

I'd like to see some testing done on that 11" sony to determine how accurately we can determine color from:

a) images
b) individual pixels
c) moving images

 

As far as I know the gamut on the 13" used to be 45%, the new ones have 72%. That's a 60% improvement