Beware! Display Quality on SXPS16 not on par with reviews

Many reviews have commented on the quality of the display.

However measurements conducted using a professional grade meter severe issues:

• Yes the colors do pop but green is widly oversaturated
• Most colors have incorrect hue
• Yes maximum luminance is very high but black levels are very poor, so the contrast remains below 580:1
• Color temperature is too high (greyscale suffers from a greenish tint)

Those issues cannot be solved:

1. Calibrating the greyscale to a different color temperature (65K standard) reduces the contrast significantly. Adding some red will fix color temperature but also increase black luminance and hence reduce the contrast.
2. The color saturation and color hue controls do not alter the green color in any significant way.

While the display may be ok for gamers who like nuclearly inaccurate colors, the display is very poor for what it is supposed to do: displaying Bluray films and other video content (after all this is a 16/9 HD media laptop)

• The poor black levels mean the picture looks flat and 2 dimensional
• The color inaccuracies lead to radiating grass and foliage as well as incorrect skin tones.

I am including the details of my measurements below, as well as examples of ow the color settings of the ATI Catalyst Control panel affect the readings.

Contrast
Black Level: 0,48cd/m²
White Point (maximal luminance): 270cd/m²
Contrast: 560:1

Unfortunately, this is merely average, as most competing non LED panels have contrasts of 600:1 or higher. Also any good screen should have black levels below 0,3cd/m².


Greyscale
There is a blue and green excedent across the full luminance spectrum which increases at low stimulous. This is typically due to lower quality RGB LED backlighting. The backlighting produces a green/blue light instead of a white light, which becomes prominant at low LCD luminance. This means balancing the grey scale will require adding some red and black levels will suffer.





The color temperature can be fixed however it means adding red, which further deteriorates black levels and contrast!


Standard Color Space
This is the color space with the standard saturation and hue setting

Color Saturation = 100 and Color Hue = 0 (Standard)





As demonstrated below, adjusting the color saturation and color hue controls in the AT Catalyst panel does not allow to correct the color inaccuracies!

Increasing Color Saturation
This merely removes blue from both the green and red primaries.

Color Saturation = 120




Color Saturation = 200 (Max)




Decreasing Color Saturation
This merely adds blue to both the green and red primaries

Color Saturation = 60




Color Saturation = 20





Increasing Color Hue
This merely adds blue to the red color.

Color Hue = 30 (Max)




Decreasing Color Hue
This merely adds blue to the green color.

Color Hue = -30 (Min)

 

Actually, retraction, as I am using the WLED and not the RGB screen.

 

Are we sure that this is the case for ALL SXPS1640's or just the one it was tested on?

 

Apparently it is the same model built in all regions. It is the Samsung SEC5448. Many people in the forum have confirmed they have the same model as mine.

This was confirmed by Dell when they said they are using a unique provider for the RGB LED display.

 

Thanks for this. Of course the average person will probably hardly notice inaccurate colours, and since the screen's bright and vibrant it still 'looks' good. But for serious colour work that sounds pretty bad. Nice in-depth analysis.

 

The Studio XPS 16's screen looked absolutely fine to me when I was watching a Blu-ray movie earlier today...

 

That sucks monkey balls! I'm glad I didn't get the RGB LED then.

Now how about the other option, the WLED display? Any idea?

PS: Props on the in depth analysis!

 

You likely won't be able to notice anything with the naked eye. It would look fine, but it may not be "correct"/"perfect"....

 

I'm much more interested in what an average user thinks than what a professional calibrator with lots of expensive equipment thinks. I'm guessing that people who wrote good reviews did actually see the laptop and liked it, but a few more "real person" opinions would be good!

 

I'm one of those "average persons". Even so, I noticed that the hue of the screen (RGBLED) is a little off. I noticed this when checking pictures of people I previously took (and comparing them to my other two monitors and TV). What's supposed to be pure red looks a bit pinkish. I tried to do minor adjustment to the hue to correct skin tones (to somehow match what I see on my other monitors and HDTV, but then yellow colors become tinted too quickly with green.

And about the over-saturation. I guess everybody obviously sees that.

 

the wled looks great. even so, if i had the extra cash and saw your review id still buy the rgbled, it is suppose to look amazing, not be calibrated the level of the hubble telescope.

 

Actually, Hubble is a good example since the pictures we see from it look great, but colours are often technically edited and incorrect.

 

Honestly, who cares. If you are doing stuff where colors have to be 100% correct, you are likely not going to use the laptop's display, but an external monitor. I'd even say that people who can afford a $1800-$2000 laptop with the 1080p display, will use an external display for at-home movie watching and the laptop's screen would only be used in occassions when a TV hookup is not available.

 

It mattered for me. It was one of the reasons that made this laptop attractive, how it was advertised to have 100% gamut, etc. That gives 1640 an advantage over other 16" 16:9 laptops out there. Also I expected it would get pretty accurate colors out of the box.

But it doesn't. Oh well, I can live with it. I'm still happy with the laptop overall.

 

I just have a couple questions to pose...

Is it possible some of this is due to the ATI video card?
In the past I have seen color differences due to the video cards, now if it is a hardcoded problem it doesn't matter where it is, it still exists.
The reason I ask, is maybe it is possible a new driver fixes image quality, or maybe a new driver will expose new settings on the laptop that may help in dialing in some color accuracy.
The point is I guess I want to hold out hope in the future for those that have the laptop or still want this display. Puremind, maybe you can float an email to ATI/AMD on the matter if you are so inclined and see what they say. Maybe the driver needs better tuning for this particular display technology.
I would but fidelity of this caliber is beyond my scope.

Also, I notice there was an updated A05 BIOS 1-27-09 which actually addresses the monitor Blue and Red, not for this issue particularly, but it does make me curious as to if a BIOS update can alter the R,G,B aspects of the panel in any way. Granted, I know alot of that is hard coded at a factory, I just don't know the extent a BIOS may be able to have in affecting it at all.

Last thing, is how do other RGBLED laptop screens really compare to these readings specifically?
AFAI hear, laptops are not anything like a professional grade calibrated external monitor so what should really be expected here?

One problem I think of for myself is so many images and even video is oversaturated for displays which just lack color brightness/vividness (CRT's, cheaper LCD panels with coating), but a Glossy RGBLED is probably at the top end of the vividness scale and will make oversaturated content probably look flourescent. Not saying the green isn't a problem, but I'm wondering if I can deal with that for myself. I wonder if the ATI drivers allows some video overlay settings to compensate for that.

I guess I want to be hopeful because I have a tough time getting my head around convincing myself to downgrade to a lower resolution and the WLED.
It may take a new revision, so if at all possible I hope you sent your findings to someone at Dell, especially if you still have the laptop they may be inclined to put you in contact with someone in the know there who can research it deeper.



Thx for the input puremind, but you caused me a dilemma from what I have been reading in reviews.

 

The Greyscale issue (greenish color temperature) is the same on the Alienware M17 (ATI) and the Toshiba Qosmio (NVidia), so it happens irrespective of the graphic card OEM...

But to be honnest this kind of greyscale is meant to increase the perceived and measured contrast, which it does, so changing it is not an option. You would only want a perfect greyscale if the native color temperature of the panel is fine by default or if you have loads of contrast to sacrifice!

The color saturation / color hue issues are linked to the panel's backlighting. But correcting such large amounts or saturation from the backlighting though the LCD won't be possible.

Having said that, the biggest issue is the milky, greenish blacks, which can never be changed by the software.

When the LCD is emitting no light, all you see is the backlighting doing its job and its hue or intensity can not be turned down on the software side (LED TV's use local dimming to fix this issue, and Sharp even uses local color dimming, but those implementations not likely to appear on a laptop any time soon).

 

I think many tested tested the WLED panel, which has higher brightness and better contrast and less color satuation.

I may be an expert but I am also a user who has had 4 other Dell laptops before. This panel is just the worst panel of all 5. I don't need measurements to tell you that!

I have had an LG LPL000, 2 different samsung panels and 1 Sharp, all were better than the RGB LED on this guy.

The contrast is an issue and the black levels and greenish light bleeding is another and are very distracting. The inaccurate green (radioactive green) and (pinkish) red are also troublesome.

I think the WLED should be much better and I think that why most reviewers got the WLED from Dell for their reviews...

 

A lot of that sounds like general RGBLED issues, irrespective of the laptop it sits on.

It also sounds like you are almost saying the Green LED itself is just off in spectrum entirely.

Personal preference aside, what's the tradeoffs/compromises for wled then? Besides the obvious ones like resolution. I wish I could see the 2 side by side then my decision would be easy.

 

My preference would be WLED in 1080p. So the trad-off is resolution against better contrast and color accuracy.

From what I have read the WLED screen looks fine.

 

Until you get your calibrator on it.

Resolution is a biggie for me, but if everything else is better then it may not make sense.

Thx

 

lol, nobody knew about this problem until you brought it up.
so i guess the screen is still pretty good as it couldnt be seen by the naked eye and only buy your program thing

 

That's not all correct. After receiving my 1640 the first thing i noticed were the flourecent reds which is really extreme. I need a true color representation working on designing web sites and this issue has really got me worried. Seeing puremind's posts just confirmed my findings and i quickly need to decide if this laptop has to be returned. WLED is no alternative for me due to its lower resolution.

I made this quick mockup to show you how the red is behaving on my RGB LED panel (Samsung SEC5448). I don't know how it will loook on your screen, but hopefully the leftmost picture is horrible wrt. red:



What also looks bad is the alignment of the RGB colors. I truly expected the alignment to be perfect, but looking at small fonts, i can clearly see green and red overshoot / bleed. I thought that was impossible with these new RGB LED panels?

This is what i'm talking about:

 

too bad it's only a mockup in altering the red channel, hard to tell how exaggerated it really is.

Ofcourse having a camera pic from two laptops would be ideal, but I know you would've if you could've.

Alignment is a bummer.
Is it noticeable from a distance when a solid color is on the screen, like white, blue, etc.

 

Well... I like this machine,,,but what do u guys recomend me???

I'm a photographer and need to work with CS3...it's better WLED than RGBLED??? I have a 1440X9something LCD in my Inspiron...the WLED is less than this so I'm not sure what of them I'll buy...

I dont want to start researching again...since I was waiting from July to comeout this model. I was hopefully used to see BluRay and photoediting.

What do u guys recomend me???

 

Since I am looking at the pictures on a RGBLED screen, and the right one looks fine while the left is wrong, it proves that not all screens have the problem you are refering to. You can call these screens whatever, but blurry is not one of them. Are you sure you are not looking at the Windows font smoothing working? IIRC, it does exactly what you are describing.

 

There is a big difference in the images above, for regular users it wouldn't be a problem but for people who work with photos and videos this could be kinda annoying.. that said both WLED and RGBLED is good quality screens!

 

To be honnest if your screen was fine, neither picture should look off at all as the red color should will remain within the HDTV standard no matter what the signal is. If you have the SEC5448 panel, then you have the same screen.

But don't forget it is only mock up, it is impossible for you to know if any picture is wrong unless it represents something that doesn't occur "painted" in the nature, such as faces, grass or foliage...

A red pole could be of any red saturation and hue...he was only trying to show the perceived effect in order to give people an idea.

 

It is a problem for people watching movies. You won't see the film as intended by the director, faces will look pinkish and green will look radioactive.

But by all means if someone is into oversaturated colors, they should go for it.

The main issue is the very poor black levels and blue/green dominance in the blacks and the resulting low contrast.

Shadows look like greenish grey and noone can say this screen makes films look 3 dimensial.

Eyes get get accustomed to black levels above true black.
The best TV's have black levels of 0,0001 to 0,1.
Good TV's have blacks between 0,1 and 0,2 cd/m²
Above 0,2 it is considered poor.

This panel has black levels of 0,48cd/m². At the end of the day black level and contrast is what makes a display easy to watch.

 

He just boosted the red a lot in the left image, it's going to loook a lot worse on any screen. Just you'd expect both to look even redder when viewing on an RGB LED.

 

Does this apply to the 720p screen? How does that one compare?

 

Puremind is the only one who has done a deep analysis, that I know of, on the RGBLED. No one has done one on the XPS 16 WLED screen.
What you would need is a direct comparison made by the same person.

The more and more I think about it and since all reviews laud the RGBLED panel as incredible (I think they actually drool), I think I will be fine. I have just never used glossy on any of my screens, they always looked saturated when ever I saw them, but I think will be fine with it. If not I'll return it. It's not a TV and I'm not using it as a professional monitor so unless it is grossly bad to my tastes I should be ok.

 

Has anyone done a similar test with the Studio 17 and its RGBLED 1920x1200? Ive frequent this other photography forum and have heard some ppl having issues with it.. being too saturated or something to that effect.

 

I agree that with the blacklight turned all the way up, the blacks are pretty washed out, but with the backlight turned down, the black levels are better than on my calibrated Sony Bravia LCD TV.

I see no green tint at all.

 

By reducing backlighting you are also reducing the contrast, unfortunately...on this display the improvement in black levels doesn't overcompensate the loss in max luminance, unfortunately.

The blacks have a green and blue dominance but the eye can get accustomed to a particular color temperature easily if the color temp is about constant from back to white, which is about the case on this display.

 

I'd like to see a side by side comparison of these measurements with other similar LCDs on the market currently. It could be that while the RGBLED has these levels, it is still better than other models out there. Presumably no notebook LCD has perfect display.

 

Has anybody contacted Dell about this issue?

 

My 1080p 1900 x 1080 16 inch RGBLED screen arrrived with a 1 pixel yellow vertical line. I noticed from many threads that Dell's lcd screen have been having this issue but never expected it to occur again in a new xps 16 and especially not a NEW one!

I wonder how long it will last after screen replacement before it occurs and have to repeat the cycle until warranty runs out. Dell is a problematic Laptop manufacturer I must say with lots of recurring manufacturing faults. Never again will I buy another Dell.

 

No doubt you think that if you stay in the dell forum and read up on peoples issues, which those people are motivated to express. The Dell forum has twice the users then the next closest manufacturer forum because of their popularity.

But I don't agree at all with that statement, they use decent components for the most part and I think they raised the bar in past years.
Your LCD issue can happen to any laptop or MFR, I guess Samsungs panels stink then.
Although, no MFR is immune to slipping up or having some lemon HW slip in from time to time, and although I am not excusing that, it will happen.

 

That's really the crux here. These results cannot be compared to TV's or external monitors used for image editing.
We really need to see is side by side RGBLED screen comparisons done by the same individual, or same calibration HW atleast, or a direct comparison to a WLED on this same laptop.

Without a point of viable comparison (similar screen, tech, platform) it's hard to quantify the results in any usable way.

There's is also a possibility some panels exhibit issues that others don't, since many reviewers said it's among the best they ever seen, they may not be pros but they see enough laptops and panels where their subjective opinion should carry some weight.

I'm not doubting what some people have seen here with saturation, nor Pureminds findings, but it may be something somewhat subjective or it may even be a bad panel.

 

In some Spanish forums I red some users with the 720p screens complaining too about oversaturated colors, but other users with the same screen resolution report they are OK.

 

I have tested several displays from 15 inches to 17 inches, about 10 of them.

The other displays had gamut beween 60% and 80% usually with correctly aligned colors. This one has a gamut of 150% with badly alligned green and red.

Other displays had max brightness between 170cd/m² and 220 cd/cm² but better black levels and contrast.

Overall this LCD has slightly lower contrast in spite of higher max brightness and due to mediocre black levels.

the backlighting is also very uneven compared to all other displays.

This panel should appeal to gamers who don't mind inaccurate colors and like to play outside but will be annoying for people ho like to watch blurays. It is ok but not great.

 

Is your sig for real? quad?

 

I'll have to agree with puremind, the blacks aren't all that great and the colors are oversaturated.

For instance I skimmed through a Blu-ray movie and most of the reds were popping out, lipstick on a woman would like like fluorescent glow in the dark red lipstick... I mean it's crazy how everything red is extremely fluorescent.

You only really notice it while watching a movie, otherwise you can easily live with it.

 

Is there not any controls in any of the movie software so that you can adjust overlay saturation? I could've sworn certain software pkg's allow you to do that, I usually do it on my nvidia driver on my desktop. PowerDVD had a theatre profile which I think darkens it up a bit. I hope ATI starts adding these options to their driver, for their highly touted Avivo or whatever it is.

 

You may adjust the color saturation using Catalyst Control Center (from 0 to 200). I've set mine from the original 100 to about 85.

 

My original post (first post in this thread) was showing that this doesn't solve the issue. I have tested all available calibration options. The problem is with the backlighting, so adjusting the LCD won't fix it.

 

The WLED screen is also shockingly bad.
iv got richer and deeper colours on my 5 year old 17" TFT.
the colours are pale and poor, the blacks arnt black.
if you look closely while watching a movie, you will notice that there are faint horizontal lines across the screen (easily noticed in black areas)

i dont expect this sort of when i buy a £880 laptop.

im going to buy a sony vaio FW as its WAY better.

 

okay guys, i'm going to say something very shocking, laptop screens are never going to be perfect. shocking i know. I have a dell xps 1530 with WLED with the most horrible color reproduction ever, although to be honest I'm use to it and kind of like it. I also own a Dell 2408 and the color reproduction is great, however it also suffers from over contrasting problems with Red being way too intense. To be honest, if I"m not spending some insane amount of money, I'm not going to expect perfection.

 

I'm not sure if anyone else is running into this problem. I'm running Win 7 on my system with the 1080p screen and I'm getting a subtle brightness flicker, it's just enough to annoy me.

 

I'm not saying the problems you point out could be fixed.
I was addressing color saturation in movie playback, specifically the R channel, not fixing it but compensating for it.
Furthermore, I am not positive your particular monitor isn't a lemon that has some bad attributes, just like owais may have on his wled.

But however good or bad my current monitor is in front of me right now, I routinely change my video overlay setting to change my "perception" of colors that I see. That is quite sufficient for me. It won't change grayscale or contrast or backlighting, etc., etc. but it does change my color saturation sufficiently. Works fine for me.

This laptop apparently lacks those video overlay settings in the driver while playing movies to adjust the R channel. That's all I would need to be satisfied with over saturation, or a way to do it in the movie playback software. Are our standards different? Very likely yes.

I'm pretty sure this thread has caused more bad press than this monitor actually deserves. How is it that every reviewer goes gaga over it???
Answer is their expectations aren't as high or you got a lemon.
Yes, it falls short, but now there are people running around saying the monitor is crap, because they know no better really.
I've seen reviews taint experiences for people, they point out a flaw then an individual when experiencing the unit cannot help themselves but to focus on it like a huge green wart.
I keep myself a little more open to have my own subjective opinion.

I know you can't be responsible to how people run with it.
You gave a professional evaluation of someone who obviously has high professional standards. That is very useful for other people with high standards thinking of doing imaging work or expecting epic quality at 1080p, but yes the tech needs maturing.

I have a calibrated Bravia 52BXR4 so I can appreciate quality (it's quality to me), one day I will likely have this monitor and I'll actually be able to say what I really think.

At the end of the day it's personal preference and perception. There is flaws in every LCD, no doubt different people react to different flaws differently while others would be ok with what others are not.

Saturation is a problem = Check
Backlighting not best and uneven = Check

I may be able to deal with it quite happily.
it should be better than the 5 year old laptop/LCD I'm upgrading from for "me".

I think people should understand this evaluation is bit high end, I'm not a nub but alot of what you say goes over my head in this category, I understand some of the specs but still it doesn't paint a clear picture.
You sure you don't work for a competing MFR. ?