Dell d620 owners (or anybody else)

Im thinking about getting one, would you reccomend it? Ive heard the screen is not very good, is this true? Is it portable, do you take it with you on the road alot, use it on your lap? Would you reccomend buying it or something else? Im looking at 13-14" widescreens with the brightview, using it for school, not a gamer, and my budget is no more than 2k. thanks alot-

 

Hi bw1985,

I have a D620 w/ C2D. I am quite happy with it.

I have to say, the longer I have it, the more I like the matte screen (does Dell offer a Brightview?) even though at the beginning, it seemed slightly blurry. But if your in an office with a lot of light, it's actually perfect. For outside in the sun, it's okay but the brightness could be slightly better.

As for heat, I have no issues whatsoever. It's quite cool and, yep, I use it on my lap.

As for what to buy, maybe the more senior guys in this forum can give you better suggestions.

jasper

 

The only options for the d620 are the 14.1 wxga screen or a 14.1 wxga+ screen.

Dell doesn't offer their version of "brightview in the d620, sadly.

Maybe you are thinking of the ultrasharp option that some of their notebooks have.

Consider posting in the "what notebook should I buy" forum if you have questions.

 

Check out the 75 pages of complaints about the D620 screen quality on the Dell Forums first:

http://forum.us.dell.com/supportfor...essage.id=21944&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

 

I have a D620. Using it for this actually.

The screen's perfectly fine. You'd find me on that 75 post where I said it's fine. I compaired with my 19inch LG desktop LCD with a 1400:1 contrast ratio and it looks fine next to it. I also compaired it with an x60 my sister's friend uses when she was crashing at our place. X60 had slightly better viewing angle but again it's low resolution. Color etc same as both X60 and 19inch LG.

I have also had everyone in my lab looked at this (one guy has the model before the M1210 and one guy has an insprion 15 incher) and a couple of people in my grad courses look at my D620. No one has mentioned anything about the screen. In fact one guy said he wish he had gone for the D620 insted of the M1210.

Further more the company I worked at before (one of the cell service providers in Canada) now issues D620 for people needing replacement laptops or new employees. My ex-coworkers all wants a D620 and they have all seen it. No complains.

The things I have found that could explain why people thinks there are issues are:

1) If your face's too close to the screen it looks kind of odd. Maybe those people played too much CS and now work with their face a foot or so from their screens.

2) They are the grass is greener kind of people or just moaners. When my ex-company had a strike situation with the call center people they send everyone else from the company to train to take calls just in case. You get live practice. From that experience I know there are just some people who are never happy.

3) They are confusing the glossy screen's issues with quality. With a glossy screen when you look from an angle you see reflections. I tried this with my axim x50v and on closer inspection it's not that you get better viewing angles but rather that with the reflection it masks some of the effects you get from limited viewing angle.

4)Color is very subjective. For example when you compair all the models on display at a shop some look nicer. Specifically some of them seem to show better color. However, sometimes those screen are actually just over saturated rather then showing you what the original thing looked like. So unless you have a calibrated screen you'll always have problems saying what's better.

As for heat. The top stays cooler then the Toshiba Tecra I was issued when I was with above said company. It's also cooler then my last personal laptop a compaq M2000. The bottom however is similar to the those two.

Considering that there are some people who feel strong enough about the screen to return it (althought I can't say for sure they really had bad screen). You'd really want to either get a firm commitment in writing from Dell for liability free return if it's not to your satisfaction. Or find one to try it out.

 

Wow, just spent some time on that complaint Dell thread, regarding D620 screen quality. Quite the thread indeed, and quite dissapointing response from the Dell 'representative' supposed to be posting on the site with updates periodically.

I was honestly considoring this machine, and waiting for a configuration that I liked, but now I see this...it's always SOMETHING with a machine...something keeping me from making a purchase.

 

Some Dell D620 (and D820) screens are better than others. Careful reading of the above thread shows that some of the newer LG screens are regarded as OK. Samsungs (SEC3xxx) seem to be quite poor.

 

I have the samsung screen. It really is ok. A lot of the people complaining are using the WXGA+ screens. I didn't get one of those because someone else told me the letters gets too tiny on their 12 incher. So you can say there might be some issue with the high rez screen and I can't say if there are or not.

You'll also notice that there are people who actually thinks the screen's fine. What you have in 75 pages is just a lot of the same people saying "when when when is my fix?". Unforunatly for them chances are good there are no fix because most likely Dell doesn't see an issue.

Remember Dell sells a lot of these machines even if the thread is 1k entry long that really doesn't mean there really is a general issue.

 

Yes. I'm sure you'll find a complaint thread/discussion/website for any electronic product, or any product for that matter, because people want to get their complaints heard (which is understandable). One must keep in mind more machines are sold, many more, than the amount of users complaining.

Anyone remember the 700m headphone hissing issue? That never ended.
www.recall700m.com I believe was the site. Especially the mass(ive) producing companies, Dell, HP, Compaq, more volume & lower price = slightly inferior quality & quality control standards.

 

So how does go abouts making certain they recieve the newer LG screen vs the Samsung when ordering the machine?

 

I have a Samsung screen which I am happy with. I don't think you can choose a screen.

Battery life is good and charges quickly. It will be more than enough to do your work. I suggest the Nvidia option for more adjustments to make the screen look better.

 

Yours is for you - I have used one that started to give me a headache after 30 minutes due to its poor clarity.

No. My D820 Ultrasharp screen is definitely not greener. Green is rendered rather poorly, and shows distinct banding in the upper right and lower left corners.

If you have a Gretag Macbeth it isn't. You can also find out a lot with a continuous color tone, or an image that has subtle tone variations. Variation of colour with angle (which is quite dramatic on the D620/D820 screens) can also be quantified.

 

I have two D820's(one is an exchange) right now, side by side. One has a Phillips and the other has a Samsung LCD. When the two are put side by side, the difference is quite significant. The samgsung is actually really bright, brighter than the phillips. I have tried adjusting gamma, etc to make it equal to the phillips what is just can't match the quality. When looking at photographs the difference is very noticable. The greens of trees, for example, a rich and realistic on the phillips. Whereas on the Sam its dull, lighter. Much more light leakage with the Sam also. I look at a photograph taken at night, phillips looks great-blacks are black; the sam-brightness on bottom ruining the nightime photo, and more significantly what's suppossed to be dark black is lighter, not grey but not true black.

 

I have a D620 that I had for a week. Not a bad laptop, but I think I would have gone with the XPS 1210 ihttp://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=83003&page=2nstead now.

Battery life with the 6 cell is poor- very poor. I have the nvidia graphics and with wifi and basic task as typing and light internet usage, the battery life is under two and a half hours- and this is with the screen on a brightness of 2 out of 8. I'd really hate to see how long my battery last when it gets older.

Screen is definately not that great. I have the AIO (AUO?) sxga+ screen and its a bit grainy (I dont think its the LCD so much as it is the screen's finish).

I also have the 2.0 ghz c2d with 2gigs of ram, and I think for some reason or another it lags doing things.

 

You went and tested the D620 D820 screens? Man I envy your free time quota.

 

For some reason, the Mods over on the Dell forum changed the message ID so the link above is broken. Here's the new link:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=latit_video&message.id=23548

 

Yes cause "someone" posted an internal Dell email address and violated the usage agreement of the forum.

Further more it looks like you can't win by moving to a different manufacturer: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread169447.html
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Board=news&Number=25136