E1705 matte WXGA+ screen opinions?

Well, 1920x1200 is simply way to high resolution to run on a laptop in my opinion. The crux to this is that the E1705 only is available in WXGA+ (1440x900) and WUXGA+ (1920x1200) ...... 1440x900 sounds fantastic for keeping native resolution gaming at a resonable level allowing for some future titles to be playable, however the panel offered from Dell is a matte finish screen with different stats from the UXGA which has been reviewed multiple times.

At first I thought I absoultely NEEEEEDED glossy, however when I was around the house with a borrowed Gateway with the glossy coating, I found myself bothered by that darn reflection from time to time. I own a 19" LCD panel which I like very much that does not have a glossy coating, so I know that they are able to still look very good without that glossy "anti-glare" polarizer.

Did anyone order with the XGA+ on the E1705? How do you like it? Anyone happen to have seen this display in comparison to other panels?

Basically just looking for some opinions on this screen.

 

Matte is the way to go & WXGA is enough for me for the same reasons you mentioned .

The quality of the screen isn't great but there are differences between panels I had , the Samsung panel is better .

If you want better panels 17"er then don't look at Dells , go with high end Sony/Fujitsu or maybe even Toshiba/HP , but I think for a price of up to ~1500$ you get a good value .

 

I bought the matte e1705 about 5 months ago (since sold and replaced) and got the LG Philips LCD, which was generally pretty good. I also felt WUXGA was too high, and though I figured 1680x1050 would be best, I went ahead and got the 1440x900, a resolution I never really liked very much. Anyway, the short opinion is this: good LCD with no dead pixels, but kind of low-res for my tastes; and there was a trivial little patch of what looked like uneven backlighting, but this never bothered me.

 

Do the Dell 17" WXGA+ panels exibit any problems like light leakage or poor color representation?

 

Mine had neither of these problems - zero leakage at the base of the LCD, which is actually kind of unusual in my experience. The minor backlighting thing I mentioned above was a very small area in the upper right corner area (maybe a quarter inch deep by an inch wide) that I only noticed when the background was black. There are pics (though not that great) in my review here of the e1705 and a comparison pic in my e1405 review, though obviously these won't tell you what your particular LCD will be like.

 

hazel_motes I have to say, I didn't see your reviews of the e1405 and e1705 but both were AMAZINGLY helpful! Thank you so much for posting and letting me know about them.

You deffinatly eased my worries quite a bit about the lower resolution screen. The pictures of the laptop showing what a windows desktop look like @ WXGA+ make me even MORE sure that 1920x1200 would be too high res! (strange saying that haha .. too high res .. we're supposed to always want higher right? hehe). Also, it was great seeing it next to the e1405 in comparison.

You can deffinatly see that the e1405 seems to have more color definition, however this may just be the way that these screens photograph. It's understandable that a 14" screen would be a bit brighter than a 17" simply because it's more screen to light using similar space to light it.

Would you say that the picture of the fall background is an accurate representation of colors comparing the two?

 

You're welcome, digitaltrav. Glad it helped. I'd say that particular picture (the fall scene) is a pretty good indicator. The e1405 had a really nice screen (especially vibrant, sharp, etc.), despite the light leakage, which I considered very minor. I just chalked up the difference to the fact that the e1405 had the glossy TrueLife LCD. Like I said, the e1705's LG Philips screen was fine, but my overall preference is matte rather than glossy, and though I'll definitely notice a bad LCD, I'm probably not as sensitive to the finer differences as some people are.

 

wow, hazel motes your pictures really helped. The matte screen doesn't look half as bad as I originally thought.

 

I seen em both and I like the true life. I like the glossy mainly for the clarity and ease to clean. Though it is true about glare with natural light so with that being said I'd try to aim in the right direction.

 

I haven't had any problems with it

 

It depends on what brand of LCD you get. I've used both LG & Samsung. In my opinion, the current LG has almost no light leakage while the Samsung exhibits quite a bit. The LG's default color looks good while the Samsung's look a bit "washout" but once you spend some time using the tweaking the brightness, contrast & gamma, you'll get great colors. The Samsungs are also brighter than the LGs. Hope this helps.