Spectre x360 (15-ch004na)

Hello

This is my first posting, so apologies if I miss anything that I should be doing.

I am looking at replacing my ageing laptop (Clevo system from PCSpecialist) that is now just too big, too heavy and the screen is not good enough for what I need it for, otherwise it has been a great workhorse.

As my profile name suggests I am heavily into photography and as such am looking at laptops with a very high sRGB coverage percentage.

I have seen the Spectre x360 noted in the thread title on HP's website and have to say that the Vega graphics look like they will fit the bill more than the NVidia for photo editing but also the games that I do play. Nothing heavy.

I know from reading and watching reviews that the previous Spectre x360 had a near 100% sRGB coverage but have read in a couple of places that the new on has dropped down to the 80's. One such place is here, but I notice that the author has not had any responses and cannot see in the link he gives where he is getting the percentage from.

WTD Spectre x360 15t 4k but not now, 86%sRGB, lame for a design machine!

I know it is a new laptop and only just hitting peoples desks etc so not sure if my question can be answered yet. I have tried HP direct and both the people I spoke with did not have a clue what I was on about let alone what the percentage was.

Thanks for your thoughts

Paul

 

Notebookcheck gets about 88% sRBG and 65% Adobe RGB on the 8th gen intel + Nvidia X360. The Screen will be the the same on the Intel G Vega edition. The best consumer option for photography is still the Dell XPS 15 by far for color reproduction (Same screen as the XPS 15 2 in 1 *most likely*). BUT you have to pay the XPS Premium $$ for this benefit. Personally I would shell out for the better screen

ALSO look at the HP Zbook X360 with its 600 NIT Dreamcolor display if photography is your thing. Will be available in May starting at $1500.
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/zbook-x360/index.html

 

Well, those statistics ARE definitely alarming to me after having moved from a Macbook Pro to a Spectre x360 with Vega M graphics. I have sat both machines side by side and compared brightness and color quality and found the Macbook pro to be noticeably dimmer. I also found that white shades seem to be more beige on the Macbook, whereas the Spectre makes them almost POP OUT of the screen. Text is also much more crisp. I spend quite a lot of time (in my spare time) editing photo and 4K video and notice a huge difference between the Macbook Pro and Spectre. The Spectre screen is brighter than I will ever need (hard to imagine anyone needing brighter) and all colors appear REALLY vibrant. So, looking at the figures posted above, my response would be... don't believe everything you see... until you see it in real life, because for me, it's a very different story

 

Perceived white point isn't really a valid way to compare. What your eye sees as "white" varies depending on the ambient lighting and the color of other items in the room (in your field of view). Your brain takes an average of all that, and decides that that is while. If you put more red items in the room, the beige screen will appear white, while the screen which used to appear white will now appear too blue.

I first ran into this when trying to generate color profiles for the photo printer at my local Costco. I printed a color chart twice, once with a stock profile found on a popular photo website, once with a profile I'd made myself by printing and measuring. I compared the two side-by-side in my room and was disappointed that my color profile looked too pink. Then on a hunch, I took them outside and viewed them in sunlight. Suddenly my profile looked correct while the stock profile looked too blue.

You can calibrate to a specific objective white point (e.g. 6500K), but if the color in your room isn't close to white (e.g. your walls are painted light blue), the screen won't look white to your eyes.

I've been following Notebookcheck's color gamut measurements for years. Their reported sRGB measurements are consistently below that of other sites.

I think what's going on is most sites are simply reporting the software measurement that comes with the Spyder, which is sRGB in CIE xy space. That's a 2D color plot, and the edges of the coverage plot correspond to the highest color saturation. Less than 100% sRGB coverage in CIE xy space means you're missing some of the most saturated reds, greens, and/or blues. And higher % *always* corresponds with more color saturation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromaticity

Notebookcheck seems to be measuring sRGB coverage in Lab color space. If you look at their reviews, their sRGB plots are 3D with axes labeled L, a*, and b*. The important thing is that the outer edges of the color coverage wedge in Lab space do NOT correspond to highest saturation. So when Notebookcheck reports that a certain screen falls short of 100% sRGB, it is not saying that the colors are not saturated. It is conflating color saturation with color accuracy. That is, a screen with relatively poor color saturation but accurate colors could still score a high % sRGB in their measurement. (This is probably why their Macbook Pro screen measurements always come so close to 100% sRGB - Apple calibrates each one of those screens individually.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space

If you don't have a colorimeter to calibrate your screen, then the Notebookcheck sRGB measurement is probably more relevant for graphics work. But if you do calibrate your own screen, then the sRGB measurement other reviewers give is going to be more relevant than what Notebookcheck reports, since it gives you a better (more direct) sense of max color saturation the screen is capable of producing.

 

In my opinion, perceived white point is arguably the most valid way to compare. Yes, manual adjustments can be made on almost every device nowadays to suit personal preference, but I've always found that device manufacturers tend to know much more about this subject that you or I and for that reason, I prefer not to dabble with the settings too much. Most of what you just said went wayyyy over my head, and I don't mean any disrespect but it's exactly the kind of mumbo-jumbo that I like to avoid when it comes to buying anything new

I spend quite a lot of time editing images and video and have done for many years, but only as a hobby ...I'm not a professional photographer or image editor by any means. I feel that if anyone is looking to find out what a screen is like in real life, they should simply go to a computer store where they can compare several of the machines that they're interested in at the same time. Live comparison of products is something I have always done, and what led me to recently replace my Macbook Pro with the Spectre x360. A color which appears beige to me, may appear to have more of a white or grey hue to someone else. Likewise, what appears dull to someone else, may appear extremely bright to me! Everyone sees things differently, and for that reason... if screen quality is thee deciding factor for someone thinking of making a new purchase, then to make a truly informed decision, they really should take the time to find somewhere that they can actually see what each screen is like for themselves.

 

tl;dr version is: What you perceive as white is not absolute. Your brain decides what "white" is based on everything in its field of view. So you can't use perceived white point as an objective measure of screen quality. Screen A can look better than Screen B under one set of conditions, while Screen B looks better than Screen A in different conditions.