x201i low screen brightness?

Hi there,

I received a ThinkPad x201i 3249MDU from J&R today. Looked great as it was setting up, the screen seemed a bit dim but I figured the brightness was probably just set at %30-40. Turned out it was set to 14/15. I've searched the forum and saw some people saying the x201i display was generally not very bright, and some people saying they're happily using their x201i at half or even minimum brightness, which does not align with my experiences at all.

At 15/15 the screen looks just fine, but I don't like the idea of using the laptop at maximum brightness at all times for reasons of power consumption mainly. At 14 the screen already looks a bit too dim. At 12 my eyes hurt after a few minutes of looking at it. At medium (7-8) things are barely visible and at minimum there's only a faint shadow to suggest the screen is on at all.

Is this normal for this model? Or is there something wrong with my screen?

Thanks! Nir

 

are you using it under the sun or bright light source?

 

That's an interesting question. I was sitting at my local cafe, inside, with the back of the laptop right against a large window, but I should say the weather was overcast, the sun was behind the clouds and there was a lot less natural light than usual for that time of day. But yeah, it was daytime. I should also add that my wife and I have used several different laptops in the exact same spot over the last couple of years and we've never had a hard time seeing the screen before. Is that something the x201i doesn't handle well?

 

did you get your laptop brand new or used? also, can you take a picture of the laptop LCD on full brightness?

 

The laptop was sold to me as brand new and it looks brand new as well. I took some pictures of the screen at brightness levels 15, 12 and 9. I'm not sure how representative they are of the real situation, they actually look a bit brighter than the screen actually is, but you can see the differences between the levels. Indoors I can go down to 12 without feeling like I'm sacrificing comfort of visibility. Anything below that starts feeling like I'm straining to look at it.

Brightness 15
Brightness 12
Brightness 9

 

that looks normal to me. At lower brightness level you would need to adjust the gamma level from the intel display property to get a better picture quality.

 

Ah, that's good to know. Thank you for responding!

 

I run my x201i at brightness 7 and I find that plenty bright. Mind you, I hate reflections so I avoid any windows in front of or behind me like a plague. I have also used the laptop in nearly total darkness (at campgrounds during a vacation and then I would reduce the brightness level to 4-5.

I have observed though that many people are content running their laptops at a much higher brightness levels than I do. To me their screens are just too bright too look at for any extended time. You might just be one of these people. Looking at your pictures, I'd think that the brightness of your laptop is basically the same as that of mine.

 

I used to think I was conservative regarding brightness. My wife likes to keep whatever laptop she's using at absolute maximum brightness I used to use my Samsung N110 at 3/8, although I've slowly gravitated toward 6/8, which is quite bright if you've ever seen that particular netbook.

Still, I can't help but wonder if there's something wrong with my screen seeing that at 7 it is just really dark, even considering how subjective brightness is and knowing from personal experience how normal most any level of brightness seems after you've looked at it for a while. At least it's capable of a brightness level I'm happy with, which is 13 right now.

 

I know the feeling. Yeah, it's a problem with ordering stuff online. You can't just walk into the store and compare the one you bought with another copy.

Last year I bought a digital SLR camera, incidentally also from J&R (actually, my x201i is from their store as well). I wasn't quite satisfied with the pixel-level sharpness of the images it produced. I posted samples online, some people thought they were normal, other thought that the lens or the body auto focusing module might be bad... In the end I sent the camera back for an exchange for another copy of the same model. There was no restocking fee, but I did of course waste some money on shipment. The replacement copy generated *exactly* the same quality images as the first one. Was it a waste of time? You bet, but at least I learned that my camera was not defective. Piece of mind is a nice thing to have. If you are not satisfied with your x201i, you might consider doing the same.

Alternatively, if by some incredible coincidence you happen to live in Chicago, you are welcome to drop by my place to compare .

 

It's really true. I live in San Francisco and PC retail here is almost dead. It used to be that you could go to CompUSA or Good Guys or Circuit City, hell, even the Sony Store and look at all manner of laptops. They're all gone now... There's a Best Buy but the laptop selection tends to skew more toward bargains.

It seems like manufacturing quality has really gone downhill lately, and I'm all for sending stuff back if it's not up to snuff. I sent a bunch of laptops back to Amazon in the last few months for things like bad keyboards, scratches, even dirt on the keys on one instance. I don't believe any company should be rewarded for poor manufacturing or recycling used products. I have so little faith in any product I get online anymore that, as you say, it's often hard to tell if I got something defective or not.

Thank you for the offer I can't take advantage of it as noted above, but I'm becoming very comfortable with the x201i, screen and all. If no other issues come up in the next couple of weeks I believe I should stick with it. It's still the most adequate laptop among the (no joke) 13 laptops I've tried in the last six months.