How good is the NP8690 / W860CU Screen FHD LED Screen?

Ok, after months of waiting, I've narrowed down my choice to be either the Dell Studio XPS 16 with a 1080p RGBLED screen and the W860CU a 1080p LED screen.

I'm primarily interested in gaming / Blu-ray movies so I want a gorgrous screen. By gorgeous, I mean glossy, bright, rich colors and deep, deep blacks.

I've heard that the Dell RGBLED is the best screen in the industry. How is the 1080p screen on the NP8690 / W860CU? If I order it, the first thing I am going to do is not run benchmarks, but rather pop in a Blu-ray movie and watch it. Will I be dissapointed I didn't go with the Dell SXPS 16?

 

Since gaming is your main priority, the 4670 @ 1920x1080 will feel behind the times even now with some games. The 280M in the 860 just decimates it as it is supposed to, especially @ 1920x1080.

Screen wise, the RGBLED is gorgeous. There's really no other way to put it. I've used a few of them (one on my M6400 and one on a bud's Studio 17), and it is very vibrant and colorful. HD trailers looked amazing on it, and Transformers Blu-Ray was beyond jaw dropping looking.

It really does come down to what is more important to you....screen or GPU power.

 

The screen on the Dell blows away anything you will find on a Clevo or Asus. I had the Studio XPS 16 before I sold it and purchased the Asus G51 and I knew I was going to be down grading in screen quality. The difference is day and night in quality. This one (AUO 1080p which I think is the same panel as the Clevo) has washed out dull colors in comparison with less overall brightness and much poorer viewing angles. The Dell display looked almost as good as my old Samsung 46" 1080p TV which says a lot. The colors are very vibrant although out of the box, the red push is very strong so you have to create custom profiles to get around that or calibrate it yourself.

Like electrosoft said, it comes down to your own needs. Do you want a gaming machine or something in between with a top end screen? Unfortunately no company has taken the initiative to create a top end gaming machine with an awesome display. I know I'd pay extra for it and I suspect many others would as well.

 

True, the M6400 was as close to the perfect fusion as possible. FX3700 (equivalent to the GTX280M now at slightly less clocks and bigger die), QX9300 and 1920x1200 RGBLED. WoW looked and played well on it.

Gaming companies should take note. Stop cramming craptastic screens in very expensive gaming notebooks.

 

While the W860CU and W870CU are expensive notebooks, mobile workstations such as the Dell Precision M6400 are even more expensive... It's not like the prices are around the same.

But I agree with you, for gaming, theres no point in having a 1080p screen if you don't have a good videocard to deal with it; a Radeon 4670 won't be enough, I think...

 

Thanks for everyone's input so far.

What about the blacks on the W860CU. I posted on the Dell threads and I got a response saying that while the RGBLED was amazing, the blacks are the weak point. Basically, you don't get really deep blacks, but everything else is ok.

A lot of the stuff I watch has large portions of the screen being black and it's one of the first things I notice when I look at screens. Can anybody who has the NP8690 / W860CU comment on how deep the blacks look on this screen?