How do Sony screens compare to Macs?

I heard, actually from a Mac saleman, that Sony notebook screens are the closest in quality of Apple's (which I have to admit have slick screens). Is that true? Which notebooks have the best screens? Thanks.

 

Expensive ones. The high-end versions of the F, the 1080p version of the Z. The E has only average quality, same with i think most other sony's.

 

Thanks. A little searching on the Sony site confirms that. An upgraded screen is available on the F (it is only an extra $100 to go from 1600 x 900 to 1920 x 1080).

 

I find Apple's panels as of late are of better quality than Sony's, especially in the mainstream panels. The FHD Sony panel's have Apple beat though in pure resolution. I keep waiting on Apple to put IPS panels in it's Pro notebook line.

 

As of today:

Sony Z LCD> Macbook/ Macbook Pro

 

Dell's Studio 1749 with 17" 1080p RGBLED LCD is pretty amazing. The 1080p screen on my Z12 is very nice to my eyes as well. Photo's look pretty darn "true" to me. Certainly not as good as an IPS panel but awesome for a laptop.

 

Studio 1749 doesn't have an RBGLED option anymore as far as I am aware. All the 1080p ones available in the EU anyway are WLED even if they don't say so on the CTO builder, they usually do on the packing slip.

It is however quite a nice screen and the one on the Studio XPS 16 is rather nice too. Sony panels in comparison tend to be much more...variable. Depending on where you live and what CTO options you have you can get real stunners or real duds. Be sure to read this forum before you buy is all I can say.

 

There's some talk that the Dreamcolor 2 screens of Elitebooks (15 and 17" screens) are very good. Some people think the HP Envy 14 has a better screen than the Sony Z. Just some opinions from people. There was even a post somewhere with a list of the screens from best to worst.

 

Not to go too far off-topic but Dell Canada still sells the RGBLED screen.

 

The Envy 14 screen is absolutely atrocious IMO.

 

I wasn't wow-ed but some people keep saying that it's better so I just reported those opinions from HP Envy owners that I've heard . But we are in the Sony forum here so... hehe... opinions are likely to diverge.

 

I've had the envy side by side with the z and there is no comparison. Envy is so oversaturared it looks like a cartoon.

 

The Vaio premium HD is supposed to have wider color gamut then Envy, 72% vs 100%

 

It definitely aint 100% aRGB though. Notebookcheck shows that its close in their F11 review but its not 100%

 

The US F11 has a nice screen but it also has a really narrow vertical viewing angle.

 

below is my opinion:

the z's screen is definitely better than the envy's, not only does it have a wider color gamut, but it achieves more vivid colors, higher contrast, deeper blacks, higher sharpness/higher resolution compared to the envy despite being semi-matte. note that glossy screens should naturally produce higher contrast and deeper blacks

however.. like someone already mentioned, hp's laptops with the dreamcolor 2 screens are probably the best in the industry.. since they're the only ones with an ips panel

 

I didn't read it that way. Notebookcheck said "100% GAMUT is by no means available", but who knows what gamut they are referring to. When talking about displays in the US & Japan, it used to be safe to assume NTSC. But not anymore, and especially in this case since Notebookcheck is an Austrian site. They did include a color space measurement, which shows a triangle on a CIE 1931 chromaticity plot representing the color space of the display. But the Adobe RGB color space is not shown for comparison. Unless you want to eyeball coordinates of the triangle from the jpg screen capture and compare to the Adobe RGB spec, it's hard to tell anything from that review.

HP advertises a 72% color gamut for the Envy 17, but doesn't say what the 72% is relative to. It just so happens that the sRGB color space is 72% of NTSC and sRGB is the most common & important standard, so it's reasonable to guess that the display is designed to cover sRGB. If so, that's probably the best choice for 99% of users.

I've noticed that too. Same with the Macbook Pros. But I'm not sure whether that reflects poorly on the displays but rather the images themselves. When you try to make something look good on typical low end, small gamut panels, it inevitably ends up looking over-saturated on wider gamut displays. For example, the stock wallpapers bundled with Windows 7 are clearly optimized for the lowest common denominator. They look OK on my VAIO Y and F, but the colors and contrast looked overblown on my old X-Brite VAIO S560 and on my calibrated monitor in sRGB mode.

So narrow that there's some color shift & light bleed even at the optimum angle. I love having 1920x1080 resolution on a laptop of this size, but everything else about the F display is average. I wish we had the option for the EU premium matte screen, or even the old FW screen. A Blu-Ray equipped machine deserves better.

IMO, the only models in the current US VAIO lineup with good displays are the Z and the X. By "good" I mean something that's not a letdown coming from a previous generation VAIO model with X-Brite display. Sony has definitely gone downmarket with their displays of late. So has everybody really.

 

The screen is my least favorite thing about my newish (US) F11 1080p. Mainly due to the viewing angles. There is no viewing position where you can see a solid color across the entire screen.

I have never used Macs extensively. My other screens now are a 23" IPS Viewsonic and a 30" Samsung... both are extraordinary.

 

Just from normal observation, the Z has the nicest (semi-)matte screen I've seen. I have the non-HD version. It appears much nicer than macbook pros in terms of brightness and vividness and saturation. As has been mentioned previously, blues are oversaturated and some bright reds/deep pinks appear almost fluoro when working in web browsers. However, I didn't find the same issue with those colors when using Sigma pro for converting my RAW files, or using a Zeiss program to look at slides photos - the reds and blues appeared true to life, and as they appeared down the microscope.

That aside, the glass panel thing on the macbook pros is an instant lose for me. Ditching the matte screen option was a pisspoor decision driven by consumerism, imo.

 

okay well as an owner of quite a few of the screens talked about and ignoring the glossy vs matte options heres what I have found sofar.

BEST screen on ANY laptop I have found is the DreamColor 2 IPS panel in the Elitebook 8740w and 8540W, next I would say is the RGBLED screen found in the Alienware M17X and some of the Dell Workstations. then into more of the 8 bit TN panels found In HP, Dell and Lenovo workstaion laptops and SOME of the business class. then we hit the 6 bit panels in which I find the Sony Z a step above the rest, the Envy's I have seen ( do not own one ) are hit or miss as to how I like their screen, then the MBP which trys to compensate for a mediocre panel by shoving it behind expensive glass ( remove the glass and THEN see how good it actually is ), then we drop in to the $4-600 consumer laptops that use whatever cheap panel they can find.

I am aware I am missing a great number of machines as there is an AFFS screen found in a couple of the Fujitsus and Lenovos as well but cant think of the models off the top of my head.

so to to go back to the OP's question Many of the Sony's especially the Z or any with the upgraded screens are BETTER than the MBP.

 

A percentage figure is pretty much worthless in measuring colour reproduction. There's no standard for how that percentage figure is calculated. You can have an area that's 100% the size of the NTSC triangle, yet be skewed and unable to produce the most extreme green values that the NTSC standard allows.

Or it may be able to cover the whole area, but only if the white point is severely off.

Or you can (and in the case of the Z do) have a gamut that goes far towards the edges, but lack a lot of the colour tones inside the triangle. Then it's close to 100% coverage in the same way as fishnet stockings cover close to 100% of the leg. In those cases, you get an overly vivid display incapable of producing nuances needed for e.g. photography and print work.

Thankfully, our eyes are very good at compensating, so we don't normally notice how bad most LCD displays are. And some people even prefer an oversaturated and overly "vivid" display, the same way they prefer turning up the bass and treble on a stereo.
But try to match colours to a physical set of crayons or a McDonalds red-and-yellow fries box, and you'll be astonished that you can't, because the display lacks the ability to generate those colours. Even when advertised as 100% something.

As far as I know, the TT had the last really good display of any Vaios. It's gone downhill since then.

 

I still think the best resolution of all time is my alienware area51m 1600x1200 lcd screen. Its always been so vibrant, just betifull and breathtaking. I can only imagine what the dreamcolor lcds will look like. Im hoping Oled will be a big sucess in the laptop industry and would be nice if laptops started geting them in them before all the mass media has time to break them down in tvs. Besides oleds dont have to be massive to put into laptops, I think we should see them soon damit! We should start a petition to get them developers on there horse's and get them riding along on the idea that oleds need top see laptops and soon! Any way, screens have always been my favorite part of electronics although honestly I dont know much about them. I do know tho that having a higher then 800 cd/m2 will make it viewable in direct sunlight so whenever they could add the feature to laptops would always be a welcome addition.

 

For photographers it is more important with more dynamic range and sRGB when editing is not acceptable. And Notebooks review about the VPHD i think that they meant that the ICC was not perfect.

I have no problem with it in direct sunlight, the matte screen is awesome and the colors look natural when calibrated, not oversaturated as on mac.

 

Very interesting. Also amazing how the human body is so good at compensating for the imperfections that it creates (humans, did, after all, create the imperfect LCD the imperfections of which our minds/brains can compensate for.

For me, this discussion does bring into focus how much ALL laptops these days represent some sort of compromise. Each manufacturer sets a design goal and then everything else falls into position behind that goal, with compromises in each component (there's no laptop with the very best/ideal component in every category) to support that design goal. For me, the design goal of the Z - and all of the compromises it makes to support that goal - makes it a nearly perfect laptop for me.

 

Can you explain further? Are you saying there are "holes" in the color space or just pointing out that there's a discrete set of possible color values (16.2M or whatever) and not a continuous spectrum?

I *think* the X might have the same screen. At one point, my local Sony Style store had both models on display and the screen looked very similar.

 

Between the HP Envy 17 and the Sony Vaio F series, which screen do you think has the nicer color? I read that HP Envy has a glossy screen, which I love since my current Fujitsu laptop also has a glossy screen, but I'm not sure if Sony's F series is also a glossy one. Thanks.

 

They're both considered glossy, but Sony's version of glossy is more subdued than most whereas the Envy has a glass or glass-like coating similar to a Macbook Pro. The color quality depends on which screen you get.

There are at least 3 different screen types for the VAIO F, a glossy 1600x900, a glossy 1920x1080, and a premium matte 1920x1080. The glossy screens are fairly low end panels with an average color gamut. Some people think they look great, but I'd say they're just "average", meaning similar to the crap that goes on most notebooks these days. They're definitely a step below the previous generation VAIOs with the XBrite screens. The premium matte screen is reportedly awesome, but it's only available in certain markets and NOT in North America.

There are two screens offered for the Envy 17, a 1600x900 and 1920x1080 with the latter having a wider color gamut. I haven't seen an Envy 17 in person, but the screens on the older Envy models were definitely better than the US model VAIO F screens - as long as you can avoid reflections. If you live in the EU or Asia, then the premium screen on the F will be better than the Envy.

 

Certain real life colours lie outside the colour space available on LCD monitors, which approximate the colours by mixing three colours.
Like, for instance, Pantone Red and Pantone Yellow, both of which would require a negative amount of blue to be approximated, due to the inherent blue present in the red of current generation LCDs.

For green, you have the problem that the human eye is far more sensitive to nuances of green than any other parts of the spectrum. So the 256 levels of green possible in a 24-bit display just isn't enough, and a wide gamut actually makes it worse -- the steps become more pronounced.
For a TFT LCD, it's even worse, as they (in hardware) only supports 6 bits per colour, or 64 different shades of each primary. It means that the display has to dither, blink, or jiggle the intensity of the other two colours to compensate, but this can be perceived as a colour tint where none was intended. This is especially easy to see for shades of grey, where parts of a picture can take on coloured tinges as a result.

Luckily, our brain is very good at compensating and pretending everything is normal. Which is why we can still perceive colours as they "should have been" in the light filtered through a canopy, or soft evening light. Or when displayed by a truly inadequate LCD display.

 

Your explanation ROCKS. Dude, you need to go tell Joe Bleau that regardless of calibration, if a screen's true gamut is limited then the calibration is a bit of a compromise (eg vivid reds at the cost of an off-balance white).

I was trying to argue that even with calibration, the F's TN screen will never match the quality of an IPS screen.

TN screens suck I was using a 17" MacBook Pro at the Apple store a few days ago and found the color reproduction FOR MY SIMPLE WEBSITE to be revolting compared to what I see on IPS screens (not just my Apple Cinema displays, but other IPS screens I sometimes use lol).

TN Screens make playing with certain colors very difficult. :\

(whoever said it was NOT kidding that there's no way to see an F series US 1920x1080 screen without color shifting.. at any viewing angle)


It's funny though, even despite the ridiculous viewing angle limitation, the F's screen is slightly better at color rendering than other TN screens. It's still really really really bad though!

 

*laugh*

Leave it to Arth to bring us back down to earth with screens.

Did you know that I actually saved your green lined picture to test all LCD screens nowadays for IPS capability?

 

I may be an outlier here.
But funny thing is I prefer Apple screens much more than the VAIOZ1 series for some reason.

I'd compare the Z1 to the iPhone 3GS, the iPad, and the iMacs and they all look brighter and vibrant compared to the Z1 (1080p version btw).

That didn't stop me from being a hardcore VAIO nut though.

 

I'm the outlier that agrees with you. LOVE that MAC screen and how cartoony/jellylike things look. I just purchased an older Sony model with XBRITE fullHD screen..I'm really hoping it's much better than the current Sony screens, which I am unimpressed by

 

First of all there is a standard for calculating that percentage figure, the standard is that it's the relative size compared to the NTSC 1953 color space in the CIE 1931 xy chromaticity diagram.

That is the actual standard for expressing the size of the color gamut.

I agree with you that it's not very useful, since it's only relative size and not coverage. You can have a 100% NTSC panel with only 80% NTSC coverage.

With Adobe RGB and sRGB the standard is coverage, so there you do get a good idea of the colors it can reproduce.

About the fishnet stockings thing, that's just the color banding. The Vaio Z has a 100% NTSC gamut (again relative), about 96% Adobe RGB coverage and 100% sRGB coverage. But it's only a 6bit TN panel, which means you have to divide that huge gamut over just 262144 color levels. That makes it pretty much impossible to prevent color banding.

Actually there are even fewer color levels to divide it over, since color consists of chromaticity and luminance and the panel must also regulate the luminance of every pixel.

So all the combinations with the same proportions of red, green and blue will have the same chromaticity. So in RGB 0;0;0, 1;1;1, - 62;62;62, 63;63;63 all have the same chromaticity (same as the whitepoint in this case, since these are the grey levels), but also 1;0;0, 2;0;0 - 62;0;0, 63;0;0 (all the extremity of red) and even 21;7;5, 42;14;10, 63;21;15 (again same proportions, so only luminance will differ).

I don't know how many combinations will have the same chromaticity, but I think it's not that hard to imagine that a lot of color levels can't be used for different colors in terms of chromaticity.

 

I have VPC Z12GGX/X it is a very high def screen but it can be very harsh too.

I would say Mac.

 

The screen is glossy, the glass makes the screen look nice... but absolutely useless in the sun. I prefer to be able to see what i'm doing at all times.