SZ330 screen color temperature off?

Just bought a SZ330 last week. Everything seems to work fine so far, but I did notice that colors on the screen tend to be very "cool". For example, grays have a slightly blue tint and warm colors like yellows and tans do not show up well.

Tried adjusting with both nVidia color management and Adobe Gamma, but results still aren't great.

Can anyone confirm that this is normal for these screens? Or do I have a bad one?

One of the reasons I switched to Sony from HP is because of the constant raving about their wonderful screens. Sad to say, my 4 year old hp displays colors more truely (although it's a lot dimmer) than the SZ.

 

Does anyone know if the higher-end LED screens have this same problem?

If anything, I'd prefer to sell the 330 and upgrade to a carbon fibre one instead of switching to a different brand/model.

 

I went to the store last night and compared a bunch of different laptop screens. Here are my findings:

- Among similar sized screens (Macbook, Toshiba 13", hp 14") the SZ had the worst case of this color problem.

- the LED screen on the premium SZ was slightly better in this regard, but still not great.

- Macbooks, Macbook Pros, and larger HPs (17") had the best screens and closest to a desktop LCD. Definitely surprised at the Macbook, as it's very affordable.

After all of this, I feel that future reviews of laptop screens on this site should be a bit more comprehensive. Right now, there seems to be a trend towards "brighter is better" but no one really considers color reproduction quality. False information has been spread around for so long that it's now easy to assume that Sony makes the best screens and HP are among the worst.

As much as I love everything else about the SZ, I will have to pack it up for return. For normal use, I would recommend it to anyone, but I can't use it for design work. It really is a nice package though, and I haven't found a system that offers those specs for that size (Macbook has crappy video, HP dv2000 is close but a tad big and ugly).

Hope this helps someone else in the future.

 

Poor you! But nobody have complained about the bad quality of SZcreen on the Forum?

 

Well, I wouldn't say the SZ screen is "bad quality." It's just not great for graphics because of the color temperature. To its credit, the screen is very sharp and very bright. Great for mainstream or business use.

 

Nah I noticed the same thing - not so much color temperature, but certainly poor blacklight performance among other things. Fit and finish is poor as well, panels "snap" on/off of eachother when you push on them, buttons rub onto black screen bezel, etc.

Packing mine up too - not sure what I'll do as an alternative yet.

edit: and like you, I'm doing this for photojournalism stuff and lots of post processing / image editing work - not th ebest screen for such a task.

 

This is also a problem when you say that false info has been spread around. What is the definition of good screens? The meaning of a good screen is subjective. I mean what looks good (& show look the way it should be) to you may not be the case to others. Even if there are very comprehensive reviews on the quality of laptop screens, that does not mean it will be "true" to you because all the time those reviews reflect the personal opinion of the reviewer. There is also the issue of each individual's own expectations & standards of what is & should be a good screen & the list goes on & on....

I'm not defending any laptop manufacturers & I'm sorry to hear that the SZ's screen is not up to your standard.... By the way, you are saying that the SZ screen is very bad but to others it may be the complete opposite......

However, I wish you good luck with your next laptop purchase.

 

I'm not saying the SZ screen is very bad, please read my above post. It's good for certain tasks, but I was disappointed in color quality for such a high-priced machine.

And, I'd consider the brightness of a screen much more of a subjective attribute than the depth of colors it can produce.

No doubt, over the internet, there's always room for error and interpretation, but the more comprehensive these reviews are, the more it helps. If I had read someone's review on the SZ, and that person being in the photo or graphics field, they probably would have mentione the color problem, and I probably would have avoided it from the beginning.

The problem with most reviews is that they get about as deep as "As expected, Sony makes some great screens. It's very bright compared to my last one. Viewing angles are good."

 

well ive had the first batch of SZs(SZ1X) for over 1/2 year now and its still great, never had much problems with colors to me. Its good for doing work and playing games with =p.

 

I'd like to update this thread. I work as a designer so color accuracy is important to me. I have an SZ450 with the LED backlit screen. I can confirm that Javablaze is correct. The screens do have emphasize blue. However, I used a color calibrator (Eye-One Display 2) to create a profile for the screen. Now the colors are very much in tune with my calibrated Sony 23" LCD (yes, Sony really does make great monitors -- almost no correction needed for this one at all).

To sum up: Out of the box SZ screens do have a bluish color cast, but for people who need very accurate color, this problem can be negated with the right calibration tools.

 

Someone claims that the SZ has, specifically, bad "color temperature" but fails to mention whether or not they use ColorVision or LaCie, etc. hardware calibration - hmm.

I use the ColorVision PrintFix Pro and have my SZ Premium screen calibrated as near as possible to perfect to my Epson 2400 and 3800 for about ten different papers and the five different lighting situations that I use the laptop in.

The results I get are good enough to go straight to gallery print or separation with so everyone out there can rest assured that the SZ Premium screen is the best currently on the market by a mile for thin-n-lite laptops.

FYI - no hardware for which color accuracy is a concern is dialed-in straight out of the box and anyone who truly needs accurate color is going to know this and is not going to go around whining about how "bad" the color/screen was on the display models at their local CompUSA or Apple store...

 

Somewhere on these forums is a link to a french website with a note on this. Anyway they say the SZ has a fairly warped range of colours and would make accurate photo colour editing not as good or something. Can't remember which thread had it thou.

 

Sony is using Toshiba-Matsu****a LED screens on the SZ Premiums....

 

Poor Matsu****a got stuck with a company name that gets bleeped out in message forums. Time to rebrand I guess...

I'm not making the argument that the screen on my SZ (Sony or otherwise) rivals my Sony P234 -- the gamut on the SZ is significantly narrower -- but I've had "thin-and-light" notebooks in the past with truly dreadful screens, and this is not one of them. For a notebook this size and weight, the screen quality is more than I would have hoped for. Yes it need a good calibration to even begin to display accurate colors, but so has every other notebook that I've ever owned (no, I've never owned a Mac...). So far I've been able to trust what I see on the SZ and have yet to get any unpleasant color surprises after plugging into my main monitor.

 

i have a 330 too and my screen is fine.

 

I don't want to rain on anyones parade, but I challenge you to load a picture with red in it, like a nice red flower and then attach an external monitor and look at the difference. I've loaded a picture with a red flower on all my computers (3 laptops and two desktops) and the difference is very noticeable. The external monitor attached to the Sony Vaio also produces a noticable difference to the lcd screen.