Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Seems I have a faulty mother/daughterboard. Went to wake from sleep today and screen won't come on. Tried my external monitor and it was glitchy too. ProSupport tech had me run through tests and the LCD works (you can test this by holding D key and power on) and while the screen works, for some reason its not getting data from the video card. It even boots into windows ok, the sounds play. ProSupport suspects a short.

Tech should be out to the office tomorrow to replace, I'm having them take care of the LCD that has a few dark specks while they're here.

 

Wow, 155 pages and counting. This is quite a thread! Thanks for all of the helpful input.

Well, I'm about to bite the bullet and order the M3800. Just waiting for a rep to get back to me later today (I hope) with final pricing. I thought I'd query the group for some final input for now. I've been debating the basic config simply because it is available now and some have indicated general happiness with the FHD display (though I'm not happy with the smaller battery). However, it sounds like people are also saying the overall quality of the QHD+ displays are better not just because of the gorgeous resolution, but because the panel is better (IPS vs. TN, if I've read the thread correctly). I do like the idea of more screen real estate for running multiple apps side by side and for photo editing (maybe it will help with video editing, too?).

I'm going to be using my system for general work + some audio, photo and video editing. I'll be using mainly Audacity, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 12, Corel Video Studio X6, MindJet's MindManager, Nero Recode and FormatFactory (freeware) for re-encoding videos for mobile formats. I'm looking fwd to a system that is not going to be holding me back at every turn.

A few quick questions for those reading this:

1. How satisfied are you with your display (whether FHD or QHD+)? Would you please share what type of display you have, how happy you are with it, and whether you'd stick with it if you were to be placing your order today?

2. What kind of battery life are you seeing in real world tests (please share whether you have the 61Whr or 91Whr battery)? Anyone know how much weight the bigger battery adds?

3. Regarding the drive options, I like the idea of the added storage with the 2nd lowest config. Basically you trade a larger battery for more disk space (though you are getting a 256GB SSD + 500GB hybrid drive vs. a 500GB SSD). Aside from the smaller battery, are there any negatives with the 2 drives on the cheaper config with two drives?

4. I like the idea of Win 8.1 for the touchscreen interface, plus for work it would be helpful for evaluating some Win 8 apps. For those of you using Win 8, any lessons learned in terms of optimizing Win 8 to work its best?

Thanks!

 

Can you post a link to your YouTube channel? I'd love to see whatever videos you've already done on the M3800. If nothing yet, would you mind doing a general, quick walk-through of the whole system and your impressions with it? I've been searching YouTube regularly and finding next to nothing. BTW, what config do you have? What are you using it for mainly? How happy are you with it? Would you opt for a different config now that you've had some time with your current system?

Thanks!

 

The QHD+ panel is NOT an actual IPS display; it's just much closer to an IPS display in terms of performance than a TN panel. That's especially true of color accuracy and gamut, less so of viewing angle. I can't comment on the FHD panel since I haven't seen it, but I'm thrilled with the QHD+ panel (with some notable caveats I'll get into below). The decreased viewing angle compared to true IPS panels doesn't bother me since I don't work off-angle or need anyone else to view my display that way, but I also doubt that the FHD panel would be any better in that regard.

Additionally, I wouldn't think of QHD+ as an option intended for more real estate. The default and sharpest-looking configuration is to use it at 200% scaling, which means you'd essentially be getting 1600x900 real estate (less than FHD), just with ridiculously sharp graphics. Think of how the iPhone 4 doubled screen resolution in each direction compared to the 3GS but didn't display more content; it instead used the added pixels to make everything sharper. You can sort of replicate 1920x1080 resolution on the QHD+ panel by using 167% scaling (a custom option), but the scaling won't be quite as sharp since that won't be a perfect 2:1 pixel mapping scenario like simulating 1600x900 on a 3200x1800 panel. If your primary goal is real estate, FHD could be the way to go. That said, I use 150% scaling, which puts real estate slightly above FHD and keeps things just barely large enough to be usable long-term (and I have excellent vision), but like you I enjoy the real estate, and things are still much sharper than normal displays even if it's not as sharp as 200% scaling. But 3200x1800 without scaling, while providing generous real estate, is completely unusable for any reasonable length of time.

To answer your specific questions:

1. I'd get my display again. But that's easy for me to say because I only have one app that doesn't handle scaling well (Remote Desktop/Hyper-V), and even then I'm often using an external display for those apps, so it's a moot point. You'll be using Adobe apps, many of which are known NOT to play nice with scaling at the moment, so your experience could be far more frustrating -- though I think the very latest versions of Lightroom and Premiere actually handle scaling; the rest of the Creative Suite definitely doesn't at the moment, though. In any case, yes, video and images will be sharp and that's great for that line of work, but your UI will also be miniscule on every app that doesn't do scaling, which isn't so great. You could work around it by dropping to a lower resolution of course, but that completely defeats the point of having QHD+. For that reason I'd check into how well the other apps you listed handle DPI scaling to get a sense of what you'd be in for with if you were to go QHD+.

2. I'm on AC all the time, so I can't be very helpful here.

3. Other than the loss of battery capacity, I see no real downside to having two drives rather than one at all. It's actually a more flexible option. Plus you can always remove the 2.5" drive and its cage and then order the larger battery through Dell Spare Parts if you decide you'd rather have more battery capacity than more storage.

4. Windows 8.1 works pretty well out of the box, actually. You do need to enable logging in directly to the Desktop rather than the Start screen, and multi-monitor taskbars are a cool feature (which I'd previously used UltraMon to achieve), but otherwise I haven't had to tweak it very differently from my Win7 installs. The touchscreen is kind of cool as a gimmick feature (especially when using the Photos app in Metro), but I have a feeling that as they become more commonplace, developers will start finding legitimately useful ways to use them.

 

Thanks for the informative reply, jphughan. For me, the pricing for the 2-drive config is barely more than the cheapest config with FHD once I upgrade the RAM to 16GB, and it sounds like I can work around some of the issues related to the QHD+ display, so that narrows my options down to the QHD+ configs, I think. Now... more storage or more battery life...?

I'd love to hear input from others to the above questions, as well. Thanks again!

 

If you can swing it and battery life is important to you, go for more battery life. mSATA SSDs are only going to get larger (there's already a 1TB 840 Evo mSATA SSD about to land), but the M3800 isn't known for outstanding battery life. It's not abysmal, but nothing to write home about. So unless you'll be able to fill a 512GB SSD right off the bat and a physically small bus-powered USB 3.0 hard drive (like these) isn't acceptable for additional storage , I think you'd be happier with the larger battery.

 

More expensive, but I guess it makes for a cleaner system with a single, faster drive, and the upgraded battery is a plus. Now if I can just get a reasonable quote. Dell reps have me all over the map (and unfortunately, I didn't realize how good my first quote was until I got other quotes and realized I didn't have the first one in writing). Seems a bit like buying a car!

 

Can any one tell me if P/N: 51970896 has small battery or large one?
It is described as M3800 15.6'' QHD+ i7-4702HQ 16GB 512SSD Quadro1100M W8.1Pro64 MUI 3YPRO in the ordeing system.
The dell reps here are idiots, they do not even know there is a battery diffrence between the models with 2.5 " ssd and msata ssd.

TIA
Maciej

 

Here are som pictures for those who want to se the qhd+ screen compared to a full hd matte-display:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/545/lb9t.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/706/d0sf.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/571/q6yh.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/802/ayh3.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/829/t6ku.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/199/4fjq.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/707/xtr3.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/31/ydut.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/11/ldbv.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/542/gg5r.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/268/jf9g.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/854/82h5.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/20/9t1b.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/542/b3ir.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/812/v6pw.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/36/y5te.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/842/5yqd.jpg

 

Can't they even look at a build list, or send it to you? That should clearly indicate either a 61 WHr or 91 WHr battery, which seems like a much easier way to differentiate the two than a part number you'd have to dig up. Also, that number you gave is an Item Number, not a part number. Item Numbers are used for system orders, but part numbers are what you use when buying spare parts. The 91 WHr battery's part number has shown up in the XPS 15 thread a few times, but it wouldn't help you in this case.