Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Interesting! Never knew about that model, though I did have an Inspiron 9100 back in the day. The only reason I bought the Precision when I did was because that was the only way to get a 17" laptop with a Blu-ray writer at the time, and fortunately I worked at a place that could get me an amazing discount -- though it was still a pretty penny. The other thing I notice looking at the 9300 pics is that it lacks the dedicated middle mouse button, which is a feature I grew to love on my Precisions and really miss on other notebooks -- of course now they don't come with buttons at all, and I haven't found a gesture for middle-click that works reliably. It was so handy to be able to middle-click when browsing in order to open that link in a new tab.

 

This probably sounds stupid, but is there a way to replace the regular FHD screen with the QHD... either via Dell or some 3rd party? I kinda regret not getting the QHD option. I do a lot of development and I thought the sizing issues would just be an impediment. I usually run 1920x1080 at regular 100%. One thing that is driving this feeling is that the FHD screen is somewhat inferior to the RGBLED screen I had been using for the last 5 years on my Studio XPS 16 and had grown accustomed to. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

You'd be replacing the entire display assembly, and the only chance you'd have at getting the part from Dell would be through Dell Spare Parts. I imagine it would be quite expensive, but assuming the display connector on the motherboard is identical between the two versions (not certain on that, but it's a good bet), then the Owner's Manual for the system has instructions for replacing the display assembly.

Fyi, the Part Number of the QHD+ display appears to be 6RGW0 if you want to try to get pricing.

 

Thanks for the insight and info! I'll look into it. I really wish RGBLED screens had caught on more. The 16" screen on the Studio XPS 16 was probably the most perfect laptop screen I've ever used. I miss it a lot (though the M3800/XPS15 still rocks- even though it's a tad bit smaller and not as sharp).

 

I guess I need to work with my RGB screen. Recently I put one in my m4400. Not that I use that machine much but the option came my way. I'm trying to figure out the right settings for it. while the colors are super saturated they aren't very true. My m3800 currently looks better.

 

On a normal FHD 15" screen, I love working at 1920x1080 at 100% scaling (not the default 125%). I find the screen real estate for overlapping windows and text size to be just perfect. However, on the QHD+ panel, is it true that the "best" scaling is 200%? This achieves a not-acceptable 1600x900 effective resolution. While I'm sure the text looks absolutely beautiful (like an iPhone and retina iPad- gorgeous), the loss of real estate is a deal-killer. 150% scaling I hear looks good too on QHD+, but that's 2133x1200 which makes for text that is way too small. :-(. I hear that all other scaling yields fuzzy and less than perfect results. Is that true?

So there is no way to achieve the sweet spot of 1920x1080 effective resolution (which I guess would be something like 166.666% on QHD+)? What are people's experiences with this?

 

I haven't used the M3800, but I am running at 150% on a 10" 2560x1440 display and I find it rather adequate. I don't see why 125% or 150% wouldn't be adequate on the M3800. The only M3800 I have occasional access to has a 1920x1080 display so can'T really comment on the QHD+.

 

I run my QHD+ display at 150%, which gives you almost exactly the real estate and text size you'd get with a 1080p display -- just sharper. Of course that statement pertains to applications that scale properly. For applications that don't, their behavior varies. Some simply won't scale anything at all (e.g. Remote Desktop if you're not connecting to a Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2 host), others will blow up the entire UI up to the appropriate size but with no sharpening (lots of installers), some will sharpen text but merely blow up their graphics, and still others will run parts of their UI at native resolution and scale other parts (e.g. Quicken 2014).

 

I don't think scaling works the way you think it works.

 

On a QHD+ panel, 200% is indeed "best" -- but at a certain point you're dealing in theoreticals. For example, a 600 ppi display is "sharper" than a 500 ppi display, but I defy anyone to be able to tell the difference. As I said above, I run my QHD+ panel at 150% (because I too enjoy the additional real estate having used 1080p 15" panels for a while) and I find that setting both very readable and extremely sharp. Perhaps under a very powerful lens the text would be fuzzier since 150% doesn't allow the exact 2:1 physical to virtual pixel mapping that 200% does, but it's not an issue for me in everyday usage. But if the text is too small for you in that setting, you can also specify 166% scaling as a custom scale factor, though not in conjunction with the per-display scaling feature, where the notches between Smaller and Larger seem to be 100, 125, 150, and 200.