Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

When running the M3800 "Classic" at 1600x900 (1/4 resolution), the screen looks ok, but not great. Running the new Thunderbolt M3800 at 1920x1080 does look great. Much more of an improvement than I was expecting. Windows 7 users will have a better experience running the new machine at lower resolution.

Measured display performance on the new 4K screen is excellent. It covers 100% of sRGB and is very accurate. It is probably the most accurate panel I have ever measured.

Measurements -

Color Gamut – (Very good, but not wide gamut)
100% sRGB
73% NTSC
79% of Adobe RGB

Color Accuracy – (Extremely good)
Min – 0.17
Max – 4.42 (in the usual blue that most flat panels have issues with)
Average – 0.63(!)
Anything below a 1 is not likely to be seen with the human eye. This is extremely good performance.

Brightness and Contrast –
Max measured brightness – 357.6 nits
Black – 0.43 nits
831:1 measured contrast ratio. (excellent)

Gamma –
Uncalibrated – 2.14 (2.2 is perfect)
Calibrated – 2.24

Native White Point – 6800 Kelvin (6500K is neutral, so 6800 will be slightly more blue) Looking at the correction curves, both the blue and green channels were pulled slightly down in level. Red did not appear to be adjusted.

Uniformity seems to be good.

 

Wow, very impressive indeed! I'm surprised 1920x1080 on the 4K display is better than 1600x900 on the QHD+ display given that the math is the same. Maybe they've rejiggered the scaling in GPU drivers and/or the display firmware to essentially perform exact scaling in this scenario rather than trying to do any fancy interpolation?

Does the new M3800 still have a toggle between splendid mode and generic mode in Windows Mobility Center? If so, what is (or was) the default setting, and what setting did you use when you took these measurements?

 

I did not see Splended mode as an option in WMC when I looked for it. I think they did away with that as an option on the M3800. The XPS 15 might still have it.

Measurements were done with my Spyder 4 Elite. System was running Windows 8.1. Adaptive brightness was disabled. All display power savings was disabled.

 

Here are my thoughts on the new system after spending a few hours with it. Unfortunately, I had to give it back to the Dell rep.

For Video Production -

People working with HD or 4K video will likely view the Thunderbolt M3800 as a solid upgrade over the previous M3800. The additional screen resolution is very nice, but the real upgrade is the Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt gives users access to much more reliable external video capture and editing hardware. On paper, companies like Blackmagic make video capture and conversation devices that work with USB3, but they are not always reliable enough for critical use. Having Thunderbolt gives the user professional options and stability. Having the extra pixels on the screen helps with the workspace in video editing software.

For Everyone Else -

One unexpected surprise was how good the display looks at 1920x1080 resolution. With the original M3800, 1600x900 was the ¼ resolution looked ok, but you lost a lot of working space. The ¼ resolution of 1920x1080 on the Thunderbolt M3800 is excellent. It is a wonderful new option for people that want a high res display for the future, but will be running Windows 7 for a while longer. It also means that games running at 1920x1080 look much better.

The new screen also retains the VERY strong measured color and accuracy performance of the original.

The Thunderbolt port is a nice and opens up a lot of new options. The supported peripherals for are still a little scarce for people outside of pro video and Mac users, but the number of devices is growing. Thunderbolt external SSD drives are already faster than USB3. It will be interesting to see how the hardware available grows.

CPU option is a small upgrade or push. The i7-4712MQ is already a free upgrade on the existing M3800. Early M3800 systems had the slightly slower i7-4702HQ

GPU is unchanged as far as I could tell.

1 TB mSata and 1TB SSD now options.

Ubuntu is indeed supported from the factory.

The Thunderbolt port drove a Mac Cinema display without issues. The monitor’s built-in networking, speakers, etc all showed up in the device manager.

The port also drove my U3012 panel without issues via miniDP.

Overall –

If the lack of Thunderbolt was holding you back from buying the M3800, now you don’t have that excuse. The screen is also a nice upgrade.
For current M3800 users, the biggest reasons to upgrade are heavy video production and/or the need Thunderbolt. Performance and operation are similar to the last generation with a slight increase in CPU performance if you have the original M3800 with the i7-4702HQ. The new docking options offered by Thunderbolt may make a difference. At full resolution, the differences in the two screens are subtle to the naked eye.

If I were buying a new machine, I would prefer the new M3800 over the original. I work with HD video often and the new M3800 is a kick-butt system that is very portable. It is what I, along with many other people, had hoped for in a Macbook Pro alternative. While I do wish it had a faster video card, the K1100M is well-vetted and solid. The Thunderbolt M3800 is a refined update to the original M3800 with that adds the option of full Thunderbolt 2 support.

 

Just wondering if you tried chaining something off of the TBolt Display, like say a second one. I'd assume it'd work just fine. We're looking for a new setup for our CEO; he wants something lighter than the M6600 he has now (pretty much anything would be lighter than that tank) but he's hesitant to lose the E-Port. Chaining 2 TBolt displays might be a good solution.

Thanks!

 

Fyi, you don't need Thunderbolt to daisy chain displays. MiniDP supports daisy chaining just fine, or if you don't have displays that have DP outputs, you can buy an MST hub. But of course that only handles display daisy-chaining. If you want to replicate a full docking station as closely as possible, the most common option seems to be something like the new Dell D3100, which seems to be just a D3000 with support for 4K displays. I still don't think those are quite on the level of a real docking station in terms of reliability or functionality, and of course they won't charge the laptop, but they might work if the systems that include E-Ports aren't suitable for whatever reason. Then again, if you're dealing with your CEO and he's going to trust your recommendation, I'd weigh this very carefully. I just had to recommend a system for a higher-end more demanding client in my freelance business and decided against a solution that involved a USB docking stations because I decided they just aren't quite there yet, at least by this client's standards. There are issues with driver compatibility (particularly some NVIDIA cards, it seems), some functions not working after the docking station is reconnected until the system is rebooted, transfers to USB 3.0 hard drives causing the video signal to start lagging, etc.

Another alternative would be a Thunderbolt dock, which would sidestep the display driver issues since the GPU would directly control the displays rather than compress video for transport over USB, but the only one I know of is Belkin's rather expensive option here: Thunderboltâ„¢ 2 Express Dock HD with Cable. I don't know anything about how well it performs on a PC though, probably because very few PC owners have tried it due to lack of a Thunderbolt port. The note about requiring that at least one display be native Thunderbolt rather than just MiniDP in a dual display setup is a bit of a bummer, but otherwise it appears equivalent to a USB dock in terms of connectivity.

Unfortunately the closest system to the M3800 in terms of size that features a docking station connector is probably the Latitude E7450, but if your CEO's workload taxes the CPU or GPU, the E7450 won't keep up with the M3800, and of course the display is an inch smaller and maxes out at 1080p.

 

Yeah, I'm currently using a m3800 with the D3000, and we've got a few more floating around the company, and they leave a bit to be desired as far as comparing with the E-Port. I'd rather him not have the driver problems I and others here have experienced with it.
I know that DP can chain if you've got monitors that support it, but I don't trust Apple (long story) and I'm surprised that the Apple display worked for Bokeh at all.
We've got a couple of CalDigit Thunderbolt Stations also and those work well for the Mac users that have them here.

Yeah, he likes the power of his M6600 but hates how stonking big it is. He pretty much wants the fastest, screaming machine he can get that's still quite portable since he travels around a bunch. We thought the M3800 was a good choice (I love mine) but the lack of E-Port was a concern. If it will work with two Apple displays that leaves just 2 cables for him to plug in which I think will be acceptable.

 

I was wondering if any of the recent buyers were still experiencing the coil whine issue? One of my friends got a M3800 lately and his seem to not have this behavior anymore.

 

Hey Bokeh, how is the touchpad compared to the previous M3800? Is it a lot better like the XPS 13, or is it the exact same as before?

Thanks in advance for any help given!

 

Hey there,
Wishing everyone an awesome Weekend. I am looking to the M3800 and use it for the Creative Suite, Revit, Autocad, Sketchup and other design/rendering softwares. How are those softwares gonna look on the FHD screen, running at native resolution of 1920 x 1080? Is the UI going to be usable?

Is there any benefit in going with the QHD screen? Or is there still too much hassle making the UI items readable.