Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

The one question I have is whether there's really any point in getting the QHD+ screen, versus the FHD screen. With the QHD+ screen, you're guaranteed that there will be applications that will have issues with high-DPI settings, and this will be true for any version of Windows. There's absolutely no difference whatsoever between Win7 and Win8 in that respect. On the other hand, I am not convinced that I will even notice an increase in quality for the QHD+ screen over the FHD screen. I used to be able to see individual pixels on 15" FHD screens, but by now that is not the case anymore, even with my standard reading glasses. Without the glasses, I cannot even read the text on this forum... Given that situations, I have my doubts that I'd get any benefits from the QHD+ screen. The price differential is negligible, of course, but at least I would eliminate application issues with the high-DPI settings.

 

Why shouldn't it be the automatic choice if you do plan on running W7 for the life of the machine? Does the 3200x1800 not work well with W7?

What are the benefits of W8.1 over W7?

Other than the missing start menu, are there any problems or downsides to going with W8.1? Off-topic a little bit, do you use some start menu replacement with Windows 8.1 and if so, which one?

 

If they both quote the same battery rating, then they're going to be the same battery. The larger battery occupies the space that would otherwise be used for a 2.5" hard drive, not the mSATA drive -- so if your spec includes only one hard drive but that drive is a 2.5" unit (as appears to be the case with the lowest-spec M3800), you'll get the smaller battery to accommodate that, though you'd have an mSATA slot available for future expansion. If on the other hand you get the top spec that includes only an mSATA drive, leaving the 2.5" drive space vacant, you get the larger battery since it can fill that space. And of course if you get a spec that includes both an mSATA drive and a 2.5" drive, you necessarily get the smaller battery.

Getting two hard drives necessitates the smaller battery, but that doesn't mean that NOT getting two hard drives automatically gets you the larger one.

Windows 8.1 has a Start button now, unlike the original Win8. As for a Start MENU rather than the new Start SCREEN, it's honestly not a big deal now that I've spent time with it. The Start screen is essentially the Recent Apps list from the Win7 Start menu, and the All Apps area of the Win8 Start screen is your Start menu, even broken down into folders which are shown as categories in Win8. Honestly, I tried installing Win8 twice and both times I scrapped it in less time than it had taken me to get it installed, but once I tried Win 8.1 and had found Microsoft's "Getting around your PC" guide that showed how to get around Metro with a keyboard and mouse rather than touch, I didn't mind it at all and got comfortable within about half a day of general PC use. It also helped that with Win 8.1 there's now a first-logon tutorial showing you where things are in Metro so you don't feel lost/stuck. If just that tutorial had been included at launch with Win8, Microsoft would have avoided all of the bad press.

 

Unless the K1100M is underpowered to drive 2.8x more pixels than 1920x1080 for your particular applications
It will be interesting to compare benchmarks for similar spec'd K2100M M4800 and K1100M M3800 with QHD+ screens to see how much those 10 watts of GPU power are worth

 

Another important question is whether the fhd display will have the same properties as the qhd+ display, i.e ~400 nits of brightness, full coverage of srgb, good viewing angles etc.

The best would have been if dell offred one with rgb ips panel with 1920x1200 and win7 or redhat linux as default os. That would've been a real workstation, with no scaling and drivers issues.

 

I am deciding between rMBP and M3800/XPS15.
Currently using the new rMBP with WIn7. On high Resolution with 150 DPI everything looks fine, but when i plug in my external monitor and set the rMBP to 1920x1200 with 100dpi (because of no multi monitor scaling in win7) the rMBP looks really blurry.
In Comparision my old MacbookAir with Win7 is totally sharp on 1440x900.

Does the M3800 behave the same way, if the QHD DIsplay is set to 1920x1080 with 100%dpi ?



btw, thanks bokeh for the information on this thread

Edit: I know, that dpi stuff is done better in win8.1, but i have to use WIn7

 

It looks like the new Precision m3800 is the same unit as the new XPS 15. We recently received one of these and it had to go back because of very poor wireless performance. I have checked the spec on Dell's site and the wireless card and chassis are certainly the same. Check out our review at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9m4NshdLTk Have you noticed wireless performance issues with yours compared to other machines you own?

 

If the FHD screen has the same gamut/gamma/contrast/brightness/angles, then you make a great argument for 1080p panel being a great option.

I should have qualified my automatic statement with an "imho".

Statements about options be automatic should be reserved for things like never buy an M4800/M6800 with a dual core processor since you lose processing and two ram slots.

I have been using the QHD+ screen for a few weeks and have grown to really like it over time. When everything is working right, it is amazing to see a screen that crisp. It is like looking at a high-end print. The flip side is when it all goes wrong. You get blurred upsampled text or really small menus. You can resize the whole screen down to fix the issues with a piece of software, but that means not getting the most out of the panel.

It all comes down to how long you think it will take for the software you run to fully support high dpi displays. I am guessing 1-2 years for everything I run. I use machines for at least 3 years, so this makes the QHD+ panel a compelling option for me.

Your use case mileage may vary

 

In the past two weeks I read the whole thread a couple of times. I can't recognize any statement about the wireless performance. As I heard from several sources, that the new XPS still has wireless issues I really wonder how the M3800 is performing.

 

This is a very recent test of the XPS 15...which is the exact same chassis and wireless card as the M3800. Dell XPS 15 Wireless test - NEW VERSION - 4th Gen Haswell - YouTube The model on test had 16GB of Ram, Haswell i7, Nvidia 2GB graphics and 512 SSD. I was gutted to have to send it back ; (