Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I was being lazy when I said QHD, I meant QHD+. There's 1080p and then QHD+, and I have the latter. So far I really like my XPS, and the QHD+ panel is freaking awesome in colors, sharpness, viewing angle, basically everything except interoperability with normal-DPI panels, but that's Microsoft's fault and I'd rather have HiDPI now and be ready for when the software gets better than go 1080p now and have HiDPI software mature before I plan to buy another laptop. I don't even notice any glare, though I also don't work under direct lighting. As for scaling, Firefox and Thunderbird looked fine, some installer apps looked grainy when scaled up (but who cares, they're installers), but RDP is the main snag for me. DPI scaling on your local display doesn't carry into the RDP session, so RDP on a QHD+ panel results in very tiny elements. Sort of a glaring oversight by Microsoft there. So instead I RDP from one of my normal-DPI external panels. If you need RDP and won't be using an external panel, you'd have to drop your native resolution before starting an RDP session.

All that said, I haven't used the built-in components too much because I use laptops primarily with the lid shut and attached to dual external displays and an external keyboard and mouse since my previous setup had a docking station, but at the risk of being called a narcissist here, allow me to quote my previous posts about the high resolution debacle as well as my take on the commonly reported issues:

 

Many seem to have plans to order the M3800 with the smaller battery and the 2.5" magnetic hard drive, planning to replace the latter with an SSD themselves. I have read several posts in this thread where people seem to think that is not possible because the max height for a 2.5" drive supposedly is 5 mm.

My question is: why would you think that the max height is 5 mm? According to this spec sheet the M3800 supports HDDs up to 1TB - and as far as I am aware there is no 1TB 2.5" drive with 5mm height. The ones I know about all have 7mm height, just as the 2.5" SSDs. That should make the replacement pretty simple.

 

Maybe they're two independent limitations? I.e. Physically, you can only fit a 5mm drive, but software only supports drives up to 1 TB in size?

 

So...this might seem obviously supported, but could an owner of the M3800 empirically confirm (by actual settings adjustment) that the following resolutions are supported:
2560x1600
1600x1200 (in "4:3" format, not 'stretched' to "16:9" or other, if you know what I mean)
1920x1200
1920x1080
1024x768

I need the above to support various 'vintages' of industrial control system HMI software; my current Dell Latitude E6500 supports the above (except 2560x1600, of course), which is VERY handy for modifying/tweaking the various resolutions' graphic displays (This is mainly for supporting existing applications which cannot be changed; all new applications will be 1920x1080).

I understand the resolution of the M3800 far exceeds, but am interested if the above is 'natively' supported easily without any 'tricks'.

Thanks in advance for anything you can offer regarding the above - I'm about to pull the trigger on two of these for work, and this is the final confirmation i need...

 

Do you want to know if those resolutions are supported on the built-in panel or on external displays? Either way, the Intel options have a choice to maintain aspect ratio, so even if the built-in panel defaults to fill mode, that option should force the GPU to always draw black bars on the appropriate edges and upscale to the panel's native resolution to make the aspect ratio right; this is called GPU scaling rather than display scaling, though the catch is that since the GPU is always upscaling to native resolution, there's a bit of a performance penalty compared to natively outputting that resolution to the panel. I can check this tomorrow for you if no one else has responded by then to confirm, though.

 

Thanks jphugan -

Specifically interested in the built-in panel - external displays will be used, but I would like to know what the built in supports...

Black bars good/ok - that's what the E6500 does...

Thanks for your help!

 

The 5mm thing may have been a mistake on my part. I was also researching an Inspiron 14 7000 for my sister at the time, and that may be the model that has that restriction -- which would be weird since that model is a bit thicker than this one, but who knows. I'll look into it when I'm not on my phone and if that's the case I'll edit all previous posts of mine about this that I can find to reduce confusion. The 1TB option doesn't show up at least on the US retail site (or didn't when I checked), otherwise that would have told me straight away that this unit had a bay larger than 5mm. Sorry if I was wrong about that, my head is spinning switching between all of these threads!

UPDATE: I got specs mixed up. The 5mm thing pertains to the Inspiron; not sure whether the XPS/M3800 is 7 or 9.5, but it's definitely more than 5. Previous posts edited to reflect this. Sorry all!

 

I can't speak to the M3800, but the 4800 with the matte QHD+ screen can do all of the resolutions you list, with the exception of 2560 x 1600. I tested 1920 x 1200, and you do indeed get two small black bars on the left and right sides of the screen.

 

Ok, every single one of those resolutions worked, with the proper aspect ratio, EXCEPT 2560x1600. That resolution wasn't available as an option in the resolution list and in my admittedly brief search through the Intel HD Graphics interface, I didn't see a way to add a custom resolution option. However, the interface is simple enough that I don't think I would've missed any available option for custom resolutions if there were one, so unless there's some sort of registry hack method to add 2560x1600, I doubt it will be available. But if there IS such a hack, I can't see why the resolution wouldn't work as expected.

 

The NVidia control panel will let you create a custom resolution for the dGPU
Suggest setting it to 'No Scaling' and 'Automatic' timing for the laptop display connector
You might have to disable the Intel iGPU to get this to work though