Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

Hey all. I am fine with answering questions about the M6700 and any shared hardware in this review. Since my particular machine was pre-production, I did not start an Owners Thread or Owners Corner or Owners Lounge. I think a lot of these orders and configs posts would be better suited for one of those threads.

If no one else makes these general owners threads, I will at least start the M6700 Owners Thread later today.

But not all displays. I have an M6600 and M6700 without tint.

I also have an RGBLED backlit M6500 that is almost 3 years old and the display on it is still fine.

Maybe I am just lucky. Who knows.

 

why not a 6700/4700 thread ? i don't think there is that much difference between the two other than diagonal, extra hard drive and double graphics power.

 

Maybe you are not as picky as some folks out there. I didn't see any tinting on my Elitebooks until the first threads about it appeared on the forum. Suddenly there was tint and lots of dead pixels (25 on one of the screens, lol).

 

Well the spirit is willing but the bank account weak. I still have a bit more saving to do. With luck, by October. Does it show?

Your words don't do it justice; upload a photo please. I wish to see this display anomaly.

Arguably no one would be in the Precision house if they weren't particular. Even so, I think we can glean enough from his review to realize that's not the case.

See Dell's pixel guarantee?

 

If only you knew. I have 4, yep 4 clalbration curves saved for 120, 160, 180, and 300 nits. Because they are all slightly different. At least I think they still are.

Back in the M90 and M6300 days, you just didn't care. Calibration would help, but the CCFL panels were so washed out. So blue tinted. You just tried to get the basic "midrange" colors right.

The M6500 was a small revelation. Much better. But each brightness level was different. You could see the difference in the curves.

The M6600 was better. The difference Between brightness levels is subtle.

I had an early M6600 IPS display had a small amount of tint in the bottom right corner. I sent it back. The replacement was good. Did I light up the boards complaining? No. If the replacement had been bad I would have complained.

The M6700 ips panel is the best I have seen or measured on a portable. I could not ask for a better panel. Was I lucky? Maybe. I am just happy to have a panel with ZERO compromises compared to my desktop.

Am I picky enough to know from sight when something is off with my displays? You bet your a$$ I am. I am ocd about display color. I am going to leave out the gory details, but I used to have my entire office painted to 18% grey with blackout shades and curtains. I still do not have any direct light in my field of vision when I edit. Every light is 5000k. I still obsess over photo prints to figure out how I could have gotten a better print. Seriously, I could go on and fully look a little crazy, but you get the idea

P.S. - Look at my pic of the 4 displays on the first page of my review. That was a "snapshot" in my office with no real prep. You can see the clutter in the office. You can also see the M6700 IPS display right in front of 3 Dell U2410 displays. There is no tint on the M6700. Pixel peep it for yourself.

 

in another 3 years or so we should see AMOLED displays on these precisions. although by then the laptops may resemble retina macbook or something of that sort. for now i think RGBLED is the best technology ... but they probably should develop better calibration solutions though so you could calibrate a problematic corner separately from the rest of the screen for example.

i think $400 is a fair price for the performance upgrade from the regular panel, even if it isn't perfect. if only other options on precisions were as reasonably priced.

if you look at the way Origin PC is customized you get stuff like a FREE 256GB Samsung 830 SSD ... and you could order 32 gigs of ram for basically peanuts. only reason i didn't get Origin PC is their graphics options are gaming centric. they did offer one Quadro ( 5010M i think ) but i wanted mid-range. and of course Origin doesn't have the IPS display.

but in any case when you configure an Origin and then a Dell you just see what kind of ripoff Dell's options really are ... i just don't understand why Dell wants to treat me like an id1ot ... shouldn't Origin customers be the id1ots ? are professionals supposed to be stup1der than gamers ?

and the idea of even offering a dual core option on a $2,000+ laptop is asinine. that would be like offering a 3 cylinder engine option on a ferrari - what a joke ! really Dell get your @#$% together.

 

That was HP and they replaced the panel 4 times and the best they could do was 3-4 dead pixels. That's when I said die...

I can see no tint on your pic, the colors look deep and the white is white. I want one so badly!

 

Here you are. The white balance is intentionally off in several ways so the effect is more visible. Believe me, with normal eyesight this is truly annoying.

Look at the bottom corners and the complete bottom half of the screen... This effect doesn't even change when changin your viewing angle or moving your head

 

Professionals are willing to spend more to get the level of support dell gives with precisions. When you buy those expensive upgrades you are getting not only the item but a full warranty on it for 3 years minimum, with 24/7 tech support and next day on-site service.

If your clevo or whatever breaks in a few months and you have to mail it in for repair, how long do you think its going to take them to fix it and get it back to you? I'm betting alot longer than next business day =)

If your clevo breaks in a year right after the warranty ends... that could get expensive.

 

Got my M6700 today and it's amazing. Built better/feels way more solid than the HP 8670w. Plus now that I have this amazing screen with WHITE whites, even at default without calibration, I can easily see the "grainy" screen on the Dreamcolor screens for the HP 8670w. I'm really glad I made the switch/upgraded and I cant wait to work on this!

One question, just want to double check everyone else is getting "The update source location does not support your system model" when running Dell Client System Update 1.2.3. I'm assuming the laptop is so new they didn't add the driver/package details yet on the support server for the program to reference.