E 6400 vs E 6500 - Primary Concern: Screen !!!!!!

Hello dear Dell owners.

I'm a webdeveloper and i'm currenty searching for a new business partner laptop. I have decided on the Dell brand. I was about to pickup a macbook - but after the TONS of problems i read on Mac forums, i just won't give Steve Jobs my money ;-)

So what i would like to ask from you is the following:

Which you prefer between E 6400 and E 6500. My primary concern ofcourse is the SCREEN.

So this is what i ask. Which model and which screen option to choose.

Best Regards,
thanasisdev

 

I don't yet own either of the two, but plan on purchasing the E6500, so I haven't seen either screen in person. They are two different sizes, so you need to decide if you want a smaller laptop's greater portability and look at the 6400, or if you need the extra screen real estate and don't mind the little extra bulk, go for the 6500. Either way, I'd go for the LED type. Brighter and uses less power. I'm sure actual users will chime in with more detailed advice.
Rob

 

How much do you value notebook portability and display real estate?

The E6400 is the more portable of the two and the LED backlit WXGA+ is the best display option on the E6400. However, the quality of these displays is variable since Dell definitely uses LG-Philips and Samsung and I think someone recently reported a CMO display. In the initial period after the E6400 launch the LG-Philips seemed to be the better display, but this may have changed.

I will leave others to comment on the E6500 display options. It does have the high resolution option that that E6400 doesn't, but such small pixels make my eyes hurt.

John

 

Hello again and thanks for your replies.

I do not have any specific preference on the screen size. I made this post in order to ask IF there is a better panel on the one of the two so i could go immediately with it.

I would like to point that i purchased a Thinkpad T61 which had THE worst lcd panel that i have ever ever seen in my whole life. So as you understand, my expirience choosing the right laptop till now is VERY BAD. Needless to say, i sold the T61 immediately.

So the big question is the following:
Is the quality of the lcd panel on E-6400/E-6500 identical to the Thinkpad T61 panels quality ??? If yes, then i think i will have to drop my current thougth on a Dell.

I know laptop manufacturers (except Sony) do not put any more good lcd panels on laptops. I come from an EIZO monitor on my desktop, and as you can understand, i had the worst switch (from Eizo Beautyness of Rich Color reproduction and white balance -> Thinkpad's SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE lcd panels.)

Your help in this would be much appreciated.

 

This is the information I've found:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=340876


E6400: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6400-Notebook.12875.0.html

E6500: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6500-Notebook.11958.0.html

On a more subjective note, and with lots of conjecture, I think the Lenovo T400 and E6400 have similar (if not identical) LED screens. I don't know how this compares to the T61. According to the folks here and at notebookcheck the E6500 has a better screen and clearly not a bigger version of the E6400. The biggest differences being a more accurate blackpoint. Since the two displays have similar maximum brightness levels the lower black point means much more accurate shadow detail (black instead of dark gray) and higher contrast.

While I couldn't afford the EIZO and went with a LaCie CRT I think there are a bunch of things that you'll have to accept --> Near as I can tell all laptops except tablets have 6-bit interfaces to the screens, meaning no more than 262K colors (think WFWG 3.11 days). No true 24 bit color as you would have on the EIZO. Logically this would mean that the wider the gamut the more granularity in the color (the bigger the steps between colors) and thus more banding. All latops now seem to use older TN display panels exclusively (again except some tablets) which suffer from restricted angles of view which can become a problem since the colors shift as the viewing angle changes. Finally if you are used to a CRT the brightness is pretty much automatically even, I think, and no LCD of any size is going to match this.

Unfortunately I've been unable to view any of these dell models in person and so far have only thought that a couple of the sony's and the macbook pros have been in the ballpark. Both sony and the MBP seem to have relatively accurate color while the other brands have been out in far left field. I didn't try to calibrate any store display models though.

I don't know if any of the above actually helps -- I just keep confusing myself more -- but good luck.....

 

I have the E6500 with the WXGA+ LED panel. The screen is really beautiful, although I might have preferred one step lower in resolution to increase the size of icons and text. Most people (younger?) like the high res, even the 1920x1200, so that part is just me. I set my screen background to one of the ones that it came with of some mountains, lake, rocks, and the colors and brightness are great.

 

I haven't purchased my E6500 yet, but intended on getting the WXGA+ screen too. Isn't there a way to incremantally increase font size without distorting text?

 

There are options to (i) increase font size and (ii) change the overall display dpi setting (the default is 96 dpi). However, the former does not change all text while the latter can cause display formatting problems where programs have assumed 96dpi.

If my old eyes find WXGA+ @ 14.1" usable (but I wouldn't want to go any smaller) then you should should find WXGA+ @ 15.4" to be OK. Having a bright display with good contrast must help with the legibility.

John

 

I took a look at a 15" MacBookPro at Best Buy yesterday. It was the only WXGA+ screen notebook they had. You're right, those LED screens are bright and sharp! I wouldn't want to go any higher rez (text size wise) than that though, and since I'm getting this mostly for my Mom, I want to make sure she will be OK with it. I think WXGA+ is the only way to get the LED screen on the E6500

I'm having more fun with this purchase than she is (I'm typing on a Dell Dimension 4100 and definitely living vicariously here. I/I] can hardly wait to use it. Therefore, it's hard to get her real excited about going into Best Buy to look at screens. I know once she gets a computer, she'll find so many cool uses for it she'll wonder how she would get along in today's culture without it!

 

If mobility is not too important, I would favor the bigger E6500 WXGA+ screen and then maybe bump the DPI to 120... for a 'mom'. I say this because screen resolution just becomes more critical with older eyes. And you'll get better performance with the E6500 nVidia GPU.

I just retired a THX-certified Dimension 4100 with a great! TB Santa Cruz sound card... will probably move the Cruz into a 4600, if possible. These P3 1GHz machines are still usable with XP if you keep Norton AV and MS .net framework off of them!

GK