How black is the Covet screen?

Another question for Covet owners: How black is your RGBLED screen? If you look at the black screen (say, black desktop background) in a completely dark room, is the screen uniformly black? Mine has some slightly brighter "shadows" (well, it's actually the opposite of a shadow) towards the middle of the screen. Granted, this is a tough test for a laptop LCD, but for that kind of money I would have expected more. My M90 certainly does better in that regard, but I do seem to recall that the screen on that laptop had a similar issue, and did improve over time.

So, is what I am seeing normal, or should I get them to give me a new LCD?

 

I also wondererd about some brighter parts of my rgb led panel. Normally only the ccfl backlight has this effect . But after thinking about it... the leds used for the backlight are different as well - some shine brighter the other ones darker.

 

Hmm, this is what Wikipedia has to say about the topic:

LED backlights

However, there are several challenges with LED backlights. Good uniformity is harder to achieve especially as the LEDs age with each LED possibly aging at a different rate. Also the use of three separate light sources for red, green, and blue means that the white point of the display can move as the LEDs age at different rates.

 

I've got the silver E2E-Display... as you can see it is 300 bucks above the normal (matte) RGB LED!!!

I choosed the E2E version because I wanted to get the best screen available!! No matter if I need to sit in a darkened room! After all, I'm disappointed about the E2E screen! They just covered the normal matte RGB-LED with a glass plate!! I don't think a glass plate is worth 300 $ US!!!

 

Well, if you had taken a look at all the M6400 posting regarding the Covet-Version, you could have saved all the money. That aspect has been cleared out for some time now.

 

Mine has a slightly brighter patch in the upper left quadrant. In terms of Photoshop, the brightness of the patch corresponds to the color value (8bpc) of (2,2,2) vs. (0,0,0) for the rest of the screen.

In a dark room the screen is obviously lit. If I black out both the Covet and a Dell 2208wfp using the windows blank screen screensaver, the Covet is noticeably brighter. If you work in the dark to avoid the reflections, it might bother you, but when you're in a lit room the backlight bleed fades away.

 

Yeah, in my case I have a feeling that the light patch is slowly fading over time, too.

By the way, here's another "test" that I found extremely sensitive: Choose the dark red that is offered among the standard colors for a solid desktop background, and look at the screen. The question then is, how even is the red top-to-bottom? I have found that the pure red color is extremely sensitive to vertical viewing angle. Desktop monitors usually do not have much of an issue with this, but laptops generally do. The covet screen, in that regard, is once again slightly inferior to the screen I have on my M90. If I want to see an even red color, I have to angle the screen just right, or else I will see the screen become washed out significantly towards the bottom.

Like I said, this behavior is common, to some degree, on all laptop screens I have seen, but one might have wished for better results from the highly touted E2E RGBLED in the Covet; after all, it cost quite a stack of extra cash...

Bottom line in evaluating the Covet screen for me is this: The screen is significantly brighter, and does have better color reproduction than other screens I have seen, but it is by no means perfect at all. Given the price I paid, I would say that it is an o.k. choice if you need the color range and the brightness, but nothing to get ecstatic about. If you need a screen for professional graphics/photography, go get yourself a good desktop monitor. But you knew that already, right?

 

I noticed quite a bit of hue skew also, with both vertical and horizontal viewing angle. I also noticed a moire effect on the hue which is really strange. At certain angles I notice a very subtle concentric target-shaped pattern between red and green. (I guess it could be caused by only one channel, maybe just the green?) Also, out of the box the screen has a very cold tone, almost greenish, compared to any other screen I have contact with. I'm going to try the Adobe Gamma system but I don't have a color calibrator yet.

Also I am worried that I will be starting out with full Adobe color gamut, and then reducing that gamut by squishing color channels to make it color correct. What would have been nice is if the screen could adjust its color output like a desktop screen can. If you do it in software, you lose some bit depth right?

 

Are they using the LG panel for this RGB-LED notebook?
I just received the S17 with the RGB-LED and it seems to exhibit the same conditions. It is made by LG.
In pictures Im finding that the blacks are very black.
It is when it is booting up that the screen has this greyish/greenish look.

 

Don't know what to get from where, to be able to check the manufacturer.

Do you have a color calibration that kicks in once you're in windows? I'm looking at my black point by telling windows to preview the "blank" screen saver, and also by using the photoshop full screen mode. I'm pretty sure both are turning the display 100% black.