Identical E6410s, different brightness levels

Hello, everyone,

My name is Shady (yes, seriously ) and I'm new to this forum, and this is my first question.
I have two (almost) identical Dell Latitude E6410 laptops, both running identical displays (at least according to the Device Manager, that is.) However, placing the two machines side-by-side, the display on one is significantly brighter than the other:



As a matter of fact, I like the brightness so much that I sold off my later-model (and, admittedly, somewhat troublesome) E6420 just because I wasn't using it anymore, given that its 1366x768 display is grossly inferior (also, the Pointstick on the 6410 is far better!)

I have the ambient brightness sensor (Fn key + left arrow key) set to "off" on both machines. The displays of both laptops are 1440x900, and the Device Managers on both give me the following: > Monitors > Generic PnP Monitor > [right-click] Properties > [tab] Details > [drop-down] Hardware IDs > [popup] "MONITOR\SEC5442".

Both laptops running off of nVidia NVS 3100 GPUs, and so far as I can tell, the only hardware difference is in the processors (Core i7 640M for the brighter machine vs. 620M for the dimmer one.) I didn't find any meaningful differences when checking System Configuration using the two machines' service tags on Dell's support website. If it makes any difference, the brighter laptop is running Windows 10 Pro, which the dimmer one is still on Windows 7 Professional (I briefly upgraded it to 10, but that didn't seem to have any impact on the display's brightness.)

So, given all that, my question is, is there a way to get the dimmer laptop's display to be as bright as its sibling?

Thanks in advance.

 

tl;dr: short of replacing the screen and possibly the inverter board, probably not.

I think the E6410 generation was still CCFL backlit, and those do age -- both the CCFL tube(s) and the inverter board, and two of the same screen may not necessarily age at the same rate. I don't know if LED-backlit screens age, but if they do it is much more slowly.

Also, I'm not clear that SEC5442 is the actual model -- I think that might just be a Windows-internal code for "Generic PnP Screen with resolution X" ... Dell definitely sources screens from different makes and then calls them the same model. You can check with DumpEDID ( http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dump_edid.html ) and check the manufacturer and model IDs.

With the E6420, they shipped me one with a very nice Samsung panel, and replaced it with a less bright (and somewhat less saturated) alternate manufacturer (LG?) when they needed to replace it under warranty.

 

I have checked my E6410 review and the display had an LED backlight. However, there's a comment about the preceding E6400's display (which was also LED backlit) getting less bright which I hypothesised might be due a a BIOS update. This raises the question of whether both these E6410's are running the same BIOS.

Moninfo is another program that can report the display hardware details. AFAIK, SEC indicates a Samsung panel while an LG panel would be LG or LGP.

John

 

Interesting -- bad memory on my part, I guess. I've only had one E6410 to play with, but having had a bunch of recycled E6500 come through, the variation in brightness was really obvious, and they were all the 1920x1200 screen. I never checked the panel manufacturer details, and while I thought I brought them all up to the final BIOS it's possible I didn't, or the brightness issue was specific to the 14" models.

Certainly worth checking the BIOS versions just in case. Would also be interesting to see compare the manufacture dates on moninfo or dumpedid, if they're otherwise the same panel model.