Latitude 7450 Owners' Thread

John, can you elaborate on this at all? I ordered the e7450 a few months ago after looking through the thread and while I have been mostly pleased with it, I feel like the screen is a little "off". Basically, I feel like it has too much gamma, washed out colors, and fatigues my eyes. I even went into the Intel settings and lowered the gamma, which while it made darker grays turn into blacks, sort of alleviated the problem by making it feel less glaring.

I switch between this 7450 and a 13" retina MacBook Pro and I feel like this display really does fatigue the eyes. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it too well, but hopefully you get my drift.

Is there a way to see which LCD panel I have?

 

From what I have read the current generation of faster PCIe SSDs have heat dissipation problems resulting in performance dropping due to thermal throtting. Perhaps notebook manufacturers will link the SSDs into the cooling system in order to addess this issue.

There are various ways of identifying the panel type. You can try Monitor Asset Manager (click on the Monitor Asset Manager heading to get the download, or find the device info in Device Manager, or use HWiNFO.

In Monitor Asset Manager the key entries are Manufacturer, Plug and Play ID and Data String. For the LG panel (which I currently have) these read
Manufacturer............. LG Display
Plug and Play ID......... LGD046D
Data string.............. 3GPW0€140WF3

The data for the AUO panel in my E7440 were (I think the E7450 uses the same AUO panel)
Manufacturer............. AUO
Plug and Play ID......... AUO113D
Data string.............. XTRY9€B140HAN

I prefer the LG panel because the anti-glare coating on the AUO panel degrades the image with the sparkly effect - a bit like looking through a screen door so the LG is sharper. However, my Spyder 4 Express display calibrator shows that the AUO panel has better colour rendering (eg 100% of sRGB while the LG has 91% on my testing). TN panels tend to be 60% to 75%.

John

 

Thanks for the quick response! I just checked Device Manager again and it looks like I have the AUO133D panel. I definitely know the sparkly effect you are talking about - I noticed the same on a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga last year.

Maybe the coating is what is causing the glare / "garishness" of the display? I wish there was a way to see the LG panel and whether it, too, has this problem. Is this something you think Dell will honor under warranty? I don't want to nitpick but if the LG panel causes less eye strain then I would exchange in a heartbeat. As it is, it makes me shy away from using the laptop.

 

The LG panel is slightly more reflective because of the relatively less anti-glare coating but this is not a problem in normal usage. It's not like a reflective glossy display.

You can try asking Dell to replace your display because it is hard on your eyes. However, they may only agree to replace it with whatever is in stock so you may end up with another AUO panel.

John

 

Any other advice on an e7450? I'm about to buy one not sure about the dgpu vs intel as intel gpu has made some wonderful gains. I'd like less heat on the bottom, I assume the dgpu will radiate more heat. I'm thinking of really going all out on this laptop as constantly installing stuff, changing little settings to my satisfaction, moving all my data and vm is getting old. This seems like the perfect laptop for me (especially if I can mount a higher resolution than 1080p and it takes 1x16gb sodimms).

Also are there any good places to get dell outlet coupons?

 

The dGPU version of the E7450 only uses the dGPU when it will help performance (eg 3D graphics), for the rest of the time the Intel GPU handles the graphics. For me, the main benefit of the dGPU version is the better cooling system with less noise under normal use due to a better engineered fan. The fan does have to get noisier if the dGPU is under heavy load, but it is a less intrusive noise than the fan in the normal E7450. Sensibly, Dell would have put the better fan into all versions of the E7450 but I guess the bean counters wouldn't allow it.

John

 

Greetings everyone.
Have bought the second e7450, since the first one had a problem with one key (letter B) - being pressed on the very edge, the key popped out halfway from the keyboard. I gave it back to the seller. Now I've got the second device and I don't like the spacebar behaviour. It produces a clicky sound when I lightly tap on its bottom-right side. I actually don't press the spacebar, just tap it a bit. However, during the typing the clicky sound accompanies almost every spacebar hit. Isn't comfortable when working in a silent place.
I'd like to know how it goes with your e7450 keyboards to understand if it's widely spread or I have to use this magic NBD guarantee to ask for the keyboard replacement.
Thanks.

 

My E7450's keyboard is reasonably quiet - more clunky than clicky.

I wonder if the scissors mechanism is not clipped together properly. Try firmly pushing down the whole spacebar as far as it will go. If that doesn't fix it then call Dell.

John

 

Hi John,
Already tried it - no luck.
So, you're telling there is nothing close to the click sound while using spacebar in typing? In other words, the press sound for any letter key and for the spacebar are the same?

 

The space bar is slightly more clicky than the other keys, particularly if I press it near the ends.

John