Lost in LCD land (M2400/4400 & E6400/E6500)

Whew! Can't believe I scanned through the whole owners threads for the M4400, E6500, M2400, E6400. Can't believe I still have questions, but they are listed below:

Background: I'm a pro photographer and am looking for a road machine that has a decent, accurate display. Won't be used at home, won't be used for games. I have looked closely at the MBP (older matte and new glossy) and could live with the screens but the smug gets to be excessive and it would be demeaning to live in bootcamp or lose the touchpad by loading just windows (no interest in switching to OS X). I have also looked at the sony sr & z 13" and could live with either if I gave up and went size over power and durability.

I have not seen any of the LCD choices for the Latitude or Precision in person unfortunately and have no place to view them, which leads me to this post. What got me here is that I have read that the macbook pro shares LCD panels with the WXGA+ LED screen of the M4400 and E6500. Now there are other choices namely the WUXGAs and possibly problems with the WXGA+ displays on both the 14 and 15 inch dells, or maybe with specific samsung or LG models of either though it isn't really clear which one is superior.

Question 1) Truelife = Glossy? AG= anti glare? Ultrasharp = high res?

2) Is the main functional difference between the latitude and precision the video card choices and possibly a display option for the 15"?

3): I would prefer to go with the smaller 14 inch model but looking at the comments on this forum and the review on notebookcheck.net left me thinking the 14 inch LED screen was not up to the level of the 15inch model. Am I wrong on this?

4) The M4400 thread refers to several tables with Contrast, gamut and brightness data for the 4400 --- does anyone have a link to this data for the M2400, E6400 and/or E6500?

My other questions refer to the M4400 and E6500:
5)Is the Canadian website's ultrasharp UWXGA CCFL display the same as the 2 CCFL display mentioned in the M4400 thread? Anyone know if the RGB LED display is available in Canada?

6) Is the UXWGA CCFL monitor the same on the E6500 as the M4400? Is the UXWGA RGB LED monitor available on the E6500?

7) From the specs banded about is the following true:
WUXGA CCFL -- 75% of ARGB gamut, 350 cd brightness 1:400 contrast MATTE finish
WUXGA RGL LED -- 100% of ARGB gamut 300 CD 1:500 contrast GLOSSY finish
WXGA+ LED 45% of ARGB (or similar) 300CD 1:500 contrast MATTE Finish

8) Is the WXGA+ LED display really equivalent to the MBP lcd quality? Are there still problems?

9) How tiny is the text, icons, etc on the WUXGA screen? At home I have a 22" CRT running at nearly the same resolution and I am worried that I'll have to use the "special" features of windows to read.

10) There was brief allusion to problems profiling the RGB LED screen on the M4400 thread -- I've got the older xrite DTP 94 colorimeter-- will there be problems?

11) For those with the LED RGB WUXGA display --> are there banding problems from the wider gamut and (presumably) still 6-bit display?

12) Finally given all the above I didn't seem to find a consensus on the best fit for a monitor for my purposes. The choices being A) E6400/M2400 with WXGA+ LED, B) E6500/M4400 with WXGA+ LED, C) E6500/M4400 with WUXGA CCFL, and finally D) M4400(E6500?) with WUXGA RGB LED.

Thanks very much for any and all answers!
Doug

 

Interesting, I was just going to ask about that . Where did you read this?

Truelife = Glossy (http://www.screentekinc.com/dell-truelife-lcd-screens.shtml)

UltraSharp = those panels that have a ppi of 120 or higher.

Do not know about AG, but I'm under the impression that all Dell business notebooks are anti-glare.

Source: http://www.dell.com/content/learnmo..._screen_precn&~lt=popup&~series=precn&ref=CFG

I would also like to know this (for the WXGA+ LED display on the E6400 in particular)

 

The screen quality on the LED 1440x900 Latitude E6400 is great.

 

Davenport: Have you looked closely at a macbook pro? In particular the matte screen model that was just replaced this fall? How would it compare? Also do you know if you have the samsung or LG panel? Thanks!

MTah: Great -- you've pointed me to both the definition table and comparison. I can't find anything on the dell websites (may be a personal problem).

For the Macbook>E6500/M4400 same panel suggestion I came across it (IIRC) in several places, one of which was a thread here in the Lenovo forum.

I found the panel part number here for the macbook: http://lcdtech.no-ip.info/en/data/lcd.panels.in.laptops.htm.

The apple panel is listed as a samsung LTN154X7-L02 but I have no idea how this relates to the information discussed on this forum regarding the Dell panel part numbers.

Note that I'm definitely not an apple-head, but it's the nearest thing in specs that I have actually seen up close and it would be excellent to get a windows laptop with a screen as good or better.

Thanks
Doug

 

Good thread!

I am leaning towards E6500 /CCFL WUXGA/NVidia. After researching this forum just afraid of getting Samsung panel, it looks like people are more happy with LG panel.
Also I really don't like glare screens.

 

true!

Wenn you call Dell you have the same options on both models, just the video card is different.

The 14" screen is worse than the 15" screen (The specification say they are similar, but all the reviews measured that). For photoedition I'd go for the largest screen possible.

Display specification M2400, M4400, M6400
The screens are the same in the Latitude E-Series.

It's the same. When you call Dell, you have all display options, even the RGB LED.

It's the same. When you call Dell, you have all display options, even the RGB LED.

true

Yes they're both very similar, due to the glass plate the MBP screen's colors look more vivid and it has a slightly better contrast. Which problem are you refering to?

It is really, really very small. I've got the WUXGA RGB-LED on a 17" M6400 and use the DPI scaling because for me everything is to small. With Vista the scaling works fine, so you can use this on the 15,4" WUXGA, and have the better screen for photoworks.

Those old colorimeter can't calibrate high color gamut or glossy screen. The RGB-LED has both A cheap solution would be the spyder 3 tool.

No, there is no banding, you get real 8-bit 16,7billion colors. Checked here: lagom monitor test

D) If you really care for best color reproduction you want the RGB LED. If you do most of your works on external monitors I'd go for mobility and battery life --> A) (for the E6400 I'd choose the NVidia Card, because the Intel settings for the screen is a lot worse than NVidia's.

Your welcome

 

For what will you use the E6500?
Nevertheless you can get a bad LG and you can get a bad Samsung. I had a LG M4400 and a Samsung M4400 (WXGA+) and there was no better screen. The LG was sharper and had better contrast (great whites...), the Samsung was a little less grainy (<-- bad word, I mean the normal matte grainyness, not the bad ghost grainyness) had natural colors, but tends to be a little yellow.

@ DougMorgan:

I posted some comparison pics with the M4400 WXGA+,the MacBook Pro and the M6400 RGB-LED screen.

Precision M4400 (WXGA+ LED matte) MacBook Pro (WXGA+ LED glossy):





Well the RGB-LED-screen is a glossy one. The colors will be better due to the glossy surface (no diffusion of the light that comes from the screen) and the RGB-LED. Here some pic of the new MacBook Pro (LED) and the Precision M6400 (RGB-LED).

 

Excellent response Intoxicate -- thanks very much.

I saw the earlier thread with the photo comparisons before and it was very encouraging.

I wonder about the colorimeter I already own since in past experience it works fine so long as the display can set a low enough black point. It can both measure and calibrate the temperature so it should be to set the backlight properly I'd imagine. At any rate it's due for replacement since I have only hacked vista drivers for it that need to be reinstalled every time I want to use it.

One small question though --> are you sure it's an 8 bit panel for the LED RGB? In all the reading I've done so far it seemed to be that only the tablet-type laptops had anything other than 6-bit TN's. I ask because there are less problems with banding for a finer graduation (8 vs 6 bit) and I think the desktop LCD's meant for this sort of work are now all 10-bit.

Excellent website for LCD tests -- so with the RGB-LED display you can't detect any banding? Good news. The problem with visible banding on a display used for photography is that you lose any way to determine if the problem is a "real" issue in the image itself that will show up and wreck a printed piece if not fixed in photoshop.

As far as video card goes I think the higher end card is more likely to have the proper LUT tables for profiling than the integrated solutions. It's very hard to tell though as the video card is such a gaming issue that searching for information is near impossible. I think I've found the crysis frame rates for every card ever made though I have no idea what crysis actual is.

Thanks very much again! Now if dell had a 30% off deal in the next few days I'd be set. Anymore information would be welcome as well.

Doug

 

Update: I found that I can order the LED RGB screen directly from Dell Canada with the M4400 only, not the E6500. The RGB LED option doesn't appear on the Canadian website so it has to be ordered by phone.

Price was 164 C$ more than the WUXGA CCFL display. The configuration I wanted came to $2317 Canadian + shipping. If I put the same thing through the USA site I get $2021 USD which current exchange rate has at $2451. Dell USA throws in a 19" lcd monitor I didn't want for the extra $134 which is probably all it's worth. So it's not a x-border thing.

Unfortunately there are no specials, no deals, and even shipping on the Precision is not free. No deals expected for Canada either. Canadians can't order through the outlet store. Asked 3 times for a way to get the price down -- even threatened to buy a MBP -- but maybe I'm just not pushy enough: all I got was a "maybe" free shipping. Bummer.

I guess I'm going to wait a bit and hope for a better price. I don't need this until spring and the precision is so far over my original spouse-approved budget I cringe. Thanks very much for the help and if there is anyone in the Kelowna area that either has one for sale or has a Dell discount scheme, or even has one to show off, let me know.

Doug

 

That is correct. The RGB LED screen is not available for the E6500.