M4600 IPS Screen Corner Tint

I've searched these forums and the web but can't find any similar complaints, so maybe it's only me...

I have an M4600 with the IPS screen. The lower two corners have color tints. On a white screen, the lower left corner is noticeably greenish and the lower right is noticeably pinkish. On a completely black screen, I don't notice the lower right so much, but the lower left is still glowing a dim green. The left-center and upper left also glow green but to a lesser extent. Obviously the LEDs must be located in these areas, but I don't want light leaks or whatever you want to call it, I want proper colors!

I do photo work and paid plenty extra for this IPS panel and am a bit disappointed by the corner tinting.

So the million dollar question, before I call Dell support: Does anyone else with the M4600 IPS screen have any problem like this? Same colors, same places, or different?

 

A photo, then an inside look at Dell's response to quality

So I sat on this problem for a few weeks, but Monday (Aug 8th) I finally got around to calling Dell support about the screen issues. The events that took place after that one phone call have left me pleasantly amazed by Dell's support and concern for quality regarding these machines, but I'll get back to that thought in a minute. First, as I should have posted long ago, a picture of my problem (this should be a flat black screen, but obviously it has some problems!):



If your IPS screen looks like that, call Dell!

So at first, my support case proceeded pretty much as I expected. As per the NBD service, a technician was scheduled to come to my house Tuesday afternoon. While still at work on Tue, I got a phone call from Dell and that's where things got interesting. In reviewing the tech support call logs, they became very interested in my issue. They wanted to send me a new machine so they could keep my bad one to take a closer look. They could have had my machine in about 1.5 to 2 weeks, after I received the new one and sent out the old one.

Let me tell you, these guys are hardcore and take quality seriously. They didn't want to wait 2 weeks and risk other machines having the same issue, so what to do? They flew a Dell engineer from Dell HQ in Texas to my house in Massachusetts so he could do the failure analysis on site. Believe me, I was shocked when they proposed this plan, but in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. Kill the problem ASAP. Air and hotel is a drop in the bucket.

So Wednesday afternoon comes around and Liam Kennedy, a quality engineer from Dell, arrives at my house. What a nice guy, the kind of guy you'd want to go out and have a beer with after work. Right from the very start, he told me to ask him as many questions as I wanted, and to give him whatever feedback on the M4600 that I could think of. Very friendly, and very interested in my comments (he took lots of notes!).

As he dissected my machine for his on-site FA, we chatted about this and that, took notes, and took pictures of some problem areas (beyond just the screen, part of my feedback). He ultimately identified the source of my light leaks: the screws holding the panel from the side were hitting the interior parts and putting torque and pressure on things. Most likely the glass was too wide (from the screen manufacturer). Just for completeness, he dug into the main chassis of the machine as well, to check general build quality from the factory and to investigate other smaller issues further. After about 3 hours of checking things out, my machine was back in one piece. We then had a brief VOIP call with Dell-Mano_G (nice talking to you, and thank you for the help!).

So in the end, Liam was able to find the root cause for my light leaks, which is good for both Dell and myself. During reassembly, he intentionally put the screws all the way back in to cause the same light leaks. In about a week, I should be receiving a new machine. I will swap my HDD and send the bad one to them so they can do a more extensive (and destructive) FA on the screen.

So besides fixing my problem, and the neato-factor of having a Dell engineer in my house, what did I get from all of this? I gained a whole lot of confidence in Dell, their business products in particular. I know some might feel that they don't care because they don't take every suggestion that we throw out there, but I can tell you, THEY CARE! I have now seen it with my own eyes. I wish the quality department in every company was like this one. I'll tell you one thing, from now on it's only business machines for me, even if it's just for home!

Liam and Mano, keep up the good work.

 

That's awesome, and very nice to see when things get resolved well technically.

My only gripe with Dell is that their Tier 1 support is terrible...(ok, your computer is on fire...but can you try rebooting it for me please...)

But in general I've been pleasantly surprised each time I underestimated Dell.

 

Haha, yeah that's pretty much what I expected, but the guy I spoke with didn't give me too much script or hassle. With the machine powered off, he just had me hold down the "D" key and the power button for a few seconds until the screen started cycling through the 3 primary colors, white, and black. That's a nice little trick to see if your screen problems are caused by anything from BIOS to the OS to the drivers, or if they are real screen problems. Once I told him I could still see the problem, he scheduled the appointment.

I think my worst experience with phone support was many years ago, calling Apple for my wife's laptop. The hard drive was grinding so bad you could hear it from another room. The tech didn't seem to believe me, and was giving me the usual list of crap to do, so out of frustration I just held the phone up the the laptop and asked "See? Can we do business now?" He immediately arranged the repair after that

 

I think that's the operative conclusion: business machines are built for serious use and thus get serious attention. I have never owned a Dell, so I cannot speak about them. I've only owned two IBM (now lenovo) business class machines (the only kind IBM made, I believe) and they always took care of my problems immediately and thoroughly. If they still made an IPS Thinkpad I wouldn't even be having this discussion on Dell (or HP, either).





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Since you're obviously an owner of the IPS display, could you give me any idea of what your battery life is like? Do you have the 6 or 9 cell battery? Do you have the secondary battery that replaces the drive?

I'm getting one of these in for review. I work in printing/graphic arts and color fidelity is very important for us. Having a screen that can display full AdobeRGB would be phenomenal. But we also travel a lot with it. If it weighs 10 pounds with all the extra batteries to get more than 3 hours of battery life, an sRGB capable system (like the e6520) with Optimus switching will be more appropriate for us.

 

Sorry to tell you this but the E6520 does not have an sRGB panel offering. The M6600 FHD panels are all 72% color gamut, sRGB panels. The IPS RGB offered on the M4600 and soon to be offered on the M6600 are both 100% color gamut panels.

 

Thanks for that info.

The notebookcheck review (they do so much better than most, especially for display measurement) showed the FHD (Non-IPS) display being just a tiny bit off of sRGB.

The specs I have show the standard FHD panel on the M4600 as being a 60% panel. Is it significantly better than the FHD panel on the e6520? If the battery life issue ends up making the IPS panel untenable, I'm wondering what the next best option would be.

 

I have the 9 cell, and do not have any secondary battery. I also have the Quadro 2000M, which is something you brought up in another post. As I suspect you already know by now, the IPS screen cannot be used with Optimus, so it is the Quadro all the time. So far the longest I've had it unplugged is 30 - 45 minutes, so I can't say much about the battery life. I'm plugged in 99% of the time. I'll try to do a runtime test for you when I get a chance.

As for the color gamut, it is great. According to my Spyder 3, it meets AdobeRGB and NTSC. This screen (with it's defects) has a native white point of 7800 K if I remember correctly, though I'm not sure if the replacement will be the same in that regard. With the full NTSC gamut, you'll be in good shape for just about anything except some vivid spot colors. Some have complained about it being too saturated, but that's what you get IPS for! It is true, though, out of the box the colors on everything from icons to pictures can make your eyes bleed. After profiling the monitor, things calm down of course.

 

Does the IPS have an sRGB mode and if activated does it stop the over-saturation effect?

Thanks for the info on the IPS! No one has posted any in depth info on the IPS before and your post really helps! I'm surprised it can cover NTSC, thats pretty impressive!