Precision 7720 - What does "narrow border" mean?

I just received mine, with the IPS UHD screen, labeled as "narrow border". As far as I can tell, it has the exact same cheap-looking wide plastic bezel as any other screen the 7720 comes with. So what the heck is "narrow border" supposed to mean? I thought this was supposed to be an edge-to-edge glass panel over the LCD?

Ultra-brief review: I'm seriously underwhelmed. Seems an o.k. machine, with the exception of the idiotic keyboard layout, and the fantastically bad touchpad. You better plan to never use the touchpad on this thing, or you'll be in a world of pain. Unfortunately I did not have any other options. I'm still considering just returning the thing. Should have tried to get the HP, perhaps.

 

Hi,

Could you do me a favor? Open it and take a look if there is a cable for broadband antennas (LTE etc.). DELL claims that there's none with UHD display.

TIA.

Cheers,
Alex

 

"Narrow border" sounds like it could be cool, but it means nothing. I'm surprised if they're selling it with that option, it was supposed to be a mistake. Dell confirmed that the regular 4K screen and the "narrow border" 4K screen are the same thing.

 

So, perhaps the internal screen itself really has a narrow border compared to the standard? Dell didn't make any alternate design to the 7720 bezels to put it to good use, though it's hard to see how to use it other than to reduce the bezels and the dimensions of the whole laptop itself (e.g. like XPS 15 does).

 

I have read from 7720 user review that IPS 4k screen can use LTE card without any issue. Not sure why Dell said they are not compatible. I specifically asked about this and the author replied it is working, and he said even old school M6700 IPS screen can use LTE card although Dell said "no" back in the days.

 

This is the part I can confirm: I've been using my M6700 with 3G for years now. DELL refused to build my M6700 with broadband so I asked them to simply add the card at the end of my order as a separate item and they did. And it worked flawlessly. But I heard that some M6600 didn't have the needed antenna. I asked myself if if one could hijack one of the three Wifi-antennas (since newer Intel cards only do MIMO 2x2).
This time (getting a 7720 with 4k display) I did the same: I asked them to add the DW5811E as separate item and I hope that this works out again

Cheers,
Ales

 

FYI: Received my Precision 7720 with 4k "narrow border" display yesterday. Both WWAN-antennas (main+aux) are in place and after installing a Dell Wireless 5811e card (and a sierra driver update via Microsoft) I get really fast LTE (4G). Great.

BTW: I'm not sure if I am happy with this display. Compared to the great IPS-Edge2Edge display in my M6700 (which is going back to DELL, soon) and the 4k IPS (real) narrow border display in my new XPS 9560 the 4k non-glossy display in the 7720 looks dull and pale. But maybe I'm spoiled by using glossy displays for years. And now I can go out of basement and start working in daylight again

Cheers,
Alex

 

I'm starting to understand my setup and the problems: PremierColor ist still the pest (as it was on my M6700). The picture looks pale because the gamma is wrong. The "sRGB" profile claims a gamma of 2.2 and looks bad with raised blacks and flat picture. After switching to REC.709 (claiming to have a gamma of 2.4) the picture looks much better. Since sRGB and Rec.709 are close enough in appearance I may live with this.

You might ask: but why not dump PremierColor?! Well, I enjoy to switch color profiles very fast and easy. My typical day includes sRGB/Rec.709, AdobeRGB and in the near future DCI P3 (for SGamut3.cine material which is very close to P3 and it seems to be a good source for future homebrewed UHD-Blu-rays with Rec.2020 and HDR).

Cheers,
Alex

 

I don't do color stuff much so this may sound ignorant...
Have you looked into alternates to PremierColor if it is a pest? I've heard recommendation for DisplayCAL. (I think it does require a spectrometer, though ...?)

 

Could you please let me know what is the touchpad driver (Synaptics, ALPS, etc) on this workstation?