17" MacBook Pro Screen Quality

I'm curious about the screen they are putting in the new 17 inch MacBook Pro. It says "The 1920-by-1200-pixel resolution (133 pixels per inch) means you can view more palettes and windows or watch HD video in its native 1920-by-1080 resolution. Perfect whether you’re working in the studio or out in the field, the display offers a 60 percent greater color gamut than previous generations for richer, more vibrant colors and a 700:1 contrast ratio that makes whites brighter and blacks blacker." Does this mean that they are using real 8 bit displays? I kind of doubt it since that don't mention the infamous "millions of colors". How are they getting a high quality screen in a such a small compartment? The screen on the Sony AW is easily a half inch thick on it own. I can't wait to see the difference in person.

To me the screen is the most important aspect of a notebook followed by weight. I'm not a fan of Apple's politics, but this new MBP has me intrigued.

 

My guess is that it's not using a TN panel, and an IPS of some sort.

Isn't your avatar a picture of missile testing?

 

Yep! When the end comes it will be an amazing sight.

 

it is likely to be the same RGB LED, so TN anyways

if apple can find a source that produces IPS, others can do the same on the expensive market, color gamut and quality of the panel are two different things

ps. don't be silly

 

The marketing part first:

Okay.

So the previous generations had 45% NTSC, which is poor but typical for notebooks. Now they say 60% better which is 72% NTSC and is about the average color gamut for a typical LCD monitor. That's what they are trying to show with their picture:


http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features-17inch.html

72% of the NTSC gamut equals sRGB gamut.


The Sony AW you mentioned uses RGBLED backlight and has significantly higher color gamut - 137% of the Adobe Color Gamut.

Enough about the gamut as that's just the range of colors that the display can reproduce and it's determined by the backlight. So you get a backlight upgrade here. Congratulations.

That would be nice, but I would like to see what the real-life contrast ratio would be like.

There is nothing that suggests that there.

Considering that phrase was turned to buzzword (sounds good, but means nothing), it doesn't matter either way.

Btw, it does say "millions of colors" but then again, all of their notebooks (and their 6 bit screens) "support" that "feature", through dithering.

The LED backlighting allow the screen manufacturers to make thinner screens, which doesn't mean that every notebook manufacturer will take the full advantage of that. Either way, there is no direct relation.

The IPS technology is pretty much dead for the notebook industry at this point since neither screen nor notebooks manufacturers find it profitable to use it anymore. So you are pretty much limited to cheap TNs unless you buy a tablet.

The only improvement recently were some RGBLED screens used by other brands, since they use better TN panels, which are advertised as 8-bit, and also the RGBLED backlight offer a wide color gamut and more natural colors.

Just for an example, this below is a comparison between the the 15" MBP with WLED and the 17" Dell Precision M6400 with RGBLED and 100% Adobe gamut.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4311761&postcount=8


Back to the 17" MBP, it probably uses a 6-bit TN panel with White LED backlighting, which isn't exactly impressive at this age and time.

This below is from Displayblog:

Anyway, we will know that for sure when someone finds out the manufacturer and the part number of this display and so on.

 

Especially at almost $3K !

Cheers,