AluBook crappy screen, 9c8c>9c89

After I got my new AluBook the screen just bugged me. The blacks were horrible and there are alot of complaints about it. Some people claimed that the 9c8c screen is better than the 9c89. Today I went to the Apple store in town and it is a LOT better (compared side by side). The blacks are incomparable. I have the 9c89 and it is just total crap when you put on a dark background. It is not even moving your head causes the black to go out of wack, looking straight at it the top and bottom part of the screen is grey instead of black. Apple should be ashamed to put out such a crappy screen.

 

well, get it exchanged then.

 

Yeah if you can please teach me how to spot one with a 9c8c screen Oh wait, you cant.

 

get it exchanged, you can look it up in the profile (refer to macrumors site)

 

I know that, however you wont know what you get until you open the box and turn the notebook on.

 

Well, it won't get any better just sitting in your lap. Go into the Apple store, tell them your problems, and say you want it exchanged. Open the new one there at the store, and see how it looks for you.

Also make sure to send Apple an email about how your original unit had a very crappy screen.

 

I had the Macbook with 9C8C screen. It won't matter which one you get, don't kid yourself, the Macbook screen still washes out when you pull the screen towards you and loses all black level. If you push it back too far the picture will disappear into a silhouette. If there's any difference between the 2 screens it will only be visible to the trained eye. The Macbook is made for general purpose computing and not really for any sort of movie watching or serious photo editing as the black level washes out if the screen isn't pivoted to the proper sweet spot. No amount of color profile changes will make any difference. I ended up returning mine and bought a Macbook Air and love it, the screen quality difference between the Air and the Macbook is like night and day.

 

The difference is quite big on a black background. If you think the 9c8c is bad, and I never said it is good, the 9c89 is much worse. It does not take a trained eye to see it on a black background. The 9c89 you dont even pivot for it to seem washed out on the top and bottom. I showed it to the Geniuses and they all agreed my AluBook has worse blacks. However they cant exchange it for me since I bought mine online and the local Apple store is an affiliate store.

 

I dont think there is much of a difference. I was watching Wall-E last night, blacks were not that great. I thought that I must have the 9C89 screen, but what do you know, just checked and I have the 9C8C

 

So it's not an "Apple Store" then? If it's listed here, then there should be no problems exchanging it.

 

I agree 9C8C is better than 9C89. But it's not a huge difference in my opinion.

Notebookcheck.net have measured both screens and published results. The 9C89 has a contrast of 155:1. The 9C8C has 190:1

If you want a really good screen have a look at Macbook Air or Sony SR. Contrast rates around 500:1.

I bought a 9C89 Macbook and sold it after 3 days mainly because of the screen. I have been considering hunting for a macbook with 9C8C screen, I reckon my best chance is the second hand market, since dutch resellers do not want to open up boxes before selling. I am unsure the 9C8C display will satisfy me though.

 

I have the 89 display, and I don't have a problem with mine. Looks fine.

 

I dont have a problem with the contrast ratio, the negative blacks is what annoys me. The 9c8c will probably make me content. It is not a great screen but a tolerable one. I am thinking of getting the MacBook Pro instead, but that is $$$ more.

Imagine watching a dark scene and the blacks have a silver hue to it even when viewing it even straight on. For those that bought the Ipod Touch when it first came out the Touch had a similar issue.

Anyway I am not trying to convince people who like their screen to dislike it. If you dont have a problem with it great. However for those that is looking to buy the AluBook do yourself a favor and make sure the display sample is a 9c89 screen to prepare for the worst. The one I looked at had a 9c8c screen. I used the first stock Black and White background to compare the two. At full brightness looking perpendicular at the center of the screen the blacks on the 9c89 is destinctively silvery while the 9c8c is still tolerable.

 

I have a 9C89 screen on my aluminum MacBook.

Looks great to me. Colors are extremely vibrant and naturally saturated. Blacks are almost as deep as my LCD TV (which produces blacks just about as deep as DLP).

I calibrated the screen using the "TV Gamma" option. Made a world of difference.

It looks every bit as good as my friend's MacBook Pro's LG LED backlit screen.

Edit: wanted to add that the aluminum MacBook's I played with prior to Apple giving me this one as a replacement (again) all had 9C8C screens and, quite honestly, I was disappointed even when they were calibrated. Colors were washed out in all cases.

 

"TV Gamma" option, can you fix that in the settings? Anyone else try that with satisfactory results?

 

You can find it in the calibration settings. Just go to Display in System Preferences and run that little wizard.

 

Seems more people like 9c89 here
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=591122

I had the 9c89, no problems for me....paid so much less for a small macbook pro form.....of course they use a cheaper LCD than the Air or Pro.

 

The bad black levels influence the contrast ratio, as contrast ratio is the difference in brightness from the darkest to brightest portion on the screen.

By the way, Notebookcheck.net also published the black level scores for both panels.

I did the numbers using that poll, turns out 54% thinks the 9C89 is good, while 60% thinks the 9C8C is good. Do the same thing for MBA and I estimate >95% will think it's good.

I understand that some people are happy with it. Just like some people are happy with the screen on the previous Macbook. It all depends on how critical one is and what their frame of reference is.

I bought the Macbook 2.4/320GB for 1589 euros, that's only 100 euros cheaper than a MBA. The competition (Sony SR and Lenovo U330 for example) use better displays. I can even get a better display in a $600 Vostro 1310.

So the fact that Apple makes a laptop with an A grade aluminium casing, the best touchpad in the industry, a great OS and then uses a mediocre display surprises me. I was not surprised by the number of reports on Macrumors of people returning their Macbook, either for a refund or a MBA. I hope Apple will respond to the market demands.

Yes that helps. You can find many calibrated display profiles on Macrumors. I recommend JC display profile posted by pstube. It makes the contrast look better. Unfortunately it also makes the display darker.

 

That probably just indicates that the 9c89 is more common and the majority of people are indifferent when it comes to the quality of their displays. Many of them never had a notebook before or upgraded from an inferior display. Well, maybe Apple could introduce a premium MacBook in January with a "cinema display" or as we call it the MBA panel for $1699 ($100 price reductions on the other configurations).

 

Returned my Macbook back to Best Buy the other day.

I was totally bewildered by the poor quality screen. I was really looking forward to changing to a mac for my portable needs, but this has really put a sour taste in my mouth. Such a great quality build, gone to waste with a horrible horrible display. I really really wanted this macbook but it unusable.

 

Imagine that, Sauron likes Apple again...
Before I get totally engulfed in flames, how does anyone think the aluminum mac screens compare with the last gen macbooks?
I suspect that there may be a decent enough difference between the 9c8c and 9c89, but that many are hoping (expecting?) to recieve a screen like the macbook pro and are disappointed to find that it's not as good.
In my personal opinion, if it's as good or better than the last gen macbook, I would be happy with that as I find the white macbook screen to be pretty decent (although I'm not a photo/video editor ). I guess that I'm wondering if some people are just being too picky?

 

Contrast rates and black levels are similar to the previous generation Macbook. Brightness on the new gen is better.

 

Then I honestly can't understand what the problem is, because I find the screen on it just fine. It's a huge step up from the inspiron that I had (I cannot under state that!). I find the screen very bright too, so I imagine the new macbook would be almost blinding at 100% brightness.

 

That's exactly the case. It depends on your frame of reference.

If you're coming from a run of the mill Acer or Dell screen the Macbook screen looks good.

If you're coming from Sony SZ/Z/TZ or Macbook Air the Macbook screen looks mediocre.

 

I did have to put Windows on this new MacBook to make it useful

And I am considering selling it.

I had an LG screen in my last MacBook, which people over at various forums considered to be the "best" manufacturer for plastic MacBook screens. I have the LG screen in my aluminum MacBook now. I think it looks considerably better. Much brighter and much better color saturation. Deeper blacks. It's a big step up.

See thats the thing, I never thought the MacBook Pro screen was as good as people make it out to be. My aluminum MacBook screen looks every bit as good as my friend's LED backlit MBP screen.

You realize that Acer, Dell, HP, Sony, Apple, etc. all buy panels from the same manufacturers with the same specs, right?

 

LCDs are not all about brightness. Viewing angle/color shift, black depth etc all are just important if not more important.

I never owned the previous MacBook so I cannot comment on that. But what I do see is that Apple is putting in two displays of varying quality into the same product. One which (I believe) is just plain better than the other.

 

They all buy screens from the same manufacturers, but there are big differences in specifications. Have a look at the measurements of Notebookcheck.net if you don't believe me, especially the contrast rates and black levels:

9C8C:
Maximum brightness 318 cd/m²
Average 283.7 cd/m²
Black 1.67 cd/m²
Contrast 190:1
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Apple-MacBook-Aluminium-Unibody-13-9400M.11984.0.html

9C89:
Maximum brightness 298 cd/m²
Average 246.1 cd/m²
Black 1.92 cd/m²
Contrast 155:1
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Apple-MacBook-Aluminium-Unibody-13-9400M.12533.0.html

Macbook Air:
Maximum brightness 354 cd/m²
Average 308 cd/m²
Black 0.49 cd/m²
Contrast 722:1
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Apple-MacBook-Air-Subnotebook.7979.0.html

Sony SZ7
Maximum 251.4 cd/m²
Average 245.3 cd/m²
Black 0.5 cd/m²
Contrast 503:1
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Sony-Vaio-VGN-SZ71WN-C-Subnotebook.9606.0.html

 

Yep. A friend of mine who used a cheap Toshiba notebook for years, told me that the new Macbook screen was the best looking screen he ever seen.

 

IMO, another thing to note is that the glass panel in front of the LED screen on the Alu MacBooks do affect how the screens look...

 

I have two brand new Macbook Aluminums infront of me. One is the base model and the other is the 2.4ghz/backlit keyboard model.

The cheaper one has the 9C8C screen, the expensive one has the 9C89 screen. There is virtually no difference between these two displays. They both exhibit the same problems with color shift when changing vertical angles. If you change them both to a black background, there's no viewing angle on either one that produces a solid looking color from top to bottom.

It's a real shame that Apple couldn't just put the Air screen in these.

 

Don't forget that the glossy covering actually improves how the screen looks - imagine what it would be like without it (of course, talking about a low-light environment).

This is a premium priced notebook... using sub-par quality screens is really strange and appears contrary to the Apple design philosophy.

 

I had hope Apple used higher quality displays in their new Aluminum Macbooks. The black macbook I used had horrible color shifting problems from changing viewing angles. It makes it hard to show videos or pictures to a group of people looking at your macbook if you have to view it straight on for the best color.

I agree. People call this a consumer notebook (and it is to certain extent), but it is at a Pro price of $1600.

 

mine's 9C8A

 

Does that screen even come equipped with the MB, or is that the MBA or MBP?

 

Credit goes to Apple's outstanding marketing department.

 

mine's a macbook,btw I'm pretty amazed that no one has ever met with that model

 

Wow I am intrigued. Does your LCD suffer from the color inverting when looking at the screen from anything other than a 90 degree angle?

I was in the Apple store and I had a Genius come look at it to make sure I was not crazy. I was not. Both are bad but the color on the 9c89 inverts (black becomes silvery).

 

I never knew about this screen in the MB. How is the quality compared to the 9c89 and the 9c8c?

 

Gizmodo showed the differences between the MacBook and the MBPro screens side by side. It's kinda ridiculous how poor the MacBook's display is.

Dead on:



From an angle: