1520 Viewing Angles

I just got my 1520 with 1280x800 WXGA glossy screen, and the vertical viewing angle is pretty bad. Slightly nodding my head up and down causes a pretty drastic shift in brightness and color, and there really is no sweet spot; for example, if the middle of the screen looks good, the bottom will be washed out as I gaze downward, improving as I tilt my head to bring it perpendicular to my line of sight. The "Help me choose" part of the order screen described the WXGA and WXGA+ (1440x900) as having "Standard" viewing angle, so I didn't think there would be any difference, and I definitely did not want the WSXGA+ (1680x1050) on a 15" monitor, even though it offers "Wide" viewing angle.

Now, I see in the printed specifications in the back of the manual that the WXGA has vertical viewing angle of +15/-30, while the WXGA+ has +/- 45 degrees. Had I know this before ordering, I would have ruled out the WXGA on the basis of its extremely limited viewing angle. (I would also have widened my search had I known that +/-45 is as good as the 1520 gets.)

My questions are these:

1. For those who've seen the WXGA and WXGA+ side by side, is there a dramatic improvement in the vertical viewing angle for the WXGA+? Or is it still pretty bad?

2. For anyone who has the WXGA+, what's your impression of the vertical viewing angle? Is there a sweet spot? That is, can you position the display such that you observe uniform brightness and color when sitting directly in front of it at normal distances?

3. Finally, if I decide I want the WXGA+, does anyone know if Dell will replace the display on site?

 

1. Doesn't apply to me

2. No issues like you describe. Yes there is a sweet spot, if I position the screen at about 35 degrees, its fine.

3. I doubt it.

 

everyday I read this forum I get more and more nervous about my laptop. I also have the WXGA screen and did not notice that either.

 

Thanks for the reply. What about watching a letterboxed movie? I just tried King Kong 2005, which has substantial black bars above and below the image area, and I found that with the screen at its nominal angle, the upper black bar looked black, while the bottom black bar appeared a light shade of gray. The whole image is quite washed out, and it's much more noticeable than at the desktop. Move back about a foot, and the top black bar goes light gray, while the bottom goes black. It's just extremely sensitive to the most minor movements of one's gaze.

 

haven't watched any movies on it yet, maybe later in the week, I'll report back

 

Update: I checked out the NVidia control panel settings and found that for the Desktop, the defaults were 50% for each of Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma. I don't know how comparable my 1520's 8600M GT is to my desktop's 8800GTS WRT all this, but the 8800GTS defaults are 50% Brightness, 46% Contrast, and 9% Gamma. I tried those settings on the 1520, and they made a noticeable improvement. (Note: I've been working with the 1520 backlight turned up all the way. The screen is just too dim otherwise.)

While it's improved, the WXGA's vertical viewing angle is still terrible. To anyone with the WXGA+, how does it look when you have an (almost) all-black screen, such as when the BIOS is booting, or the default Vista screensaver is playing? (You could also create a suitably-sized image in Paint, fill it with black, and Ctrl+F to view it full-screen.) On my WXGA, the screen begins to lighten about 25% of the distance from the top of the display until it's a light gray color at the very bottom. If I go into contortions (i.e. I gaze directly at the middle of the screen, which is an impossible working position), I can get the middle third to appear fairly black while the top and bottom thirds go light.

 

I know! So many complaints... Next thing is going to be like an exploding battery.


Again.

 

Im liking my 1680x1050 selection more and more.

 

Doesn't the text get really small? Especially on a 15 inch

 

I'd expect he'd need to use the "Large Fonts" option. Not all applications cope well with it, though, as high resolution displays (high DPI, that is) aren't yet mainstream. And it's not just fonts; it's icons, single pixel lines (that need to become thicker), etc etc etc.

 

You can adjust all aspects of windows (font sizes, window border sizes, button sizes, icon sizes, icon spacing, etc) easily enough. I change them all the time on my desktop.

But to be honest, I have no idea how it will turn out in practice.

Playing games at 1280x800 resolution on a 1680x1050 screen doesnt look very different than playing on a 1280x800 screen, IMHO.