Best WUXGA displays out there these days?

What laptop models (at least on the PC side of the fence) ship available with what you would consider the best WUXGA displays available today? "Best" is subjective but I define it to be that overall combination of contrast, brightness, low black levels, wide gamut, viewing angle and high resolution that makes photo working a pleasure, movie watching fun, and gigantic spreadsheet work a pleasure thanks to a sharp screen.

I used to have Latitude 15.4"s with the 1920x1200 screen which I used to think were pretty darn good (though that was years ago) and migrated over to Toshiba Qosmios with 1920x1200 17" screens that admittedly are stunning even though I've had other issues with those models. However now I am looking for something 15.4" with the same resolution but that Qosmio "wow" factor to the screen, and struggling. The Lenovo 1920x1200 panels seem to have a "eh, yeah it's dark too but at least it's not as crappy as the other Lenovo panels" reputation. The Dell XPS 1920x1200 panel seems to be okay but not terribly vivid, though it's hard to tell as they don't seem to be very popular. The Latitude 1920x1200 panel (from the D830), I can't find a great deal of feedback at all except for some people saying it's the same as the XPS panel and others saying it's not. I'm not sure whom else plays in this market. I think HP has a model (8510W) with available WUXGA under their Compaq workstation brand but it sure isn't cheap!

Any suggestions? What are my manufacturer choices for 15.4" WUXGA (assuming I don't want to do anything crazy like LCD replacements and all) and if you had to pick on the basis of screen quality alone, where would you lean?

Is there any indication that we're in for a new generation of much-improved panels? Perhaps some 15.4" LED WUXGA uber-panel? Or are there just not a lot of suppliers and variability for such a high rez panel?

 

Unfortunately laptop brand has very little to do with LCD brand. Most manufacturers will use various brands of panels, and most manufacturers will use a variety of panels in even the same laptop model. It's a gamble at the best of times.

If you want the best screen possible, I think your best bet these days is to purchase the laptop with a cheaper panel (or a good panel - if you want to keep it as a spare, or take the chance in case you get a screen you like) and then if you are unsatisfied, purchase a specific brand and model panel after-market that you know is good... and install it yourself.

The best panels going around these days (by popular opinion anyway) seem to be the LG-Philips panels. The particular model you would be looking for (if you want a WUXGA 15.4" panel) is LP154WU1. There are plenty on ebay, you'll find that model number is suffixed with letters/numbers in 2 brackets, for example (TL)(B2), and these numbers indicate the mounting bracket configuration. You should get the bracket config to suit your laptop, but as forum users here have proved, if you can't find the right bracket suffix (or simply don't know) it's possible to swap the brackets over from your existing panel to the new panel.

Now if that all sounds well out of your league, sorry I don't know how else to help - like I said getting a good screen in a laptop is a bit of a gamble. But if it does sound like something you'd do, you might find these threads informative:

Putting WUXGA 15.4" panel in dell M1530, including bracket swap:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3322153

Discussing WUXGA 15.4" installs in macbook pro, lots of praise for LG-Philips:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5222519