15.4" WSXGA+ LCD panel comparison - Samsung vs. LG

Update: the LG vs. Samsung comparison images and analysis are on pages 5 and 6 of this thread, you can see them by clicking here.

Given the numerous discussions and opinions about the differences between the Samsung and LG panels, I wonder if people would be interested in seeing an empirical side-by-side test of the two?

<del>For this purpose, I've created a fundable collection to raise a little money to cover the 15% restocking cost of purchasing and returning a T61p with the LG panel.</del> Comparison has been done locally, so I've removed the fundable collection. (Alternatively, if there is anyone with a T61p with the 15.4" WSXGA+ LG panel in the San Diego area who would be willing to meet up with me to do a comparison, send me a PM!)
Update: a local San Diegan with the T61p LG panel has contacted me. We'll be comparing them Saturday, so hopefully the fundable collection is unnecessary.

If I'm able to raise the money or find someone local to compare with, I'll post side-by-side pictures of identical T61p's with each panel (similar to what I did in this post comparing my T61p to my T43). I'll also post the results of empirical tests to determine how their other performance attributes compare to each other (such as contrast ratio, sharpness, and pixel response time).

 

Hasn't this been done here?

And does it make any difference? What I mean by this is a simple question? Is your screen a a rewarding experience for you? What's the point in all of these interminable measurements? Ultimately it has to come down to whether or not one enjoys their machine.

I have a t61p. I have no idea who makes the screen. What I do know is that I very much enjoy my machine. I enjoy looking at the display. Measurements won't change that and measurements won't change the person's experience who does not enjoy their screen.

 

I don't think anything close to an empirical comparison has been done, here or anywhere else I've searched.

I think it does make a difference. Although people might be happy with their display, they might be much happier with a better display. The display is the primary interface, and significant quality differences in luminosity, contrast, or pixel response could mean the difference between getting headaches/eyestrain, or not. Without a side-by-side comparison, there's really no way to know whether one display is significantly better than another.

That said, I do understand where you're coming from. When I bought my T61p, I made no effort to search for dead or stuck pixels in the display. I figure that if I don't notice any, then there is no difference, and I'm better off not knowing about them, even if they are there.

I've read comments from people saying how their LG display is "so much better" than their Samsung, and I'd like to see if there's really a noticeable difference. I'm just as interested in debunking unfounded rumors as I am in exposing interesting information. I totally agree that a lot of it is personal preference, but photographs and hard data are much more useful than opinions. If there is a significant quality difference between the Samsung display and the LG display, then I would certainly be interested in knowing about it. I paid $1500+ of my own money for my laptop, and I want the best display available! I could easily make a case for why my current display is defective (light leakage), if I needed to.

 

I've had the two side by side (15.4", 1680x1050). The LG is much better than the Samsung I had but still have viewing problems with the vertical angles. The Samsung has a much more grainy image (looks like very thin sand all over the screen) where's the LG is much better (but not perfect).

The screen I compared these against is a 3-year old panel that came with an Asus M6Ne (no idea of the screen brand as it does not show on Everest) which I regard as perfect in terms of viewing angles and image sharpness.

I kept the LG but after two months I still haven't gotten fully used to the screen so I might be looking for a replacement in the future. Shame as I *love* the laptop (T61 6460-66U) other than the screen.

 

Cool, thanks for the account, smartins. Basically I want to translate your experience into pictures that people can use to judge for themselves. Is there anyone in the San Diego area with a T61p with the LG panel, who'd be willing to meet to compare them? Check out this post to see how to tell who made your LCD panel.

 

I've tried and failed to capture into pictures what I was seeing. They all looked very similar in pictures, not even close to how I saw then in person. Of course I used a regular digital camera, it might be possible to get better pictures that come closer to the real images.

Oh, at the same time I also had another T61 WSXGA+ with the Samsung screen, and even between both Samsung screens there where some noticeable diferences in light bleeding and brightness.

 

Thanks to this thread, I've just found out that I have the 15.4 inch LG Phillips display.

No light leaks or if there are they are minimal. The screen is a sheer pleasure to read.

 

Thanks again both of you. I am confident that if there is a significant, visible difference between the screens, it will be possible to demonstrate it with a decent digital camera by properly calibrating the LCD panels, and taking the pictures correctly (with manual settings, controlling ISO, exposure, ambient light, distance & viewing angle, and other aspects carefully).

While my Samsung panel works well enough, I wouldn't call it a "sheer pleasure to read". It is better than my T43 screen, but nowhere nearly as nice as my Dell 2001FP panel made three years ago. There is certainly a general "graininess" to it that I suspect might be pretty obvious if it was side-by-side with an LG panel. It has a good overall viewing angle, but significant changes in quality with relatively small changes in viewing angle. For example, you can see significant variation in luminosity and color just by looking at it straight on, not at all like my Dell. Then there's that light leakage thing. So I'm still looking for someone in San Diego with whom to compare the screens, just to find out for sure! If I could get a panel with similar quality to my Dell 2001FP, it would really make a big difference to me.

 

what is this light leakage you are talking about? where is it coming from?

 

I show the light leakage of my Samsung LCD in pictures attached to this post.

 

Fignuts, I had the LG screen on my T61p and it was DOA with mobo issues, had to send it back and get a new laptop. They sent me the Samsung, after using the LG I can't even look at this thing. I think you will be greatly disappointed when you see the LG monitor and I am telling you right now before you do your tests it's going to be a landslide victory for the LG screen. Samsung monitors should be pulled from Lenovo, I don't know how they look on other laptops but on the t61p it is HORRIBLE. Ruins the whole experience, I am sending this one back and have a new order which will hopefully be LG or I am done with Lenovo.

 

I won't question how you know the LG screen was so much better if the mobo was DOA, I trust that was your experience. I won't be too disappointed if the LG is much better than the Samsung...as long as I'm able to show that difference with pictures, I think it would make an easy case to get the screen replaced (or notebook returned). However, I think there's a chance that there is significant quality variation in panels made by the same manufacturer...it might be possible that some people have great Samsung screens, and some people have lousy LG screens. If that's the case, then it might not be quite as simple as LG being better than Samsung. Hopefully I'll see on Saturday!

 

well I am calling Lenovo tomorrow about my new t61p. When I am at full brightness (15 of 15) my screen brightness is comparable to the LOWEST setting on my dell laptop sitting side by side. It really strains my eyes to look at the t61p for a while because the brightness is so low, I have the Samsung lcd. I just am so very disappointed in this screen. Everything else about the laptop is great, but why put such a terrible looking lcd on such a powerful and well built laptop?

 

didn't you just post that same response in another thread?

it sucks that the screen is bad..but it really is not that bad...

 

Don't know about y'all but my Samsung LCD is quite nice. Yes, it looked grainy for about 10 seconds, but I got used to it. It's not even noticeable anymore. Also, the panel's contrast and colors are good enough that it doesn't need to be at full brightness to be comfortable. I find it pleasing to work with, especially after a bit contrast/gamma tweaking. It's more than usable a few notches down from max, with the BIOS brightness setting at Normal. Sweet. Wish I had the LG screen because then I imagine this laptop would be absolutely perfect, but I'm fine with the way it is right now.

 

Squale: Have you looked at the NVidia control panel? It allows you to adjust 2D brightness/contrast/vibrance/gamma levels. Its at 50% on default. That should help.
On mine I actually turned it down to 35% brightness.

 

Does your Dell have their glossy "TrueLife" panel? Glossy LCD displays are generally noticeably brighter than ones with a matte finish, especially indoors (the T61p comes with a matte panel). That said, I would also describe my Samsung LCD as disappointingly dim at full brightness. It is certainly useable, but not at all vibrant like other LCD displays I've seen.

 

i also have a samsung and I love it..i am sure it can be better (like the vaio's)..but i am happy with it...there is no light leakage and the so called graininess

 

Pictures or it didn't happen. But really, if you've got the 15.4" Samsung WSXGA+ and you have no light leakage, it would be easy to show by taking a few pictures of it in a dim room with a blank screen (or the default windows screen saver). I've read posts from others saying their Samsung panels don't have any light leakage either, and seeing a picture would be good evidence that there is noticeable variation in the quality of Samsung displays, and not that people just don't know what light leakage is. I showed the leakage in my own panel in this post. The graininess would be very difficult to show, I suspect the only way would be to take a macro picture showing the actual pixel configuration. I suspect "grainy" displays have slightly higher pixel or subpixel pitch, or perhaps lower pixel size to pitch ratio, which would be noticeable if true.

 

turning the brightness up just washes out the screen.. really what needs to be done is the backlight of the laptop should be much stronger.. my dells backlight makes the screen glow really bright.. but not bright as in 'washed out' bright..

 

okay yes, my Dell 1505 laptop has the TrueLife display.. so I guess it's glossy??? but still it's much more vibrant, even at full brightness on the lenovo the display is not enough close in brightness/vibrance as the dell is at 80%

actually on the dell when the laptop is powered down you can see a reflexion of yourself pretty good in the black lcd. one the t61p with no power, you can barely see yourself reflected in the lcd..

 

your dell is a glossy if you can see your own reflection

I personally hate glossy screens...a matte finish is perfect...there are too many glares with a glossy screen and it is hard to use with a light source behind you

 

lol, I hope you don't think of the ability to use your screen as a mirror as a measure of its quality! As eyecon says, glossy vs. matte is just personal preference. Like him, I also prefer matte. Glossy screens are awful outdoors, and I find the reflections (especially my own handsome mug) distracting indoors too. But in the absence of reflections, they can certainly provide a brighter picture.

 

sorry, i don't have a 15''..i have a 14 in wxga panel

the reason why i posted is because it doesn't do samsung justice to bash just on samsung..i think we have to clarify here that samsung lacks in quality with high res lcd's while lg's tend to exceed.....

with standard res lcd'..the opposite is true because LG's have major light lekage problems and horrible contrast

 

I totally agree, I think people do a lot of unjustified Samsung bashing. You've got a great hypothesis, but it would be pretty difficult to test without having access to tons of displays of different types. That's why I'm trying to keep it simple by only comparing two specific panels with each other...when we say "the Samsung panel" is poorer in this thread, we're not saying "Samsung is teh suck!", we're just saying that particular panel might be poorer quality. That's what I'm hoping to find out for sure this weekend.

 

yea you are right, it would be hard do emperical testing..but I also have a friend with the same specs as mine who also has a LG panel, and we both agree mine looks 'slightly' better. he also has pretty bad light leakage on the bottom 1-2inches as well while mine has absolutely no leakage.

My father also works for Motorola, where everyone in his dept has thinkpads. I do go in occasionally to his office to do some cpr training for motorola and I have asked many of my father's co-workers to see their notebook screens and they are all the same...i guess motorola must have ordered in large bulk and specified a samsung screen..

I have also noticed their thinkpads are of a slightly higher quality than the CTO models...there's no creaking and so forth and all the lids line up properly without any gaps

i wish you the best of luck in your comparison and look forward to seeing side by side photos..thanks!

 

Heh, small world (or maybe big company?), I work for Motorola too. My old T43 is my work laptop, the same one my colleagues use. When I decided to buy myself an upgrade, I stuck with Lenovo because I liked my T43 more than I liked any of the Dell Latitudes (or other laptops) I've used.

I think there may be some validity to this idea. If a company orders 500 laptops, they are generally going to get rebuilt/imaged by company IT personnel, who will easily notice if a particular laptop has substandard hardware or construction quality compared to any of the others (though, I wonder if that IT person would do anything about it, if it's not their own laptop?).

If a person buys a single laptop for their own use, they have nothing to compare it to, and thus no easy way to know whether they got a lemon unless something obvious is wrong.

Alternatively, it might just be easier for Lenovo to produce better quality laptops if they are building 500 of the same configuration. Worrying about customizations might affect build quality.

 

I've seen both the LG and Samsung 15" WSXGA side by side and I personally think both are lacking. As others have said, everything else about this laptop is aces, but the screen LG or Samsung are way under par for this machine.

My impressions of the two screens side by side

LG dimmer, but less light leakage
Samsung brighter, but way more light leakage

LG less grain, but text not as sharp
Samsung, sharp text, more grain

LG colors appeared over saturated even after calibration
Samsung less color saturation but still off I'm sure viewing angle is a factor in both cases

Viewing angles for both seemed about the same with wash-out and negative-effect when moving too far off center.

There wasnt anything about either screen that made one seem decisively better than the other. I personally own a Samsung and I do prefer the sharper text and additional brightness, after a while you get used to the grain and just look through it. But I think the T61p deserved better than either.

 

thanks for that comparison....which one had more sparkle in your opinion? i had a 15in samsung wxga+ with horrible 'sparkle'

 

I've never noticed any sparkle, but both screens were calibrated using HueyPro so that may have corrected that particular problem.

On a side note, I think the Samsung looked worse than the LG out of the box, and benefited the most from calibration and the latest display drivers. After calibration either screen is fine. It is a laptop after all.

My biggest gripe is the viewing angle, which both screens suffer from. I find myself moving the laptop around too much when making client presentations or collaborating with colleagues.

 

what do you think is the best way to calibrate the screen of the samsung? should I use software like HueyPro such as you did?

what is the latest version of the nvidia quadra 570m drivers and how do I find out if I have the latest version? I just got my t61p last week.. thanks

 

Thanks Chris, very informative! It will be interesting to see if I have the same experience in my comparison.

 

If you have access to a Huey, Spider or other LCD calibration software then certainly use it, but I don''t think its worth the investment to go buy it just for your laptop.

The latest nVidia drivers are a huge improvement over the base drivers that shipped with my unit. (Model T61p) latest version I'm using is 6.14.11.5666 9/28/2007

If you dont have calibration software just click on the nVidia icon in the taskbar, selecting "nVidia Control Panel" then selecting "Adjust Desktop color settings" and play with the Brightness, Digital Vibrance, Contrast, and Gamma sliders until you get the look you like.

 

That's odd that viewing angles are that bad from your experience. Those experiences don't mirror mine however. In fact I was actually surprised at how good the viewing angles are. There's slight wash out look when the screen is at an angle. To show you how slight it was I had to recenter my view couple times just to make sure there was a drop in viewing angles. That's how slight it was. Even at extreme angles text was still very legible. Only the colors and contrast was slightly off.

If anyone has shopped for standalone TN-film panel monitors in the past year they'll notice a difference in the newer models vs ones that were 6-8+ months ago. The older TN panels had horrible viewing angels. It was so bad bad that noone would recommend a TN panel unless they absolutely need minimal ghosting..somehow the new ones have improved alot when it came to viewing angles. I think the same thing is happening to notebook lcds.

 

personally, I don't mind the bad viewing angles...it allows greater privacy in public settings

I hope they can make the horizontal viewing angles even worse, therefore insuring privacy...why would you be sitting diagonally from your notebook anyways?

The verticle viewing angles arn't an issue for me

 

True but there are times where I need to show something to a colleague or client. Having to adjust the notebook everytime is annoying. Imagine when you have a small crowd around your notebook ><

 

that's why I said personally..

I never have anyone else looking at my notebook, and I am student who spends a significant time in the library...I don't like the nosy people that walk around and like to stare at what others are doing on their notebooks. ..so, personally I dont mind this flaw

 

has anybody besides me compared the T61p Samsung lcd against a WSXGA Dell laptop with Truelife... it's a night and day difference, I have been using the Dell for the last year, now I have the T61P and it's a HUGE step down in lcd performance..
the t61p is SOOOOO much less bright..

 

Thinkpads were never known for their screen brightness. If you want screen brightness then check out the Apple MBP 15.4" with the LED back-lit screen at your local BestBuy. That notebook is brighter than a Sony LED lit Vaio!

 

i believe the brightness is perfect...in fact, even while plugged in and indoors, i tend to take the brigthness down a few notches to prevent eye strain

however, i must admit, that the vaio's color is very brilliant and vivid, the TP's are a little bit more washed out and dull looking

 

are any of the t61p's coming with the LG screen anymore? or only the Samsung?

Fignuts: did you ever do anything about your display? are you past the 21 day return period?

 

Yep, I'm a week or two past the 21-day return period, but I think if you have a demonstrable display defect, it shouldn't matter when you return it, as long as you're still under warranty.

Wuzer and I compared our LG and Samsung 15.4" WSXGA+ displays side-by-side a few hours ago, and we were surprised how little difference there was, once they were both calibrated properly. Nothing jumped out at us as a very noticeable "night and day" difference, though we both agreed that small calibration changes could make big differences in the display quality (which makes it tough to compare LCD panels, particularly without careful calibration.) Wuzer's LG panel seemed to have less viewing angle related picture degradation, and possibly better dark colors. The Samsung seemed to be a slightly brighter display, with mildly greener greens and redder reds. However, it's possible these color differences were correctable via further color calibration. Overall I think I preferred the LG slightly over the Samsung, due to the viewing angle performance, but if there was a difference, it was extremely slight. Both displays had obvious, almost identical light leakage. I did not notice any significant difference in perceived "graininess" of each display. We actually reconfirmed that he had an LG and I had a Samsung, because the displays were so similar we wouldn't have been surprised if they were from the same manufacturer.

I'll upload my pictures asap, I need to resize them all first. Unfortunately, they are all fairly grainy, as I had my camera at its maximum ISO, but they should still be useful for comparison.

 

looking fwd to the pics!

 

pics wont capture these subtle differences anyways

 

I'm more interested in the light leakage and the vibrance of colors, which should be noticeable..even from a grainy out of focus pic

 

Thanks, that's encouraging Guess I'm not missing out much with my Samsung (though I like it).

 

fignuts, thanks for the info, can you comment on what your Samsung display settings are set at and also what version of the nVidia 570m drivers you are using?

I want to tweak my display settings to close to what you have and see how it looks..

btw.. do you still have that dark area on the screen down by the lower right hand corner clock? don't know if you can take a picture of that area or not, it may not come out with a camera..

 

The fact that they were both calibrated brings HUGE credit to the rest of your statements. I'm a huge home theater fan and actually do professional video calibrations on the side (Colorfacts Pro/Gretag Macbeth Eye-one). It drives me nuts listening to people on the forums comparing TV's that they saw on display next to each other at the stores.
The only correct way to compare two displays is to calibrate them to the same reference using quantifiable instruments.

 

Thanks copilot! I think our comparison does merit some credibility, but given that we calibrated our displays using subjective tests, and were not able to take measurements in fully accurate, repeatable manner does diminish the value of our results somewhat. We used the calibration and test images at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ to calibrate and compare the panels. We compared the panels twice, calibrating them the first time to be as similar as possible, and the second time to represent the best quality for each display (both calibrations were fairly close to each other, though the LG did seem to get a little better in the second). Most of these images were taken with a Canon Powershot SD-10, using the Fluorescent white balance option, ISO 400 (thus, the graininess), at 2272x1704 resolution, superfine compression. I did borrow a DSLR camera, but the person I borrowed it from only had a telephoto lens for it, which meant we had to take pictures with it about 12-15 feet away. Additionally, we didn't have time to find the best manual settings for it, so we more or less ditched it, except for a few blurry test pictures we took.


KEY THINGS TO NOTE:
1. These pictures are intentionally overexposed. This helped capture the differences between the panels, but in doing so, emphasized the differences much more than they are actually perceived by the human eye. From up close, wuzer and I had a hard time telling the displays apart, except for certain tests which I'll elaborate further on. Just keep in mind, while some of the pictures show an obvious difference between the displays, that difference is significantly magnified from the actual perceived difference we saw. See this post for a good explanation of how overexposing pictures makes for poor translation to reality.

2. Vignetting is quite noticeable in most of these pictures, and unfortunately, due to the confines of the space we were in and my own amateurness, many of the pictures are poorly framed, such that the vignetting interferes with the Samsung screen on the right, but not with the LG panel on the left. Please also keep this in mind.

3. These pictures are JPEG compressed twice (once by the camera, and once to resize them, both relatively low levels of compression). The resizing and recompressing had the beneficial effect of averaging out a lot of the high-ISO graininess I got in the original images, but also reduces the level of detail.

So without further ado, here are the images, and my analysis.

 

First calibrition (screens as similar to each other as possible, at best display quality as possible). LG screen is on the left, Samsung is on the right.

01-05: These pictures show similar levels of light leakage in both screens. At a large vertical angle, the LG seems to have a redder hue than the Samsung. Additionally, the Samsung seems to get a bit darker than the LG at a large horizontal angle. This seems to show up in most pictures. In reality, we did not notice this extreme a difference, the difference was barely distinguishable.

06-09: These pictures are intended to show image distortion related to viewing angle. Again, the Samsung appears to suffer a bit more at a large horizontal viewing angle, but the distortion was not as apparent in real life (the camera overexposure emphasizes it).

10-15: These pictures show color tests. Straight on, both panels are fairly similar for most colors, though the Samsung does have noticeably deeper red. We noticed this difference in actual viewing as well. At large vertical viewing angles, the LG seems to retain better color accuracy. The Samsung looks more washed out at a large vertical angle. Again, in real life, the difference between the two was not as pronounced. The vertical viewing angle difference was most noticeable with the green/yellow-green color comparison.

16-19: The green/yellow-green comparison is repeated here, just to demonstrate slight diffrerences between the comparisons, and that the vertical viewing angle difference between the panels is still evident. The last set is a pure blue color (different from the first, which was purple).