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New 17" Display Quality is POOR

post #1 of 34
11/6/05 at 5:04pm
Thread Starter 
Just went to buy the 17"... FINALLY with the higher resolution. Couldn't bring myself to do it. The display is absolutely terrible... grainy grainy grainy.

WHY WHY WHY is Apple using this poor quality display?

Better displays ARE available. Please charge me $200 more and put a quality display on future notebooks.

The grain and lack of solid colors makes this machine worthless for ANY professional design or photo editing.

Anyone out there know if future units will improve on this definitive weak point???
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post #2 of 34
11/6/05 at 5:26pm
r u sure abt tt? some fellas say that the quality is more crisp due to the higher resolution and text looks sharper
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post #3 of 34
11/6/05 at 5:48pm
Where did you go to look at it? Cause the ones I've seen are fantastic. I have the new 15" powerbook and the screen on it is excellent. I have 3 notebooks-a sony s360, the powerbook, and an acer 8103 and the screen on the powerbook is imho the best one.
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post #4 of 34
11/6/05 at 6:03pm
did u happen to look at what the res was set at? it's possible a consumer may have changed it to a lower res, which we all know makes an LCD look fuzzy, grainy, etc
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post #5 of 34
11/6/05 at 6:31pm
hmmm... wierd My screen is the best i have seen so far in a laptop
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post #6 of 34
11/7/05 at 12:55am
thats wierd, im not apples biggest fan or anything, but i wouldnt expect them to use crappy parts like that. normally it would be easy to just justify this as a manufacturing problem, but then they would have returned it instead of using it as the display model.
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post #7 of 34
11/7/05 at 4:21am
I haven't seen a bad Apple display ever. They're all soooo cool.
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post #8 of 34
11/7/05 at 12:33pm
Yes it is true, the new 17" Powerbook display is not good. There are many posts about this at various Mac centric forums and I have confirmed this with my own eyes at a couple of Apple Stores. I don't know if these are a bad batch of displays or what but I would really make a big deal out of it before purchasing. This way if you were to get one with a bad display you would be on record and have an easier time returning it. By the way some of the problems with the new display:
1- Strange irredescent glow
2- Flashlight halo effect, bright in the middle and gradually gets darker as it goes out up/down & left/right.
3-Viewing angle changes dramatically when shifting you head even a little left and right.
4- White balance is to the blue side, though calibrating might fix this problem
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post #9 of 34
11/7/05 at 5:09pm
1) sparkly screens seem to be a complaint of many LCDs these days.

2&3) this is a product of using a higher res on too small a monitor. needless to say this is typically an issue in many pixel dense LCDs. u don't see the issue on a 20" LCD bc it is an appropriate screen size for the pixels. this was a complaint and still is on the 4:3 15" screens w/ SXGA res of 1400x1050. i can't imagine why people would think it would go away w/ a longer horizontal spec.

yay, now we have all the LCD problems the PC users have had for trying to get the "UBER-ROOXXXXORRZ!!!!ONe!!!1!!" specs when they aren't necessarily needed. :/

i can't imagine $200 would cover the cost of a high-end, pixel-dense, wide angle laptop LCD. who knows tho, it very well could be a supply issue,so maybe it'll get sorted out.
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post #10 of 34
11/7/05 at 9:07pm
the viewing angles on a dell lcd 15.4" 1920x1200, way higher than the pb are great. it does have some light leakage, but other than that teh dell display is excellent and doesnt suffer from the isseus discribed here. there is no glow, graininess, sparkles or screwed up white balance, and you cant even see hte light leakage unless the whole screen is one color.

the problems certainly arent due to the fact that the lcd is a higher resolution. it is simply a crappy lcd(if what everyone says here is true, i havent seen any yet).
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post #11 of 34
11/8/05 at 3:26pm
cool,i'll check it out at the local dell kiosk, thoi'm doubting they have the 1900 res. maybe take some pics too.
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post #12 of 34
11/8/05 at 10:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by triadone
1)i can't imagine $200 would cover the cost of a high-end, pixel-dense, wide angle laptop LCD. who knows tho, it very well could be a supply issue,so maybe it'll get sorted out.
I think he meant an additional $200 added to the cost of the laptop for a higher quality panel, rather than $200 for the panel itself. I've seen the new Apple displays, and in my opinion, they looked very nice. However, I don't do any visual design work, etc. so I may not have noticed subtle problems in hues, shades, or colors.
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post #13 of 34
11/9/05 at 12:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by triadone
cool,i'll check it out at the local dell kiosk, thoi'm doubting they have the 1900 res. maybe take some pics too.
well, there is one about 15 feet away from me, and it is running at 1920x1200 and it is 15.4". apple has blinded you from the truth



and dont expect to see one at the dell kiosk, it is a latitude d810, not an inspiron and it is targeted mostly at engineers and business people.

however, you MIGHT see a i6000d at hte kiosk with a 1920x1200 lcd, but that is unlikely. the 6000's they have there will most likely be 1280x800 or 1680x1050.

also, you will probably also see the 17" xps m170 there, which also runs at 1920x1200, still a higher res than the powerbook, but not as high as the d810/6000. they are pretty nice lcd's, but they do have backlight bleeding(some of them anyway). dell isnt exactly known for its high quality lcd's, but its hard to come across sagers and asus's at the mall.
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post #14 of 34
11/9/05 at 2:54am
Thread Starter 
To clarify on the initial post...

I looked at the new 17" at the Apple Store. I was shocked at the lack of quality... and more shocked that the sales person couldn't fathom my immediate questions about the lack of quality.

The display is terribly grainy and sparkly in appearance... there is NO WAY to even get a solid color to display on this screen... This problem is further compounded by the fact that the viewing angle is terrible, even straight on you can't get a solid white area, the brightness is inadequate.


THE BOTTOMLINE... There is no excuse for Apple, an icon of quality to take the cheap route using d-grade crap screens that really are no better in general appearance than what they used over 5 years ago.

Beautiful, perfect screens do exist... take a look at the Sharp display on the SONY A Series... Perfection. You can't even see the pixels. No grain, perfectly smooth whites, colors, awesome brightness. Too bad the A-Series has been discontinued, other than the display unfortunately the general build quality is less than desired. Even my 5 Year old ThinkPad A31 has an amazing, crystal clear, wide viewing angle display at 1600x1200. Compare either of these side-by-side with the new MAC 17" and you'll cry.

Come on APPLE... get it together already so we can stop using this Windows crap on our mobile desktop replacement machines.

Or if you can't get it together, just go ahead and release MAC OS for general INTEL usage so we can all participate in KILLING OFF WINDOWS with your superior operating system...
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post #15 of 34
11/10/05 at 11:50pm
i think u should send an email to apple's feedback dept instead of venting here. not that u can't, but i'm thinking in re: to yout apparent desire for things to change. heck start a website dedicated to it if you're that passionate about it. we could all use better LCDs in our lappies!
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post #16 of 34
11/12/05 at 10:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jpca
To clarify on the initial post...

I looked at the new 17" at the Apple Store. I was shocked at the lack of quality... and more shocked that the sales person couldn't fathom my immediate questions about the lack of quality.

The display is terribly grainy and sparkly in appearance... there is NO WAY to even get a solid color to display on this screen... This problem is further compounded by the fact that the viewing angle is terrible, even straight on you can't get a solid white area, the brightness is inadequate.


THE BOTTOMLINE... There is no excuse for Apple, an icon of quality to take the cheap route using d-grade crap screens that really are no better in general appearance than what they used over 5 years ago.

Beautiful, perfect screens do exist... take a look at the Sharp display on the SONY A Series... Perfection. You can't even see the pixels. No grain, perfectly smooth whites, colors, awesome brightness. Too bad the A-Series has been discontinued, other than the display unfortunately the general build quality is less than desired. Even my 5 Year old ThinkPad A31 has an amazing, crystal clear, wide viewing angle display at 1600x1200. Compare either of these side-by-side with the new MAC 17" and you'll cry.

Come on APPLE... get it together already so we can stop using this Windows crap on our mobile desktop replacement machines.

Or if you can't get it together, just go ahead and release MAC OS for general INTEL usage so we can all participate in KILLING OFF WINDOWS with your superior operating system...
I am no Apple fan, and displays are part of that reason. Toshiba, Fujitsu and Sony all use glorious bright screens, and Apple's notebooks still use these crap screens that you mention, a lot of the time. I've seen a few PBs in my classes, and my Toshiba pummels them in terms of screen quality. Sitting beside an Apple user I can see nothing of their screen and they can see all of mine. That tells you something about viewing angles and clarity.

You'll have to go for one of the makers I mentioned if you want a SOLID screen that won't die by the pixel (not specifically an Apple thing, I'm talking in general for this) or strain your eyes.

Actually you can add Acer and Asus to the list too, I've seen some nice screens on some of those--though nothing beats Tosh, Sony, and Fujitsu as far as screens go.

M.
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post #17 of 34
11/12/05 at 11:12pm
well ive seen an acer with a TERRIBLE glossy lcd. and ive seen a cheap toshiba also with a terrible lcd. fujitsu is probably the nicest.

anyway, didnt you get hte memo? crappy viewing angles are all the rage these days. its actually a much sought after feature. its a good thing that the person sitting next to you cant read your screen.
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post #18 of 34
11/12/05 at 11:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jpca
The display is terribly grainy and sparkly in appearance
I just looked at one too, it's awful; my eyes find it offensive to look at. I'd describe it as being covered in holographic speckles, leaving it with a yellowish tinge.

I've seen the same kind of speckle on laptops from a range of different manufacturers.
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post #19 of 34
11/13/05 at 4:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by drizek
well ive seen an acer with a TERRIBLE glossy lcd. and ive seen a cheap toshiba also with a terrible lcd. fujitsu is probably the nicest.

anyway, didnt you get hte memo? crappy viewing angles are all the rage these days. its actually a much sought after feature. its a good thing that the person sitting next to you cant read your screen.
Don't know about what model you saw from Toshiba especially but when I sit in the third row of a 40+ person classroom, the people I know at the back occasionally tell me to stop playin minesweeper. They're not always directly behind me either, so the screen is obviously good. But my unit is one of the higher-end ones. However I've seen a low end Tosh unit with a great screen too, so I don't know if I fully aree.

M.
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post #20 of 34
11/13/05 at 10:45am
that's because apple refrains from using glossy screens like the other laptop makers... they appear to look better but aren't exactly better... glossy screens are seriously horrid for design work...

the only thing that lacks in the screens of the powerbooks (15" and 17") are the viewing angles...
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