Dell Screens

If you don't want to hassle with exchanging LCDs I wouldn't recommend the 9400, 9300, or M170. A large amount of those getting these systems are getting very shoddy screens and are sending them back for replacements.

actually, a lot of people are happy with them. you are basing that comment on all the negative feedback read on here.

id say you have a 25-35% chance the screen will be junk.

as of late, the 9400's have been getting excellent screens.

I got my E1705 on Tuesday, and the screen is a pos. I have also read many people in the Core Duo forum complaining about their Samgung screens or prior generation LGs. There is only one screen that is very good, and only a third (roughly) of the people are getting it.

My 9300 WUXGA truelife screen is whicked. No "Sparkle" effect and verrrrry little light leakage at the very bottom of the screen. I am quite satisified for the price I paid.

It is a Samsung.

Likewise... although the glossy picks up every smudge and piece of dirt imagenable. If my OCD kicks up I'll have to be commited!

Double post.

You know what is funny, a lot of people say they have a nice screen, and I will admit it, they do, BUT when you see someone else's screen which happens to be an LG, and then put your screen next to the LG, you are like, Whoa! Your screen IS better than mine.

I know, run on sentence.

Mine is great. But, I have a lg wc2222. It's not a Sony xbrite but after calibration with powerstrip it is great in my eyes. My last Sony had more light leakage than this screen. This screen just tends to have a lot of blue tint. I thought the forums were blue til I calibrated and I'll be damned if it wasn't grey.

Also remember when people say "my screen is a piece of shit", you have to take that with a grain of salt, some people's opinions are different and some are way off when judging a screen. Some people are picky as hell. *wink wink* (don't take it too seriously, but really, I think some people view and judge screens very differently, unless there are isolated incidents or lemons)

so what lcd's come on like the dell 24" widescreen lcd

eternal, the 2405FPW is a highly rated LCD. It scored high marks with many reviews, and owners of the screen also like it. There isn't anything wrong with the 2005FPW or 2405FPW.

Listen when it comes to screens and what people say about them you have to be very careful not to read too much into it especially when the comments involve few facts. Some say wow my 710 has a great screen!!! yet neglect to mention whether it was a samsung or lg panel and what model number the panel was, leading folks like you to think hmm, the 710 screen is good while other models are bad which is entirely not the case. It took me a month to glean through ALL and I mean ALL of the posts regarding screens, models, quality, light leakage and sparkle, here are some general conclusions that should help you out:
First off, you cannot order a specific panel be it samsung or lg, having said that it doesnt hurt to call dell up and try or get them to make some kind of notation, thats what I did and I got the panel I wanted, in my case a samsung, though that is not to say it wasnt just luck of the draw, still it doesnt hurt to try but there are no guarantees.
Secondly: I went crazy trying to decide on a wxga or wuxga panel, peope have lots of opinions on this but often dont tell you why they think their screen sucks or why its fantastic. Keep in mind wxga is a non glossy panel of lower resolution, wuxga is higher resolution, very high infact and a glossy panel. Now you may be saying more resolution means better right? Well yes and no, more is not always better, more resolution means text will be smaller, ALOT smaller and for gamers, wuxga panels have soo many extra pixels to render that the video cards are feeling the load and you wont be able to play games with all the video settings maxed out and at native resolution. Alot of people who like wuxga are younger, twenty somethings or teens, they dont have a problem with the smaller text, folks who are older, thirty somethings and people with poor eyesight will appreciate the traditional text size on a wxga screen. Wait....I can adjust my wuxga screen to a non native resolution and adjust the text and so forth right? Yes but using the wuxga panel in a non native resolution, in this case anything less than 1920x1200 will take hits on overall picture quality as a result, lcds run best at their native resolution, anything less than exactly half that value will result in a bit of fuzziness, so a 1920x1200 wuxga screen will look best at 1920x1200 resolution or exactly half that value 960x600. Besides that, it kind of negates the necessity of spending an extra 125 bucks to buy a 1920x1200 wuxga panel for the privilege of using it at non native resolutions and tweaking the hell out of the text to make it comfortable to read. As a general rule of thumb, if you use a desktop at a resolution of 1024x768 or less, most are using 800x600, then you are not likely to enjoy the text on a 1920x1200 screen and frankly most laptops dont even offer a resolution that high, very few companies other than dell have models of wuxga resolution. Now if you like glossy screens and dont mind the smaller text, then wuxga is the way to go. Also if you look at desktop lcd panels, panels even larger than 17 inches, they dont offer a wuxga resolution, even panels 19 to 21 or more inches dont offer resolution that high so why would you want it on a panel thats only 17 inches? Just something to think about, check them out at a local store and see what you like best thats the safest thing to do, just make sure the panel you are looking at if its wuxga is actually running at that resolution, dell kiosks will show you a wuxga panel, but those panels are NOT running at their native 1920x1200 resolution and the systems are set up so that you cant take a peek and see what they are running at so dont judge wuxga by what you see at delk stores.
To glossy? or not to glossy? That is indeed the question, after looking at both I went with the non glossy, the wxga (1400x900). If you use your laptop outside of the home say at work or school youre going to see alot of reflection in that glossy panel from background lighting, its very distracting. Kind of like watching television at home and say you have a skylight or a windwo with the curtains or blinds drawn, sunlight streaming in shining onto the television set while you are watching it really takes away from the viewing if you know what I mean. Glossy works great though if you are working in a low lit or dark room.
One final note on resolution here since soo many people seem to associate properties of the lcd panels with it even though the resolution has nothing to do with it.......alot of people think the colors and light leakage of a panel is due to its resolution, sparkles too. These things have nothing, NOTHING at all to do with the panels resolution, they have everything to do with what BRAND of panel it is, samsung or lg, the same holds true for the most part wiht the viewing angles.
As for the glossy or not to glossy? Wuxga is glossy, no other choice, wxga is non glossy but ultrasharp, also no other choice there.

Light leakage: Alot of people cause a stampede of returns over light leakage, first of all, ALL LCD panels, ALL OF THEM, have some form of light leakage. Some have more than others ofcourse, those that have very little light leakage are overall not as bright a panel as those that have more or heavy light leakage. The good news for those with panels that have alot of light leakage is that with time and use the light leakage does in fact dissipate, this can take a few weeks to a month depending on usage, it wont happen in a day or two and if you read opinions you will find that everyone will tell you this. Light leakage is most noticeable on the windows boot up screen, the black screen with a windows logo, sending people into an obsessive frenzy, myself included, I was a nervous wreck about the lcd panel sparkles and light leakage for days before and after ordering especially after reading comments here in the forums. We all tend to get the hypochondriac syndrome so that when our notebook does arrive we absolutely MUST find something wrong with it!! From my research, LG panels generally have less light leakage than samsung panels and also generally tend to be a bit darker than samsung panels. Ask yourself, how often will you be looking at a black screen? It's safe to say....not very dam often, at boot up, thats about it. The samsung panels tend to have more light leakage, generaly quite heavy in fact as the panel I own did though this went away considerably within a month. Samsung panels are generally brighter than their Lg cousins with less light leakage.

SPARKLES: this is alot of hype, hysteria, obessive compulsive worry warting at it's finest. Bear in mind we are talking about lcd panels, they have anti reflective coatings on them, not unlike the old movies screens when you get the projector out, you cant look at an lcd panel and expect television CRT perfection. If you want more information on anti reflective coatings I suggest you whiz by Fujitsus website and check out the detailed info they have on lcd panels and various anti reflective coatings, its very informative and will help you to understand this phenomenon better. Anyhow, these lcd panels as ALL lcd panels do.....have an anti reflective coating, on an LG screen the coating is somewhat dusty and metallic looking while on the samsung screen it is more of a transparent/patterned sheen. Generally speaking if sparkle is something that bothers you, it is less noticeable if at all on a samsung while on the lg its a bit more metallic and dusty looking. Having said that, youll find people with both panels who say they notice no sparkle and people who say they do. One can easily picture thousands staring an inch away from their screens looking for defects and something to sparkle and catch their eye. This phenonemon is not limited to dell but most laptops out there are dells or ibm's and by the way my ibm thinkpad also has antireflective coating and some have said wow it has the sparkles too.
Dont think that sony's acers toshibas have better screens, some companies call their screens xbrite, crystal view and what have you, these are the same technologies named different things by different companies, only fujitsu has a technology that is different, there are alot of companies out there making laptops and desktop lcds, pull the panels apart and you wont find a great deal of variety at all, you'll find a samsung or you'll find an lg, dont let names like sony and toshiba fool you, ive taken some of their lappies apart uhhh hummm cough cough samsung cough cough lg uhhh hummm. The proof is in the pudding. Same goes for viewsonic, acer, all the big name desktop lcd's, these companies dont make lcd panels, they just badge a case around them in laymans terms, same goes for apple, apple doesnt make any lcd screens. I laugh at people with apple lcds who say mine's better than yours blah blah blah samsung or lg.........Nuff said.

So which one is better? Samsung or LG? To summarize here are the basic differences which vary a bit by panel model number and there are several different model numbers per each resolution of panel. Samsungs have brighter screens with more light leakage and better viewing angles, colors tend to be a little off when compared to an lg screen until you adjust the color to your liking in your video cards color profile settings, many posts on the forum for both lg and samsung with great color settings for both manufacturers panels. LGs generaly have less light leakage to almost none but tend to be darker overall, punchier colors but some are a bit colder on the temp scale and the lgs have less viewing angle. Samsungs have less sparkle or none at all, LG's have metallic sparkle to more dusty looking.
While the lg has less light leakage, the samsungs have more but it dissipates with time and use, the lgs punchier colors are nice but the samsungs can look every bit as punchy once you have adjusted the colors to your liking in the color profile of your video card. The lgs have less viewing angle while the samsungs have more. Overall I would say the better of the two is Samsung, that is my opinion ofcourse and yours may differ, the samsungs colors can be adjusted, the lgs poorer viewing angles cannot.

At the end of the day, color is in the eye of the beholder, as are sparkles and light leakage. One other thing I would like to point out here, people compare their lcd laptop panels to their crt or lcd desktop panels and may or may not like them in comparison, I have used many of both, I had a kds crt for example that I replaced with a viewsonic crt, I noticed a difference in color immediately though I had also replaced the video card, no two panels or crts are going to look the same, you get used to the way the one your familiar with looks and you get a new one all of a sudden it could be the bad guy for not looking like the one you are familiar with, a trap we all fall into. It's also a very bad comparison to compare desktop lcds with laptop lcds, well my new dell laptop cant hold a candle to my desktop lcd, well ofcourse it cant silly, laptop lcds are confined by power and space requirements, desktop panels are far brigther and more powerful because the overall wattage is not as big of a concern since there's no battery time to consider so comparing a desktop lcd to a laptop lcd is like comparing apples to oranges, they truly are two totally different beasts for two totally different functions.

So anyhow I hope this helps you out some with the lcd panel dilemma, the sparkle and light leakage dilemma, the wuxga and wxga dilemma that caused most all of us here alot of sleepless nights wondering and worrying. Take all comments you read on panels with a grain of salt, especially those not listing any detailed info, its not enough to say "I have a samsung or I have an LG, there's wxga and wuxga, there's several different models out there by both companies that behave differently and there are very very few opinion posts on any of these panels, especially the wuxga panel opinions that ever bother to mention how old they are or how good their vision is. One model samsung may have heavy light leakage, one model may not, same goes for LG. Its all in the details when trying to discern fact from fiction in these opinion posts and unfortunately, the details are often few and far inbetween.

Having said all that, buy the laptop you want for the features you want the size of screen you want and soo forth, they all have the same goods and bads about them, problems are not laptop model specific so first off decide what laptop you want, then decide what resolution you want which is also tied to glossy or non glossy remembering that the smaller the screen the higher the resolution, the smaller the text. Forum user Dellbert has collected alot of information about various panel models and what peoples likes and dislikes are about these various models, it wouldnt hurt to look him up and ask him some questions and get more information.

When you do finally order a laptop and it arrives, no matter how horrible light leakage may be or colors and soo forth whether lg or samsung, give your panel a few days, a week or more even better, kick the tires a bit and then decide if you like or dislike your panel, then ask dell for another panel if you got lg ask for samsung and vice versa. Another point to remember is that dell uses several different vendors for each of the compnonents in the laptop, you guessed it, dell doesnt make lcds, hard drives, motherboards, memory or processors. If you are savvy enough and happy with the other components of your lappy but not the lcd panel, have dell send you a panel instead of you sending them your whole laptop, that way your down time is far less, only a day as opposed to several weeks you can still use your lappy while you are waiting for the new panel and/or get a warranty where dell comes out to you and replaces it because if you return the entire system, you may get a system with a totally different hard drive, cd/dvd drive and soo forth leading to problems with those components, for example with optical drives folks have had alot of problems with sony optical drives but not with other vendors like NEC for example, your first laptop has a nice NEC optical drive but a bad lcd panel, you return it for a different lappy and now you have an lcd panel that you like or dislike??? that comes with a crappy sony optical drive, get the picture??? Or it may come wiht one of five different keyboard vendors keyboards, all of which vary in quality and tactile feel, this is why alot of people end up in an endless return cycle with dell, they dont understand that no two lappies are alike because there are soo many different vendors for all the hardware such as keyboard, optical drives etc. You could buy five dell laptops all of the same model and none of them are very likely to have the same model keyboard, optical drive, hard drive, lcd panel model ( even if they are all samsung or all lg, several different models all of the same size and resolution) so you could easily love one and hate the other, most certainly you would have different opinions about each one. Thats why forum opinions on these subjects varies soo much on the love/hate scale.


Okay, I think I have bloviated enough, im sure that others will come out of the woodwork in an uproar over my opinions versus theirs but I have looked at both LG and Samsung on the 9300 and 6000 inspiron models, have compared mine with others side by side, have taken a few apart so the proof is in the pudding and Ive no doubt created a controversy not unlike someone talking about democrats or republicans, I can see the repsonses already ROFL.

Good Luck with your purhcase, happy hunting and relax and evaluate, most of all enjoy your new laptop purchase and dont buy into all of the hype that people post here.++


OOPS, I knew I forgot something, Please DO NOT LOOK AT PICTURES ONLINE OR ON THIS FORUM OF LCD PANELS FOR THESE LAPTOPS and make some kind of judgement from them, you cannot truly assess the qualities of a certain resolution or panel based on someone's very amateur photos so dont even try it, a majority if the pictures are overexposed and of rather poor quality and based on the personal bias of the picture taker not on some professional review.

Actually I have done just that, and I said WHOA, my samsung IS better than your LG, theres more to it than that and EVERYONE adjusts colors to THEIR liking.

so, how do i check what screen i have?