Dell 9300, can't decide on lcd screen

I had a 9300 with WUXGA and it was Gorgeous...I lowered the resolution for everyday projects, and boosted it way up for Gaming,,,KICKED BUTT!

i had the xga on my 9300 it was ok noticed light leakage ... i prefer the glossy screens ... the truelife will be glossy so it is just preference

Yeah. I got the WUXGA because of the Trulife or Glossiness. My first experience with glossy screens was I saw my friends low-end Sony laptop with the glossy screen and I personally think the glossiness makes everything look so much more vibrant and almost give it that photo-feel.

But again, to tell you to truth, I haven't actually seen the WUXGA screen myself (my 9300 is with my friend in the US, so Yet to come). I've only seen the Trulife on the Dell 700m's and it looks a lot better than the WXGA+ personally.

Lastly, my friend commented on my laptop's screen and she said everything looked great except that pictures looked very pixellated, until I told her to switch to 96 DPI (after realizing the laptop was running at 120 DPI). That was when she was shocked at how tiny the text was, but the pictures didn't look pixellated anymore. And that's coming from someone, if I recall properly, who uses a Dell 14" laptop with SXGA (1400x1050 i believe??). So that could be something you might want to think about.

coolp,

I was in the same position as you last week. I read through hundreds of posts on this topic and ran across one comment that made the difference: Stop thinking about it and just get it - you won't be disappointed. That's the best way I can put it.

I got a 9300 last week and also had to make this decision. The way i decided was going by what i am used to with my current monitor.

I run a 17" CRT at 1152x864, which equates to a real life resolution of about 93dpi. 1280x1024 still looks acceptable for me and equates to about 103dpi. So this is the range i was interested in keeping. I also didn't want to mess around with large fonts, increased dpi settings, etc etc just to make something look right instead of getting the most practical option in the first place.

1440x900 equates to a real life dpi of 100dpi and 1920x1200 equates to 133dpi. On my CRT that would be like a resolution higher than 1600x1200. I tried it out and quickly decided WXGA+ would be the best choice for me.

Another factor i thought about was game performance. Yes 1920x1200 would be extremely crisp, but it's also nearly 80% more megapixels that need processing. I figure i'd rather the faster performance than a 33% crisper resolution.

So anyway, i now have my 9300 with WXGA+ display, and i've got to say that it isn't overly impressive. Whilst it is the perfect resolution for my needs, i have a few gripes about the brightness and contrast. It seems somewhat overly washed out which in turn kills the contrast, and i can't successfully counter for this with the brightness and contrast settings. Light leakage at the bottom and top of the screen is quite prominent (i am hoping this will fade a bit over time).

Another thing i noticed was image blurring in Half Life 2. When you moved around, it looked kind of like when you set the screen to a resolution other than it's native setting, and when you stood still it looked really crisp again. I suppose this is an issue with the refresh rate. Just doing a bit of research the Samsung WXGA+ is 25ms, and so is the WUXGA version, so i would assume it would be similiar on the other brands and indeed the WUXGA displays also.

Finally, i should probably mention that i haven't really looked at LCDs too much, and that my CRT is a professional series monitor, so i am used to a pretty good picture. I think the WSXGA+ resolution is perfect, and if the brightness washout will fade over time (as i have read) then i'll be pretty happy overall with it.

The best advice i could give is to think about what your requirements are, and then go down to your local department store to look at as many laptops as you can to get an idea of what the different resolutions and glossy/matt screens look like in real life, to give you a bit of a better idea of what's best for you.

That saying goes well with the purchase of a notebook, but not on deciding screen resolution.

I would think that the xga would be big. I would get the wuxga. Also, check out your local computer store (best buy, CC, etc.) and check the notebooks there.

I have the wxga+ resolution on my 9300, Its VERY BRIGHT, whether your screen is bright or not has more to do with lcd panel manufacturer than with the resolution, I have seen and used both WUXGA AND WXGA, WUXGA is going to tax your games performance to process all the extra pixels you dont really need, most games wont play at WUXGA anyhow, as for reading text do you like to squint at normal dpi?? then get the WUXGA, if you like your eyes and comfortable text at normal DPI without endless tweaks then get the WXGA. Im glad I didnt pay extra money for the uselelessly high resolutions, notice all WUXGA users are using their high resolution screen at non native lower resolutions to read stuff comfortably. SO WHY I ASK WHY??? WHY OH WHY?? spend more money on a screen that isnt any brighter just so you can lower it to 1400x900 (wxga) resolution to read text and surf the web normally and comfortably???

wiht the WUXGA true life (this means glossy screen) you have to deal with a glossy screen. I dont like them, used them, dont like them , they look nice in the store but in real life that glossy screen means REFLECTION, something to think about, too bad a Wxsga isnt available as an alternative for some of you resolution junkies.

WUXGA definitely. HL2 plays perfect with all high on the Go6800, no blur at all and the image quality is amazing. Just make sure to bump it back down to 96 dpi, I don't know why it defaults at 125, it makes a beautiful screen and resolution look awful..

As far as I know, every single game out right now can be played on an i9300 @ 1920x1200 (even BF2, even though it requires 2GB of RAM to do that smoothly, due to the way they wrote that game). However, the concerns regarding too small text and images are important, along with the cost and the glossy/non-glossy concerns.

In regards to trading 80% more rendering work for 33% more crispness, you may have a point there. However, it's also true that for non-gaming, that 80% extra pixel space directly translates into 80% more screen real-estate for you to work with. ALSO, when the day comes that you can no longer game smoothly at 1920x1200, don't forget that the day will also come that you can't game smoothly at 1440x900, either (but who knows how long that will take). In this case, the WUXGA will look better than the WXGA+ when it's interpolating at a resolution of 1280x800.

Oh... no.... I just calculated, and I think on my 19" CRT with 18" viewable, running at UXGA (1600x1200), the DPI is 111.11, but WUXGA (1920x1200) on a 17" LCD screen gives you a DPI of 133.18561598197558321864461709585 (gotta love MS Calc).

Aieee! I don't know if I can take images and text that is 70% the size of what I'm seeing now.... This laptop order is going to be the death of me!

But I'm hoping that it will be ok because it will be sharper on the LCD than on this 19" CRT, which is quite blurry. *bites nails*

Anyone run their 17" @ WUXGA with the 96dpi setting in Windows?

uxga

check out my post titled "decision dilemma wxga/wxsga/wuxga solved. you might find it helpful in your own dilemma. many users who use their laptops for office work, web browsing and so forth do not like the tiny text associated with WUXGA native resolutions, why buy this for more money and then have to tweak your dpi and use after market solutions to make your text large and comfortable enough to read and use/?????

To give this dilemma further perspective, what resolution do you use on your desktop monitor?? If you use 1024x768 or smaller, you will find WUXGA far too small to be useful.

You are using your LCD in not-native resolution ?
That is so misguided ...

I agree totally, precisely why it doesnt make much sense to go with WUXGA unless you are just gaming on your machine, text and web browsing will look too tiny and be bad for your eyes.

I've got to disagree. I run my WUXGA at 96dpi and love it. Could definitely never go back to anything less. I code, a lot, and run Visual Studio (white text on black background looks awesome) with Courier New 10pt font and it's great. You can get so much code on the screen at once. If you go fullscreen you can have two seperate files open in a vertical split configuration, which is great, too. I've come to run things as follows:



This way. you get a portrait aspect web browser, and you can have other windows in the side. You don't have to squint. The text is small, yes, but there isn't any flicker like high resolutions on a CRT, which makes a big difference.

And for games, I run at 1440x900. Better fps, and a 'smoother' image - with (comparitively) low resolution textures and models in games you dont get that much of a benefit moving up to the ultra resolution. What you do get, however, is a slightly anti-aliased image - the interpolation has a side effect of removing some 'jaggies'. For text-work, though, run at native. High contrast things like text look awful blurred.

So, in summary: WUXGA > WXGA+.

The decision was simple to make for me. I went down to CompUSA and looked at their HP 17" notebooks, which use the 1440x900 resolution. I couldn't have imagined it being even more dense, so I stuck with the WXGA+.

And I figure that the 1440x900 will give my 6800go a little headroom for future game releases. It might be able to drive HL2 @ 1920x1200 right now, but will it be able to drive the next big wave of games like ut2007 or TES:Oblivion?

the WUXGA is the only LCD i've ever owned that looks very good at all resolutions... not perfect, not as good as native, but very good...

i run mostly at WUXGA but some at WSXGA... use other resolutions for checkin' web pages...

this is from another of my posts, but might help you with setting PPI/DPI...

generally speaking, normal in regards to screen resolution means something that is 1 inch appears on your display as 1 inch...

i have no idea why people keep insisting that 96 PPI (pixels per inch) is the "correct/normal" PPI... there are only 2 screen resolutions that i'm aware of where 96 is the normal PPI 1024x768 and 1280x1024... Windows refers to this as DPI (dots per inch) a term usually used for printers but still equivalent...

the "normal" settings for a 17" screen are as follows:
WXGA+, 1440x900, 100 PPI/DPI
WSXGA+, 1680x1050, 117 PPI/DPI
WUXGA, 1920x1200, 133 PPI/DPI

a huge problem is that Windows (and IE in particular) doesn't scale/resize text properly... this is supposed to be addressed in Vista/Longhorn, the next version of Windows which is due to be released early next year (don't EVEN wanna discuss MS's release dates lol)... if it works as advertised, and i'm fairly confident it will judgin' by the comments of some heavyweights in the web design world, then this will become a non-issue...

as an aside, the "font" problem will be addressed too... for those of you who aren't aware, it's a real problem for web designers to use the fonts they want, because now they have to choose fonts that are installed on the users' pc or create graphics from their text which spiders (pgms used by search engines to discover the content of a web site) can't read...

here are two links that might help... this one is a table of the "normal" PPI/DPI for most display sizes/resolutions...

this one is for free tools (only pay if you want all the features) that allow you to exactly measure distances of anything on your display and a lotta other really cool things as well... PLEASE, do yourself a favor and chk out this site... bet you'll say it's cool too... i have no connection with it other than i use the tools (and some of the other things as well) and i really appreciate great apps and some of these qualify...