LCD Brightness, Contrast, and Viewing Angles
We recently did an article taking a closer look at the LCD panels on several laptops, and all of our future of laptop reviews will include coverage of this important feature. Our testing methodology is the same as we use in our desktop LCD reviews, although somewhat more limited in scope. The simple truth is that even the best laptop LCDs tend to pale in comparison to typical desktop LCDs. One of the reasons for this can be found by examining the panel used in the HP dv6500t notebook.
Using a utility called ASTRA32, we discovered that the LCD panel is an AU Optronics model AUO 2174 (though we admit that ASTRA32 could make mistakes). While that model number may not mean much to most people, perhaps more telling is the manufacture date of January 2005. This is a brand new notebook based on Intel's just-released Santa Rosa platform, and yet the LCD is apparently about 2.5 years old! Needless to say, LCD technology has advanced quite a bit in the past couple of years.
Our initial impression of the LCD panel prior to getting the above information was that it was pretty average at best. It's not particularly bright, viewing angles are limited (like most other TN panels), and colors seemed a bit off. All of these are characteristics that we would expect to find in LCDs from several years ago, but we ran through the rest of our tests regardless. Sadly, we would wager that HP isn't the only company using older LCDs on their laptops.
We'll start with a quick look at brightness and contrast ratios, then we'll look at viewing angles, and we'll conclude our examination of the LCD by looking at the color accuracy, before and after hardware calibration. For color accuracy, we are also including results using ColorEyes Display Pro in addition to Monaco Optix XR Pro. One of our readers pointed out that Monaco Optix XR Pro uses the older ICCv2 profile specification and that it might not be as accurate as software that uses the more recent ICCv4 specification. We still use the Monaco Optix XR Pro colorimeter (which is the same as the DTP-94) with both applications, and in general we did find that ColorEyes Display Pro produces better results on laptops. However, on at least a couple of displays we've tested, the results are better with Monaco Optix XR Pro, so we will continue to use both applications.
The white level is pretty typical of most laptop LCDs, maxing out at around 150 nits; black levels however are not very good, coming in at 0.66 nits -- the brightest "black" of any of the tested LCDs. The net result is one of the lowest contrast ratios we've measured. Subjectively, we would agree with the measurements: the overall quality of the LCD panel is slightly better than the panel on the ASUS A8Js, but we wouldn't rate it better than any of the other LCDs.
Brightness and contrast ratios aren't necessarily the most important aspect of a display, so let's move on to the other areas. Here's a look at the viewing angles, taken at 30° from center. Images for the other laptops can be viewed at the following links:
ASUS A8Js
ASUS G2P
Dell M1710
MSI S271
The lackluster LCD performance continues, with viewing angles that are no better -- and often worse -- than any of the other LCDs. During typical use of the notebook, it's not uncommon to find that you need to adjust the screen in order to properly see things. Even a small movement of your lap can mean the difference between an okay viewing angle and one that washes all of the colors out. Since all of these notebooks so far use TN panels, the somewhat limited viewing angles aren't too surprising. We are still trying to get some laptops in for testing that use IPS panels, as those are likely to perform better.
We recently did an article taking a closer look at the LCD panels on several laptops, and all of our future of laptop reviews will include coverage of this important feature. Our testing methodology is the same as we use in our desktop LCD reviews, although somewhat more limited in scope. The simple truth is that even the best laptop LCDs tend to pale in comparison to typical desktop LCDs. One of the reasons for this can be found by examining the panel used in the HP dv6500t notebook.
Using a utility called ASTRA32, we discovered that the LCD panel is an AU Optronics model AUO 2174 (though we admit that ASTRA32 could make mistakes). While that model number may not mean much to most people, perhaps more telling is the manufacture date of January 2005. This is a brand new notebook based on Intel's just-released Santa Rosa platform, and yet the LCD is apparently about 2.5 years old! Needless to say, LCD technology has advanced quite a bit in the past couple of years.
Our initial impression of the LCD panel prior to getting the above information was that it was pretty average at best. It's not particularly bright, viewing angles are limited (like most other TN panels), and colors seemed a bit off. All of these are characteristics that we would expect to find in LCDs from several years ago, but we ran through the rest of our tests regardless. Sadly, we would wager that HP isn't the only company using older LCDs on their laptops.
We'll start with a quick look at brightness and contrast ratios, then we'll look at viewing angles, and we'll conclude our examination of the LCD by looking at the color accuracy, before and after hardware calibration. For color accuracy, we are also including results using ColorEyes Display Pro in addition to Monaco Optix XR Pro. One of our readers pointed out that Monaco Optix XR Pro uses the older ICCv2 profile specification and that it might not be as accurate as software that uses the more recent ICCv4 specification. We still use the Monaco Optix XR Pro colorimeter (which is the same as the DTP-94) with both applications, and in general we did find that ColorEyes Display Pro produces better results on laptops. However, on at least a couple of displays we've tested, the results are better with Monaco Optix XR Pro, so we will continue to use both applications.
The white level is pretty typical of most laptop LCDs, maxing out at around 150 nits; black levels however are not very good, coming in at 0.66 nits -- the brightest "black" of any of the tested LCDs. The net result is one of the lowest contrast ratios we've measured. Subjectively, we would agree with the measurements: the overall quality of the LCD panel is slightly better than the panel on the ASUS A8Js, but we wouldn't rate it better than any of the other LCDs.
Brightness and contrast ratios aren't necessarily the most important aspect of a display, so let's move on to the other areas. Here's a look at the viewing angles, taken at 30° from center. Images for the other laptops can be viewed at the following links:
ASUS A8Js
ASUS G2P
Dell M1710
MSI S271
 |
The lackluster LCD performance continues, with viewing angles that are no better -- and often worse -- than any of the other LCDs. During typical use of the notebook, it's not uncommon to find that you need to adjust the screen in order to properly see things. Even a small movement of your lap can mean the difference between an okay viewing angle and one that washes all of the colors out. Since all of these notebooks so far use TN panels, the somewhat limited viewing angles aren't too surprising. We are still trying to get some laptops in for testing that use IPS panels, as those are likely to perform better.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link
Funny you should mention the E-155-C.... :DFant - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Seems HP shipped you a badly specced machine. They should have used a 5400rpm drive and the nvidia graphics chip as well as the extended 6-cell. All three would have improved your benchmarks. Out of curiousity, did you use a clean vista build or the out of the box vista build that hp supplies with loads of extras installed?JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
HP's install, minus a bunch of software that I didn't want running. Although, when I ran SYSmark 2007, I ahd to do a clean install first. (Now you know why the lack of GbE was annoying - image a HDD over 100 Mbit and I averaged 3 MB/s instead of 12 MB/s with GbE. Not sure why, but Acronis only manages to use about 25% of the Ethernet bandwidth.) Anyway, I like to make the testing close to "real world", and most people don't buy an HP, Dell, Gateway, etc. notebook only to install their own operating system. (Businesses are different story, but let's not go there.)I actually don't think that the configuration they sent was all that bad. It may not perform as well in benchmarks, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people get way too hung up on benchmark results. Do you want a faster hard drive, or do you prefer having a bit more storage? There is no right answer, although personally I would generally go with one of the 120-160GB 7200 RPM laptop drives if possible. As for the battery, they did send me the 12-cell for testing, and the only thing I really would like to know is the capacity of the extended 6-cell. The basic 6-cell is a 47 WHr, so if they extended capacity is 65 WHr it would increase battery life by about 35-40%. I'm trying to get an answer from HP about the capacity of the other 6-cell offering.
Fant - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
I have a dv6500t with the extended 6-cell. I havent done any formal testing but I probably get just under 3 hours with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan in Vista and a bit over 3 hours when using the Power Saver Plan. I did notice that the cpu seems to stay at the lower speed with the Power Saver Plan but seems to stay at the higher speeds with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan even when I am not doing much cpu intensive tasks.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
Can you check the battery and see what the rating is? Usually it will say something like "10.8V ~= xx WHr". I want to know the Watt-Hour rating. I'm not sure why, but the notebook I have almost never runs at minimum CPU speed. Weird.hubajube - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was waiting to read on how this laptop performed when watching HD DVD's. I'm interested in buying this for my wife for her to use as a work laptop but at the same time I'd like to use it as a HTPC. Oh well guess I'll have to spend the money to find out. :(JarredWalton - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Yeah, they didn't send the HD-DVD version. I'm not sure if the 8400M GS is required for that or not - maybe X3100 can do enough to handle it (but I doubt it). Anyway, we've tested 8600 cards with HD-DVD, and I don't see why the 8400M wouldn't handle it fine. Problem is, the display is still pretty poor, especially when you consider that video overlay can have a color correction profile applied.shady3005 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was gonna consider this laptop but was turned off by the lack of gigabit ethernet. Dint know about the horrible display at that time. So i was waiting for an upgrade to this laptop but sadly none came.Then I set my eyes on the new Macbook pro. Just 500$ higher that top dv6500t config but worth every extra penny. Amazing display , much lighter , thinner , sexier and CPU (2.2Ghz) and Graphics (8600GT M) upgrade with much better battery life.
Please review the new MacBooks with Santa Rosa ..... I would like to hear how awesome they are ..
crimson117 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I lol'd pretty good at this one :)
BPB - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Maybe I missed it, if so please excuse me, but I think you simply used the ABG wireless setup. I was wondering how well the N wireless works, and how well it talks to other N devices such as my Belkin N1. My wife's HP works quite well with the Belkin N PCMCIA and router, but for our next notebook I'd like to have the N built-in.