Thinkpads Forum

I'm guessing some PVA variant?? Anyone have any info? I looked at Lenovo's PDFs and they were useless.

TN, until we find reason to believe otherwise.

I thought about that but wondered why the W700, constantly flogged as a photographer's machine (I disagree) has only 72% gamut coverage.

There's more to being a photographer's machine than the gamut coverage. It's also how accurate the colors are (how well it is calibrated).

And if 72% gamut coverage is still more than the average of the laptop LCDs, it gives the W700 an advantage.

I read a review once, conducted by a photographer that compared the W700 LCD to the much respected Flexview of a T60. His conclusion was that while it cannot compete with the viewing angles and color uniformity of the IPS Flexview, in terms of color accuracy it surpasses it (assuming you are looking at the screen head on).

So the W510 screen can be good for color-accurate work even if it's a TN panel. There really isn't a direct connection between the panel type and the gamut covered.

dr_st wrote: I read a review once, conducted by a photographer that compared the W700 LCD to the much respected Flexview of a T60. His conclusion was that while it cannot compete with the viewing angles and color uniformity of the IPS Flexview, in terms of color accuracy it surpasses it (assuming you are looking at the screen head on).

Perhaps you are talking about this review:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... -9320-9876

It does not quite say that the W700 surpases the T60. And he does not even review the 1600x1200 Flexview (he compares it to the 1400 x 1050 one).

BTW, 95% gamut means absolutely nothing (95% of what? - sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc.?).

Indeed this is the review I was talking about. Here's a direct quote from it:

Ordering the displays with an emphasis on colour accuracy, the list looks like this:

1. Lenovo ThinkPad W700
2. IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60
3. Dell Inspiron Mini 9
4. Apple late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch

You're right dr_st. I read that review too. The real problem is that as far as laptops are concerned, development of IPS displays seemed to have ground to a halt after the T60's. If TN displays are all 6 bit, they are simply not capable of displaying a true millions of colors like IPS or PVA displays can.

As far as gamut is concerned, it's got to be either 95% Adobe or 95% NTSC, both of which are great. No manufacturer would be particularly proud of 95% sRGB coverage, something all laptops have had for many years.

Oliver26n wrote: No manufacturer would be particularly proud of 95% sRGB coverage, something all laptops have had for many years.

Not really. I am writing this on a T43p with a 1600x1200 FlexView panel. Not as great as the T60p one, but far beter than the average TN junk. Its coverage is somewhat smaller than sRGB - it goes out of it here and there, and is smaller somewhere else. I would loosely describe it as 80% sRGB. I profiled also two decent stand-alone monitors - an ISP one and a PVA one. They almost cover the whole sRGB, and go out of it considerably in some areas. They could qualify for 95% sRGB, I guess but there is no laptop that can touch that quality. So I think that every laptop manufacturer should be proud of 95% sRGB coverage but it does not sound that sexy, does it?

BTW, in the photo circles, wide gamut monitors are not that hot. Since Windows is not color managed, you get icons, etc. with radioactive colors that some people cannot stand. Many of the photo enthusiasts return the wide gamut monitors for sRGB ones.

My Dell M6400 (which I want to sell, but for different reasons) has full Adobe RGB coverage on its PVA screen. It is annoying for regular work, but can't be beat for matching my screen and my prints. HP has an excellent setup where you can switch the screen from Adobe RGB to regular sRGB, hopefully the w510 has something like this.

M6400 has a PVA screen? Are you sure?

I have the RGB-LED one. Everyone's concluded it's an M-PVA screen.

Interesting. Can you provide some links that support this conclusion?

When you look at your screen from extreme lower angles, does it darken? Similarly, when you look from extreme upper angles, does it brighten?

Actually, no. It's all based on speculation. I must say that we believe the panel is the new RGB-LED by LG, and I was not able to find a single instance where the panel type was stated. It is certainly possible that it's a TN screen I suppose; it has that too contrasty look and only moderately good viewing angles. TN or not, it's highly color accurate, even uncalibrated, proving your point I guess. My T60P had pretty bad color accuracy, and it was calibrated.

And yes, the display does exhibit the characteristics you asked about.

Digging a little further, I found some manufacturers boasting about 8-bit TN panels. I guess they will do anything to not put a real professional LCD in a notebook.

Oliver26n wrote: My T60P had pretty bad color accuracy, and it was calibrated.

Was it a FlexView panel?

Yes, it was IPS. Great viewing angle for in-car (I had it on a platform for work purposes), but then I bought a large format printer and colors were impossible to match on the T60p, and effortless on the Dell.

Which is precisely the point that I tried to emphasize with the review I mentioned.

There is no direct correlation between color accuracy and ease of calibration and the panel type. Evidently, your M6400 panel which is obviously a TN based on your description, proved more accurate than the much touted IPS Flexview.

I still prefer IPS/VA to TN, anytime, because I like to watch movies and play video games, and sit next to my friends who play video games, and I enjoy the good viewing angles, and the fact that the screen colors don't shift with any movement of your head.

But it has to be said, that modern desktop TN screens are much much better in the viewing angle department than the old ones, and than most of the cheap crap in laptops these days.

So workstation laptop manufacturers may not put IPS/VA screens even in their high-end models, but it looks like the high-end TN screens they use are comparable to the desktop TNs, and as such may actually be suitable for photographic work, believe it or not.

Maybe AMOLED will be in near future the right display for high approach!

I know the 7.6" Kodak photo display - 8 Bit, perfect Black and about 75% gamut. Cimei is the Manufacturer in China.

Regarding present displays I do not like displays with much more than Adobe-RGB (117%...) - because if you have allready only 8 Bit for each color > it will always result in high delta E failures, regardless of calibration. Personally i have experience in calibrating and profiling - have Gretag/Xrite iOne Pro in private use.

So at the monent i feel there are only 2 displays well suited for graphics and photo workflow (if both have 8 Bit?):

Apple MBP 17" - with good sRGB gamut
Lenovo W700 - with good sRGB gamut
mybe new Lenovo W510 is in this list too (but must have 8 Bit for color and has 95% gamut)

If you look at professional desktop monitors you see that all have much more resolution for their hardware calibration (10-14 Bit per color). Displays without hw calibration possibility have a limit of 8 Bit through software/graphic cards - so should be limited to sRGB gamut to achieve accurate colors.

Best, Walter

Oliver26n wrote:Yes, it was IPS. Great viewing angle for in-car (I had it on a platform for work purposes), but then I bought a large format printer and colors were impossible to match on the T60p, and effortless on the Dell.

I have no problems with my T43p, 1600x1200 IPS panel. It was quite accurate even before profiling. After profiling, it is very good. My external IPS panel is better, and a direct comparison shows some of the limitations of the laptop but there is no problem with color accuracy. I print on a Canon recent generation printer, and get a very good match (I can describe myself as a photo-enthusiast, a dSLR and 5-6 lenses).

I have profiled 4-5 newer laptops and an external Samsung PVA panel. Nothing beats the IPS. I am not even going to comment on the TN screens. Even the 21" 1600x1200 PVA Samsung looks worse than my T43p and I am using it for office work only.

I'm going to side with dr_st on this one. I think my Dell's panel (100% Adobe RGB coverage) was specifically designed for color-sensitive work and will do better than IPS displays from 4 year old laptops. There are many good IPS desktop displays too, but even here, one should spend $400-500 for a good panel. Bear in mind that I shoot Adobe RGB and then find that printing in the same color space is the most reliable way to match colors. I look forward to hearing about the quality of the w510's 95% gamut display.

Oliver26n wrote:I'm going to side with dr_st on this one. I think my Dell's panel (100% Adobe RGB coverage) was specifically designed for color-sensitive work and will do better than IPS displays from 4 year old laptops. There are many good IPS desktop displays too, but even here, one should spend $400-500 for a good panel. Bear in mind that I shoot Adobe RGB and then find that printing in the same color space is the most reliable way to match colors. I look forward to hearing about the quality of the w510's 95% gamut display.

Color accuracy and Adobe RGB are very different things. Very few printers can go close to full Adobe RGB; most go outside sRGB in few colors only. Most photos do not even have colors outside sRGB. Very often, different results when printing are due to software limitations.

Anyway, I am not trying to compare old computers. I am just trying to say that I do not care so much whether the new panels that the W510 and the W710 will have are 100% Adobe RGB or somewhere between sRGB and Adobe RGB as most panels today. I am much more concerned with being non-glossy, uniform, having smooth color gradations, greater than zero vewing angle (I mean it), well developed shadows, etc. And that means IPS, unfortunately, even for stand alone monitors (Eizo are a very expensive exception with their PVA panels). If I have to choose, I will stay away from 100% Adobe RGB for the reasons another posted explained above. If that is a 6 bit Adobe RGB, that is really bad.

Actually, I don't know about regular desktop printers, but fine art pigment printers are capable of far exceeding the color gamut of your screen. I agree that quality desktop IPS and PVA monitors have accurate (or are capable) of accurate color, but this does not apply to the old IBM flexviews, period. Again, my calibrated T60P monitor was unable to accurately represent colors which were easily handled by my uncalibrated M6400 screen (which, according to dr_st, looks like a TN display).

Don't get me wrong. I loved my Thinkpad flexview with its incredible viewing angle and natural contrast, but its downsides were dim brightness and poor color accuracy. My X200 tablet with AFFS does not suffer from this. Just saying that I will not compromise on color accuracy just to have IPS. If and when manufacturers put an IPS display in a laptop, it's clearly being targeted towards professionals and should include full or close to full Adobe RGB gamut, preferably with on-the-fly switching to sRGB like the HP Dreamcolor display.

Oliver26n wrote:Again, my calibrated T60P monitor was unable to accurately represent colors which were easily handled by my uncalibrated M6400 screen (which, according to dr_st, looks like a TN display)

Then there must have been something terribly wrong with your T60p or your calibration device. I can get accurate colors of just any laptop I calibrate, regardless of the price. The problems are not with the accuracy. And I have never seen an accurate out of the box monitor, and I have calibrated and used a lot of them - laptops or not. Your Dell must be some unique exception.

Let us leave it like this. One owner of (one model of) a FlexView monitor that thinks that those are great laptop monitors vs. another owner of another brand of monitors that were named FlexView as well (different manufacturer). I am not interested in the past or on your opinion on my laptop monitor that you have never seen (no offence intended). I am just concerned that for marketing reasons Lenovo may offer a less capable monitor than that on the W700 (and I am waiting for the W710) than the current one, just to advertise it as full Adobe RGB.

Fair enough.

So found some news regarding the upcoming W510:

A German website tells that in the 95% gamut display we will see 16.7 Mio colors.

http://www.redcoon.de/index.php/cmd/sho ... 0_NTK29GE/

If true information that means 8 Bit color resolution - so calibration and profiling could work well... I hope!!! The W510 is the right size for me during travelling.

And on Lenovo's US website the W700 dissapeared... So W710 coming soon...

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... CCAC867854

Best, Walter

We can only hope

Anyone else notice that Lenovo seems to have pulled the standalone FHD 95% screens for the T510 and W510 and left the multi-touch screen as the only way to get the 95% LCD?

Probably a marketing-driven temporary measure. Anecdotal evidence (reported orders across a number of thinkpad forums) seems to suggest that the touch panels are not a hot selling option. Lenovo probably wants to shift some inventory.

I wanted to add some technical info on the panel. "RG-ph LED" stands for Red Green Phosphor LED. It refers to the way the LED in the backlight produces white light.

This is possible either using multi-colored white LEDs (usually referred to as RGB-LEDs), or using phospor-based white LEDs. Other ways of achieving a white backlight are organic LEDs (OLED) and quantum dot LEDs.

Phosphor-based LEDs are a lot cheaper to produce than RGBLEDs, and they are used in many LED backlit LCDs. In phosphor-based LEDs a LED of one color (typically blue) is coated with phosphor of different colors to achieve white light. In this case red and green phosphor. Two-color phosphor coating produces better color uniformity and higher color render than a blue LED, yellow phosphor coating setup, used in the previous generation panels.

the screens were probaly pulled due to typical ordering system screw-up from Lenovo.
They are available right now with no delay through University ordering pages.


as for ph-RGB screens here is an article that describes the tech in detail.

http://apex.ipap.jp/link?APEX/2/022401/pdf

Its not quiet RGB-LED, but still better than regular WLED screens. True RGB-LED screens that are used by Dell cover 118% of adobe RGB. This W510 screen is probably similar to AOU panel that is used on current line of Macbook Pros with "60% improved gamut" that were refreshed last year sometime during the summer.

I have an M6400 with the RGB-LED. While it is a fantastic screen for professional photography and printing to printers such as my iPF6100, it fails in one huge way; Dell supplied ZERO software for color management. The HP laptops and displays have firmware & software that allows users to switch between sRGB mode and full gamut mode. There is no way to describe how useful this is, and how big a fail it is for Dell to NOT include it. I hope Lenovo was more accommodating in this aspect.

Hopefully you guys won't consider this off topic. I have my W510 in, and of course opted for the FHD w/ 95% gamut.

I did not opt for the calibrator, as I'd rather spend that money on an external one I can use on all my computers.



Here it is against my old W500 WSXGA+, which I sold off to a client to help pay for the W510.

Maybe I'm just not used to what's probably 58% more gamut than the W500, but is there anything for software calibration I can do? Everything looks great, but the green power manager has almost a candy-green color to it. Maybe it's just seeing proper colors when I'm used to limited colors before...but I'd like to make sure .

See what I was talking about in reference to my Dell? Does the Lenovo have any software to run the panel in sRGB mode? If not, I think you are pretty much stuck with over-saturated colors in Windows and applications that don't color manage, meaning most of them.