Unhappy with New T500 Screen

[usadan]

I just got a new T500 with a 1280x800 LED display and I'm generally quite happy with the PC except for the display contrast/brightness. Dark colors do not appear very dark. The blacks looks washed out. If I turn down the brightness so it gets dark enough, the light colors are too dark and its still not right.

I compared displays with my T43. To compare, I set both desktops to pure black. The T43 seems to have a much better contrast and the darks are much darker. The T500 looks more like a washed out dark gray while the T43 looks like genuine black. I much prefer the T43 display.

Do you think the light black colors are caused by the LED backlight? With the CFFL backlight, are the dark colors darker? Are there any noticable difference when the CFFL and LED screens are side-by-side? I don't need great brightness but don't like washed out images either. I like this screen resolution just fine for my aging eyes.

[dr_st]

Is your T43 15" SXGA+/UXGA Flexview screen? If so, then the difference is most certainly to be expected.

[ssd_thinkpad]

Do you think the light black colors are caused by the LED backlight? With the CFFL backlight, are the dark colors darker? Are there any noticable difference when the CFFL and LED screens are side-by-side? I don't need great brightness but don't like washed out images either. I like this screen resolution just fine for my aging eyes.

The background technology (led / cffl) does not have any effect on contrast. Your T500 display panel is known for low contrast, the other panel that is shipped with the T500 - the wsxga+ panel - is known for having better contrast. You can find these information in lenovos documentation. Where the wsxga+ panel has 500 contrast ration - I remember to see a contrast ratio for your panel with around 300-350. With windows 7 you can make everything look bigger (decrease dpi) even when having a higher resolution display.

[Puppy]

The reason is that your T500 display uses outdated technology called TN that Lenovo pushes everywhere because it is cheaper (and horrible, of course). Your T43 display is probably much more mature technology called IPS. There is nearly no way that Lenovo would return to the quality offered several years ago.

Someone in Lenovo forums has started a survey trying to convince Lenovo to revert back to the original quality:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=77437

[dr_st]

Puppy,

While technically everything you say is true, the way you choose to phrase it implies that while "big bad" Lenovo pushes out TN to cut costs, there are "good" manufacturers out there who still care about quality and offer non-TN laptop displays.

Which of course isn't the case - there isn't a single one and hasn't been a single one. I see no reason to single out Lenovo in this claim.

[ZaZ]

It's interesting to me they find a way to offer a good screen on the tablets, but not other machines. Granted, the tablets sell for a lot more, but I don't know how the manufacturing side of it works or the economics of selling notebooks to say much about it.

[archer6]

Puppy,

While technically everything you say is true, the way you choose to phrase it implies that while "big bad" Lenovo pushes out TN to cut costs, there are "good" manufacturers out there who still care about quality and offer non-TN laptop displays.

Which of course isn't the case - there isn't a single one and hasn't been a single one. I see no reason to single out Lenovo in this claim.

Well said, I concur....

[usadan]

I went to Best Buy and Fry's and looked at screen's of other manufacturers. ALL of them appeared to have better contrast than this T500--their blacks were deep and not gray. They all had that shiny screen finish which I hate, but the blacks were certainly deep and rich, even on the cheapest notebooks.

I wish there was a place to see Lenovo's with various screen types side-by-side but so far I haven't found it.

Do you think the higher-resolution 15" screen would really give a noticably deeper black than the 1280x800?

Do the T400 machines have a better contrast low resolution screen or is it exactly the same at the T500?

[ssd_thinkpad]

Do you think the higher-resolution 15" screen would really give a noticably deeper black than the 1280x800?

The 15 inch WSXGA+ panels have higher contrast.

[archer6]

They all had that shiny screen finish which I hate, but the blacks were certainly deep and rich, even on the cheapest notebooks.

This is a product of the shiny front surface of the display. It's what makes glossy screens so popular on one hand, yet on the other, I cannot stand them. The one on my new 15" Unibody MacBook Pro can only be appreciated in the purposely low lit environment of my home office. Being in the center of the house, it has no windows and is the perfect environment for that display. But take it out into a Starbucks for example and you have a case of eye strain before you know it. Doubling as a mirror it's perfect.....heh!

I wish there was a place to see Lenovo's with various screen types side-by-side but so far I haven't found it.

Yes, I certainly understand where you're coming from on this one. Prior to building the collection of ThinkPads I have, the issue was the same for me.

Do you think the higher-resolution 15" screen would really give a noticably deeper black than the 1280x800? Do the T400 machines have a better contrast low resolution screen or is it exactly the same at the T500?

I have T400's in both resolutions, as well as T500's in both resolutions, and a side by side comparison is really quite interesting. By far the best display in my opinion is that of my T500 at WSXGA+, while certainly not as good as my stellar 15" T60 with it's freshly replaced IPS/Flexview display, backlight and inverter, there is simply no comparison. Yet that said I find the display of my T500 quite nice and the even higher resolution display of my WUXGA W500 simply stellar.

Cheers...

[Puppy]

Which of course isn't the case - there isn't a single one and hasn't been a single one. I see no reason to single out Lenovo in this claim.

The technology is already developed and available for many years. Why Lenovo shouldn't offer better quality (more precisely said revert back to the original quality) than the competion ? Isn't it the point of competition - offering better products ? Simply said they cheapened the ThinkPad brand name in favor of more profit. Nothing else.

[dr_st]

I would welcome any change that would make Lenovo again better than the competition in the area of screens. My objection is just to your choice of words which can make it seem, to the casual viewer of your post, that Lenovo is actually worse than the competition in this regard, which they are not.

[ZaZ]

Isn't it the point of competition - offering better products ?

It's a two way street. Manufacturers are under enormous cost pressure. Every $50 or 100 they raise prices costs them sales because they typical customer views the machine as acceptable and lower priced. People are always looking for the best deal. As much as we lament the loss of quality screens here, we are such a small slice of the pie and not the average customer.

[Puppy]

People are always looking for the best deal.

Yep. And Lenovo currently does not have anything I'd rush to buy. I wound understand such argument if there weren't people buying R50p, T42p, T43p and T60p in the past. Even totally overpriced X300 (having most horrible display in ThinkPad's history) is being sold. And again, latest E-IPS (economy edition of IPS technology with some quality compromises) panels introduced by LG.Philips are for the same price as TN.

[zenit]

there is simply no manufacturers right now who made IPS laptop screens. Hydis is the only one who makes AFFS panels (their version of IPS) with 13" being the largest. Maybe IPS is simply too expensive to manufacture (just look at prices of a proper IPS monitor). Dell's E-IPS cheap variety does not count, as it looks worse then MVA panels in my opinion.

There is nothing worse than a combination of a crappy TN panel with anti-glare coating which is what Lenovo is selling. There is a reason Apple and others switched to high gloss screens - they simply look better. If reflections dont bother you, the glossy panel is really a way to go for better colors and contast, although i suspect that it is more of a perception issue than anything else. I plan on sending in the panel from my T400s to get repolarized to glossy when warranty is closer to being over just to see if I can get an improvement in colors/blacks. Crappy contrast bothers me alot more than reflections.

[Puppy]

there is simply no manufacturers right now who made IPS laptop screens.

That's chicken-egg problem There are no notebook manufacturers demanding them. As for E-IPS quality, yes it is supposed to be worse than any IPS or *VA panel. But still far better than any TN crap. It has also lower power consumption - ideal for laptops.

There are two areas where I can't understand Lenovo marketing at all:
1. give up on well-known ThinkPad display quality
2. no trackpoint in Lenovo S series netbooks

Both of them would be unique features on the market (again). Both of them already existed in former IBM products many years ago (FlexView displays and trackpoint in S30/S31).

[dr_st]

On the subject of E-IPS panels:

Not to many E-IPS screens have actually been manufactured. DELL's popular 2209WA model has been discontinued very recently, after only being manufactured for 7 months or so.

DELL's "excuse" was "the manufacturer of the panel could not supply our demand for it". Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[Puppy]

My objection is just to your choice of words which can make it seem, to the casual viewer of your post, that Lenovo is actually worse than the competition in this regard, which they are not.

There were discussions about quality of TN panels Lenovo gets. At least HP is able (willing ?) to get better ones. X300 is the best example. I've seen it in real and couldn't believe that such horrible component is used in $3000 notebook.

DELL's "excuse" was "the manufacturer of the panel could not supply our demand for it".

Translation: too good to be that cheap ? I've never read that Eizo or NEC had similar problems. Their monitors are very expensive (so the ThinkPad with real display should be as well) but available.

[dr_st]

here were discussions about quality of TN panels Lenovo gets. At least HP is able (willing ?) to get better ones. X300 is the best example. I've seen it in real and couldn't believe that such horrible component is used in $3000 notebook.

Yep. But the W700 on the other hand is said to have an excellent panel. Some professional photographer site reviewed it, and found it to be better in some aspects than the IPS on the T60p.

I've never read that Eizo or NEC had similar problems. Their monitors are very expensive (so the ThinkPad with real display should be as well) but available.

No argument there.

[Puppy]

Yep. But the W700 on the other hand is said to have an excellent panel. Some professional photographer site reviewed it, and found it to be better in some aspects than the IPS on the T60p.

Better ? Hardly: http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/ ... fb49fc.jpg (if the link does not work, there is link to the full review http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Len ... 275.0.html). Notice also the very uneven backlight. It is just marketing fluff. You can not improve outdated technology by words

[dr_st]

I said "better in some aspects". Obviously not in viewing angles - that's something where TN will never be able to rival IPS, or VA.

However, take a look at this review here, obviously done by a personal dealing with professional color work:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... -9320-9876

Notice how he claims that as far as color accuracy goes, the W700's display is quite good, better than the Flexview.

[ssd_thinkpad]

X300 is the best example. I've seen it in real and couldn't believe that such horrible component is used in $3000 notebook.

I bought the x301 with the "improved" panel and gave it back the other day. All other thinkpad displays I've ever seen were better: x60, x40, x20 - not mention any IPS models where IPS is not even in the league of my SPVA monitor. All the flickering on every youtube video of the x300 series - they were bothering before buying but I was told here they are all "problems of the video camera" while the macbook air in the same video is shown without any flickering. Lenovo should know better and give us notebooks that are high end in ergonomics. I am not buying an x300 series thinkpad for speed purposes.

Coming back to topic: The WSXGA+ panels and higher are the best on contrast. The tablet thinkpads are also always good - there is even a CCFl tablet thinkpad with PVA technology! PVA gives me more contrast - no eye stream. I wonder why someone buys a notebook for watching videos? Seriously, you can buy a 19 inch widescreen monitor for 150 $ everywhere. That's why I weight the contrast rich PVA more than the great colors showing IPS panels for thinkpad purposes.

[Puppy]

Notice how he claims that as far as color accuracy goes, the W700's display is quite good, better than the Flexview.

I see, the tested ThinkPad is not a model with UXGA panel developed by Boe-Hydis (there was sRGB version as well) but SXGA+ only. Color accuracy of a TN panel measured from single point is pointless since moving by several centimeters from that point changes it dramatically. Noone can take a TN panel seriously for a professional work. Having notebook display with balanced parameters (which can never reach professional monitors, at least today) is a bigger deal thought.

The question is: how many customers would appreciate non-TN panel with good contrast, viewing angles, small backlight bleeding, non-visible dithering and black dead pixels over a TN panel with all its disadvantages but slightly better color gamut ?

[makaveli559m]

I have a bone to pick about the T500 I have one but I dont like how my screen dims and than turns bright it hurts my eyes looking at it dim, I dont know whether its a screen issue or bios issue. I checked the Dynamic features for dimming and they all are off.

[Colonel O'Neill]

You'll need to disable some powersaving settings under the Intel graphics control panel.