Laptop LCD saturation

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jun 2014, 20:53

On the off-chance someone here actually knows … TL;DR: don't read. For hardware nerds only.

Most laptop screens have very poor colour saturation. Last time I tried to find anything out about this (since few people ever seem to even notice) all I could glean was that it was some sort of inevitability of the way laptop screens were constructed. It's something I always pay attention to on every laptop I see, and they all have really washed out colour (the Latitude D530 is nearly black and white off-angle).

From what I understand (as it's one of many subjects that never get documented by anyone anywhere) desktop displays have a series of parallel CCFLs behind the LCD panel, but laptops have just the one, below the panel, presumably to keep the screen thin and protect the tube from being shattered by how flexible the lid of a laptop is. I've taken this to be the reason why black levels are so poor, and why top to bottom black level varies.

But colour? I was using a MacBook Pro of some kind earlier — the sort that's made of metal (unibody I imagine), with a black screen surround and optical drive. (Since Apple live in constant fear of using model numbers, I have no idea what it is.) Previous model? No idea. Incredibly smooth trackpad, whatever it is.

They're supposed to be eIPS, right? (There's an E-IPS that's meant to be an enhanced IPS, but I was sure I read "eIPS" that was some sort of economy IPS that used a 6-bit panel.) The display on it was really weird:

Refresh blur like it's the early 2000s again (12 ms or more — terrible for scrolling through data)
More vivid colour than my desktop IPS displays
Uniform pure white (I have my screens set an intensity that happens to match plain paper)
Uniform jet black — OLED couldn't beat the black level, it was darker than the night sky
Middling viewing angle — better than modern screens, but not as good as a basic Dell TN panel from the mid 2000s

Something I've never seen anyone else notice, is that viewing angle is power dependent. I think the trend of terrible viewing angle is down to manufacturers aiming to get a pat on the back for being all Energy Star and green: I will never forget the jaw-dropping moment of seeing a Panasonic Lumix change from VA-grade or higher viewing angle right down to 90s-level terrible TN simply from changing the camera's screen brightness setting. I can only assume that screens are being run at a lower power output, thus degrading the viewing angle.

So, that Lumix: is it that a TN panel with power thrown at it will turn into VA or IPS, or is that an IPS panel, run at a low power, will turn into TN?

Whatever panel Apple chose, is really interesting. It proves that laptops are perfectly capable of vivid colour, even if most somehow don't manage it. Yet, does that come at a cost of poor viewing angle and poor refresh rate, or is one or both of those a deliberate compromise of some kind?

It does at least mean that we don't need to wait for OLED before laptops can have proper colour, but whether we need OLED to clear up some of these trade-offs, I don't know.

Muirium · 23 Jun 2014, 21:06

Apple ditched optical drives several years ago at the high end, definitely before going retina. (There's still a 13 inch non retina model kicking around though, as I remember, but it's years old hardware and needs to be retired.) I've not seen any motion blur on my late 2013 (and still current) 15 inch MacBook Pro. It's the best display I've seen. Although, to be fair, I don't pay attention to the competition!

bhtooefr · 26 Jun 2014, 13:20

All MacBook Pros without Retina display have an optical drive, all of the Retina machines do not have an optical drive. So, if it has an optical drive, it therefore doesn't have a Retina display. And, the reason the viewing angles seem like TN is because it is TN - the only IPS Mac laptops are the ones with Retina.

By the way, there's a few ways to refer to a Mac laptop in a standardized way. Here's the various ways to refer to my laptop:

Model name: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012) - sometimes (in About This Mac) this is presented as MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), as there was no Retina 13-inch Mid 2012 model (that was for Late 2012)
Model identifier: MacBookPro10,1 - this is shown in System Information, and is common to the MBPR 15-inch models with Ivy Bridge processors - Mid 2012 and Early 2013, I believe, are the two families (Early 2013 got slightly faster CPUs). Essentially, the first part of the number is the generation, the second part is the model within that generation, and MacBookPro10 is the first generation of Retina machines. (There was a MacBookPro9,1 at 15" and 9,2 at 13" that was released with the same generation of hardware as the MacBookPro10 machines, simultaneously with the 10,1, but in the MacBookPro8 and earlier unibody chassis with optical drive, too.)
Model number: A1398 EMC 2512 - this is shown on the bottom of the machine. The first part (A1398) generally specifies the chassis family (although later models share the chassis, so it's not exactly useful other than to say it's a 15" Retina machine), the second (EMC 2512) part specifies the base configuration (which in this case is a 2.3 GHz Mid 2012 machine with 8 GiB RAM and 256 GiB SSD, although mine is a customized configuration with 16 GiB RAM).

Daniel Beardsmore · 26 Jun 2014, 22:31

I know that Macs have such names, but would it really kill Apple to put a model number on them like a proper company?

I did think that the laptops had had IPS before the Retina series, but apparently not.

bhtooefr · 27 Jun 2014, 00:00

They do put a model number on the bottom, it's just not one that's exactly meaningful without Googling it.

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 00:05

I was actually a little disappointed to see the text MacBook Pro on the underside of my Retina model, which is my first new laptop since a 2003 PowerBook 12 inch! I wanted the underside to be as austere and monolothic as the top. Still, at least the screen bezel is free from words now.

Daniel Beardsmore · 27 Jun 2014, 00:27

bhtooefr wrote: ↑They do put a model number on the bottom, it's just not one that's exactly meaningful without Googling it.

Smartarse.

I mean something like "PowerBook 160", written on the front, like the days of old (going back to Apple Garamond is definitely too much to ask). You know, a meaningful term. Sony are one of the worst: not only do they have cryptic and immemorable model numbers, but every machine has two completely different cryptic and immemorable model numbers.

Still doesn't explain why Apple are able to get vivid red out of a laptop LCD panel when nobody else seems to be able to.

So many little things … for example, the pattern texture of UK coinage was reduced in complexity a year or two back:

: 10 p reverse.jpg (230.11 KiB) Viewed 3522 times

: 10 p obverse.jpg (224.83 KiB) Viewed 3522 times

Compare the background texture around the lion — the texture became a lot less detailed in 2013 or so.

All part of my long list of things that I notice that no-else ever does, and will go unexplained for decades to come if not forever.

Hak Foo · 27 Jun 2014, 06:40

The US has done similar to their coinage.

If you look at a 25-cent coin from a few decades ago, there are no discrete hairs on Washington's head. New ones, he looks like he's wearing a linguini wig.

It probably improves the wear patterns-- they can make it look "right" without having to produce such a high relief figure.

Returning to topic... it's very hard to find an affordable laptop with a decent screen, yet many of the cheap tablets-- those eight-inch Atom ones running Win81-- have IPS screens which are fairly nice.

I'm wondering if part of it was Intel and Microsoft subsidizing those little beasties in a desperate attempt to acquire relevance in the market sector.

matt3o · 27 Jun 2014, 08:28

macbook with best display?! They have such lame TN panels I can't even tell! Color may seem more vibrant when power is full due to increased luminosity. Apple is probably using high quality TN for sure, but still TN panels. As soon as you tilt the screen 1deg, colors go crazy. It's such a pity that on such a glorious machine they put a shitty display like that. I've seen some Sony laptops with a display that make the macbook blush. Fortunately there's retina...

Daniel Beardsmore · 27 Jun 2014, 09:39

The colours don't "go crazy" with a 1° tilt, or anything close. Also, what's truly more important with a display is that the colour is uniform when you're looking straight at it, something that even VA cannot achieve (I have a VA screen here that doesn't manage uniform intensity when looking directly at it). Some modern desktop panels have dreadful problems with colour shifts simply through the range of angles incurred from looking straight at the screen. What's even weirder about these, is that pure white has completely different viewing angle characteristics to say 95% grey (e.g. #F2F2F2): one will shift to deep yellow, and the other won't shift at all, despite being almost the same shades.

If the MacBook display is that bad, then all I can say is that the Italian market must be blessed with better laptop display panels than the UK market, because that MacBook still had the best display by far that I've seen on any laptop ever (including brand new Sony, Dell, HP and Fujitsu). I saw an older HP once that had a nice screen — colour wasn't bad, but it did have very even light distribution.

matt3o · 27 Jun 2014, 09:45

you mean that you'd pick a macbook TN vs any other laptop with an IPS display?

PS: I bought my macbook in US and if the display is just slightly tilted colors go indeed crazy, so probably UK gets the best display compared to the rest of the world. Also light gray is basically nonexistent.

Madhias · 27 Jun 2014, 10:23

matt3o wrote: ↑Fortunately there's retina...

Well, i have a 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display. I did not buy it for myself, but for my work. There are 2 issues, which i really do not like, and after now almost 1 1/2 years i'm glad i did not buy this notebook for myself.

1. Image retention
2. Contrast much too high

For the first point i contacted Apple support several times. The official answer in the end was to use a screensaver or enable display sleep. Also that this is normal with IPS displays (but i do not have this problem with our Eizo, LG, Quato displays with IPS panel). It's not that big issue, but since i do like to work with dark settings in Adobe applications as well as the terminal for example, the display often looks like a burnt in screen from the 80s / 90s.

The second one is my biggest problem with the Retina display on the MacBooks: my biggest hobby is photography (and at work image retouching for prepress stuff). I would say i'm a hardcore Lightroom user, and like to tweak and play with my RAW images. In the beginning i thought the Retina display will be great for that. Not to use my workstation anymore. My problem is, that the contrast and black levels are that high, that dark areas with lot's of grey in it are just dull black. And they are really black. Good displays show you the difference between 98, 99, and 99,5%. I never edit images on the Retina display for my Flickr, but just do stuff like sorting images out, image rotating and 'easy' things like that. But damn: that notebook is too expensive for these tasks!

Beside the display the Retina models are the best notebooks you can get: speed, weight and durability are just perfect.

If i would buy again a notebook with a good panel, i would choose a Lenovo W series one, but that are huge bastards. I do not know if the new 540 models are as good as the older ones, the 530 series.

bhtooefr · 27 Jun 2014, 16:12

http://strdoc.com/doc/how-know-make-you ... sung-or-lg

Check that. The LG ones are the ones that are bad about burn-in. And, I wouldn't say that it's normal for IPS, but rather that IPS is more prone to it. A modern IPS panel that does it is still a defective panel.

matt3o · 27 Jun 2014, 16:50

good to know that even the Retina are shitty

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 17:02

Not mine!

bhtooefr · 27 Jun 2014, 17:06

Not my replacement one.

(My first one was LG, and had a defective chassis too. They swapped the whole machine, and the replacement had a Samsung panel.)

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 17:08

That's the underlying thing with Apple. You just might get lucky. Everyone else and it's guaranteed shit, starting with the software…

matt3o · 27 Jun 2014, 17:12

the famous panel lottery... I hate it.

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 17:14

Yup. But at least you can tell you have a lemon on first sight. The old hard drive lottery days were much worse. I had so many 8gb disks die in the first year and a half, but never in the first month…

Madhias · 27 Jun 2014, 17:15

I checked about 6 months ago which panel mine and the 2 other Retina models we have at work have, and all are LG panels. I never gave the notebook to our service partner because i need it on a daily basis. Next holiday will be the time to make use of the extended warranty! But the problem is, you can't just say: I want a Samsung panel. Our support partner just gets the spare parts, and that could be everything.

A lot of people changed their display for about 3-4 times, until they got the "right" display. Grr. That piece of a notebook is expensive, and that is really annoying.

Muirium wrote: ↑Not mine!

Then you're lucky, since it was one of the biggest support issues in the Apple support community 2012 and ongoing!

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 17:17

I use inverted colour mode so often (around 50% of the whole time) that I'd notice ghosting immediately. Apple lucked out, too!

Mine was manufactured and bought in November 2013, so I'm fashionably late to Retina.

Madhias · 27 Jun 2014, 17:20

Does CTRL+ALT+CMD+8 still work?

I remember inverting screens at the local electronic store and laughing when everybody thought the display is damaged

Muirium · 27 Jun 2014, 17:29

It's a long shortcut precisely so people don't trigger it by mistake!

Still there, but disabled by default since Lion or so. You have to check a box in the Keyboard config pane. I have it on Shift+F13 now as I use it so much (F13 is reduce brightness on my keyboards).

Daniel Beardsmore · 27 Jun 2014, 22:09

bhtooefr wrote: ↑http://strdoc.com/doc/how-know-make-you ... sung-or-lg

Check that. The LG ones are the ones that are bad about burn-in. And, I wouldn't say that it's normal for IPS, but rather that IPS is more prone to it. A modern IPS panel that does it is still a defective panel.

Yep, I have medium-older generation (8 ms G2G) S-IPS panels both at home (LG L2000CP) and work (HP LP2065) — the panel is the LG.Display LM201U05. These do suffer from the "burn-in" effect, though I don't notice it anywhere near as much now with the L2000CP as I did when the screen was new. (By mistake I wiped the usage counter on my screen at home >_< — currently it's at 6471, and it was over 3000 when I reset it, I think; it's getting on for five years old.)

Mine also have the off-angle black problem where very dark shades turn orange and purple off-angle. I just accept that there are trade-offs with screen technology. I can't replace the screens without being stuck with widescreen that both at home and at work is too wide for the space available and doesn't suit the way I work, so I'm crossing my fingers that I can get as much life out of all three screens as possible :S

The idea that I'd choose an Apple TN over an IPS display on another brand is a nonsensical suggestion. I've never been fortunate enough to use an IPS laptop, Apple or otherwise. With that said, I don't know that the colour saturation is anything to do with IPS; if anything, IPS seems a little under-saturated compared with TN panels. Right now, that MacBook Pro is the only laptop I've ever seen with decent colour.