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Macbook Pro 15" and 17" Matte Displays Unimpressive

1

1Life

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 7, 2007
88
0
Los Angeles, CA
I headed to my local MacMall today and went away very disappointed with the quality of the LED 15" and old 17" matte displays of the Macbook Pro. I would strongly recommend prospective buyers take a look at them in person before making a purchase.

Some thoughts:
- 15" LED display is noticeably brighter than the 17"
- Yellow tint is evident in 15" LED display when not viewing the screen straight on
- No backlight bleeding or yellow tint on the bottom 1/3 of screen in the 15" LED model I saw

*** Text display and sharpness is average at best. I opened up various web pages in three models that were lined up next to each other and the quality was as follows IMHO:
Macbook glossy > Macbook Pro 15" LED matte > Macbook Pro 17" matte

There's no way I can justify throwing down nearly $2000 for a laptop with a display that my crappy Inspiron 5100 beats hands down. If the laptop was in the $1500 range I might have be able to convince myself to pull the trigger.

I was prepared to consider purchasing the 17" HD as an alternative but when I saw how big it was in person I squelched the idea.

I'm so disappointed. I've been waiting awhile to make the switch and I guess I will have to wait even longer. :( If anyone wants a $30 promo code you can PM me. The code will expire June 29.
 
No offense to you but I think your judgement is abit off, unless I am wrong or biased, but I have never seen a PC laptop with a better screen than my MBP. They are all yellowish from any angle and crappy.

Then again, maybe I haven't seen enough.
 
Me too, have never seen any laptop that doesn't look off-colour when viewed from the side....

Seriously, why would anyone want to view it any other way other than from the front????
 
I too noticed the not-so-nice viewing angle on the 15". However, the 17" HD screen was too beautiful for me to pass up.
 
I've got a solution... get a glossy MBP if you don't like the matte. Or maybe you don't like glossy, I don't know, but if you liked the MB display over the MBP display, you should get a glossy MBP.
 
iToaster said:
I've got a solution... get a glossy MBP if you don't like the matte. Or maybe you don't like glossy, I don't know, but if you liked the MB display over the MBP display, you should get a glossy MBP.
Click to expand...

LOL...we think alike. I stayed at MacMall for an hour pondering if I could live with the reflective glossy screen. The Macbook display was beautiful but the reflections that I saw annoyed the hell out of me.

With regards to some of the earlier comments:

- I've worked in IT for about 8 years and have seen a large number of Dells, Toshibas, and Thinkpads notebooks. I have never noticed this yellow tint issue at various viewing angles. My Inspiron 5100 definitely doesn't have this issue. I could definitely be wrong but I think my Inspiron screen is significantly superior to the 15" and 17" Macbook Pro screens. I think the Macbook glossy screen has it beat though.

- I have Windows XP on my Inspiron and I've probably had 5-10 blue screens of death in 4 years of heavy usage. However, I am a skilled IT professional and deal with people everyday who have constant issues with WinCrap. My brother has a Powerbook and he has had a lot more software and hardware issues than I ever had with my Dell.

- I still might consider getting the 17" HD but the portability factor is a big thing for me.

So finally, people might ask why don't I just buy another Dell or Sony. The simple reason is that Apple's products are superior in concept, design, and functionality. You would have to be stupid not to admit that. At $1500, I probably would have rolled the dice and got a 15" against my better judgment. I'll just wait it out a couple of months to see if anything might get upgraded and if not I'll bite the bullet and pony up.
 
1Life said:
LOL...we think alike. I stayed at MacMall for an hour pondering if I could live with the reflective glossy screen. The Macbook display was beautiful but the reflections that I saw annoyed the hell out of me.


- I have Windows XP on my Inspiron and I've probably had 5-10 blue screens of death in 4 years of heavy usage. However, I am a skilled IT professional and deal with people everyday who have constant issues with WinCrap. My brother has a Powerbook and he has had a lot more software and hardware issues than I ever had with my Dell.
Click to expand...


I would have to say maybe your brother got a defunct powerbook and you got one of the few dells that doesn't have issues. Out of 10 friends of mine who have had dells (very popular when I graduated for a college laptop it seems) 9 of them had multiple problems, slow downs, blue screens of death, hardware malfunctions, random internet disconnects and HORRIBLE customer service the whole time.

I however had a TiPowerbook and had 1 problem. One of the hinges snapped, I called, got a box from apple to send it in with and got it back LITERALLY a day later with not only a new hinge but also a whole new enclosure because my dad's watch scraped the paint off part of it before i had gotten it.

Almost none of the people with dells ended up being able to keep them more then 3 years (tops) and teh last year was always the most horrible.

My Tibook was however 5 years old when i sold it in still perfectly good working condition.

You should be happy you were one of the few that had a dell that didn't crap out on them... although I don't know what is wrong with your bro's powerbook, very very few problems with them out of any of the people I knew.

Btw... apparently the apple store is one of the worst places to look at the glossy screens it seems. They really aren't that reflective in a normal room environment. I used my friends for a few days while we were working on a project together (and while I got the matte screen ... before the leds were out because of the color matching for print work) I found it a lot less reflective, if at all then I thought it would have been in the beginning. I also use my friends regular macbook with little or no issues either. I think if you actually had it at home or in a non-super bright rather shiny (lots of apples and their decore seems to make for a very very reflective environment) area you'd want to pull the trigger and come over to the happy side of things.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
 
1Life said:
- I've worked in IT for about 8 years
Click to expand...

Why do I need to know that? Does that somehow make you superior to the rest of us..?

Your current laptop screen isn't LED backlit. Very few on the market are LED backlit. I work in retail selling TV's, laptops etc, and I was greatly disappointed with some of the Sony laptops that offer LED backlit. I felt like I could see all the pixels individually - they did not blend well at all.

Apple's backlit LCD's are perfect. Looking straight on (which is how you are meant to look at a screen by the way...) not one slight problem.

Nothing annoys me more than people who make a fuss about something that is only there when they use their appliance wrongly. e
- Viewing a laptop from the side makes the screen look yellow! Don't bloody look at it from the side then!
- My TV makes funny noises when I put my hand on it! Don't put your hand on the TV then! (I've heard that from a customer before...)

The screen problem is only a problem if you make it one.

Care.
 
you people getting on his back don't seem to know that apple don't make their own screens lcd panels.

lcd problems are widespread issue with the new mbp, running around saying things like 'apple screens are better than sony screens 'coz you can see pixels blah blah' are redundant - apple and sony both source their lcd panels from other companies, as they do pretty much every piece of hardware in their computers apart from the actual casing/keyboard/motherboard design etc.
 
Kilamite said:
Why do I need to know that? Does that somehow
Nothing annoys me more than people who make a fuss about something that is only there when they use their appliance wrongly. e
- Viewing a laptop from the side makes the screen look yellow! Don't bloody look at it from the side then!
- My TV makes funny noises when I put my hand on it! Don't put your hand on the TV then! (I've heard that from a customer before...)

The screen problem is only a problem if you make it one.

Care.
Click to expand...
that's funny. good points.
 
you people getting on his back don't seem to know that apple don't make their own screens lcd panels.

lcd problems are a known and widespread issue with the new mbp, running around saying things like 'apple screens are better than sony screens 'coz you can see pixels blah blah' is redundant - apple and sony both source their lcd panels from other companies, as they do pretty much every piece of hardware in their computers apart from the actual casing/keyboard/motherboard design etc.
 
I don't know. Yesterday I went to the local store to see the new LED displays.
I have a 15" of the previous generation with a defective screen (a much brighter spot, very annoying when watching movies), so I thought that I might ask for a replacement with one of the new models
The one I saw was quite yellowish in the lower third, and the vertical view angle was possibly worse than mine (crappy). Quite disappointing.

PS Dells may be even crappier, but the screen of my Inspiron9300 was FAAAAAAAAAAAAAR better than the one of my MBP. Until it died. :(
 
ktbubster said:
...HORRIBLE customer service the whole time.
Click to expand...

Now...since we are all throwing titles around...(jking)...i worked a stint in IT and the company had tons of dell laptops...well, i'd have to say the customer service is amazing...we had one lappy with like 30 days left on warranty (i want to say 4 year...but probably only 3) and a tech was at the office the next day to fix it...he couldnt and a less than a week later we had a brand new dell...amazing...

On some other lappys we had some mobo problems and the such...and again, service agent came the following day and fixed 'em...i'd say dells customer service is superior to any other i've seen...

now this was like 2 years ago, so maybe they are worse...

And yes, we had to fix our Dell lappys, i'm not talking about the quality of the Dells computers...i'm talking about the quality of the customer service/repair techs, and it's great!
 
NtotheIzoo said:
Now...since we are all throwing titles around...(jking)...i worked a stint in IT and the company had tons of dell laptops...well, i'd have to say the customer service is amazing...we had one lappy with like 30 days left on warranty (i want to say 4 year...but probably only 3) and a tech was at the office the next day to fix it...he couldnt and a less than a week later we had a brand new dell...amazing...

On some other lappys we had some mobo problems and the such...and again, service agent came the following day and fixed 'em...i'd say dells customer service is superior to any other i've seen...

now this was like 2 years ago, so maybe they are worse...

And yes, we had to fix our Dell lappys, i'm not talking about the quality of the Dells computers...i'm talking about the quality of the customer service/repair techs, and it's great!
Click to expand...

Corporate/Enterprise level support is obviously better. Apple is just a small fry you know...
 
chex said:
you people getting on his back don't seem to know that apple don't make their own screens lcd panels.

lcd problems are a known and widespread issue with the new mbp, running around saying things like 'apple screens are better than sony screens 'coz you can see pixels blah blah' is redundant - apple and sony both source their lcd panels from other companies, as they do pretty much every piece of hardware in their computers apart from the actual casing/keyboard/motherboard design etc.
Click to expand...

Yup - but Apple calibrate the screen don't they?

And Sony make their own screens AFAIK - since they were boasting about their X-Black screens being the best on the market.
 
Considering I've had two bad LED-backlit displays, I can't say I'm all that impressed either. However, I can't for the life of me understand how some people think the panels in an ordinary PC laptop are any better. Just looking around my office, it's easy to find screens with similar-to-worse problems than those being described here.

IMHO, it's an industry-wide problem.
 
Kilamite said:
Why do I need to know that? Does that somehow make you superior to the rest of us..?

Your current laptop screen isn't LED backlit. Very few on the market are LED backlit. I work in retail selling TV's, laptops etc, and I was greatly disappointed with some of the Sony laptops that offer LED backlit. I felt like I could see all the pixels individually - they did not blend well at all.

Apple's backlit LCD's are perfect. Looking straight on (which is how you are meant to look at a screen by the way...) not one slight problem.

Nothing annoys me more than people who make a fuss about something that is only there when they use their appliance wrongly. e
- Viewing a laptop from the side makes the screen look yellow! Don't bloody look at it from the side then!
- My TV makes funny noises when I put my hand on it! Don't put your hand on the TV then! (I've heard that from a customer before...)

The screen problem is only a problem if you make it one.

Care.
Click to expand...

Take it easy buddy. I wasn't trying to imply superiority. I only stated that to give some context to my statement that I had seen a large number of laptop displays through out my life.

I saw a Sony VAIO (glossy) at the Macmall (in the same area as the Macs) and thought it was superior to the 15" LED light. However, I disliked the MacBook Pro 15" display for the very reason you disliked the Sony. I noticed that the text and icons on various web pages seemed to be fuzzier than the Macbook and Sony displays. I thought that the Macbook & Sony displays were pixelated really close up but looked sharp and crisp at a normal viewing distance.

There are definitely situations where I might be multitasking where I wouldn't be able to view the screen head-on. So it could be an annoyance in certain situations. And I really don't understand your comment about using the appliance "wrongly". I guess by that logic, that would mean if I had a cell phone that had an annoying "buzz" while leaning back in my chair (because I'm guessing most people use their cell phones in an upright position) that I should just accept it. If I was selling a product, you're definitely in the demographic I would be going after.
 
Kilamite said:
Yup - but Apple calibrate the screen don't they?

And Sony make their own screens AFAIK - since they were boasting about their X-Black screens being the best on the market.
Click to expand...

X Black is a coating, not an LCD panel, but you're right, they do make their own panels but in partnership with Samsung AFAIK - but then Sony is around 20 times bigger than Apple, and you can replace 'Sony' with 'Dell' in my post - the specific manufacturer is unimportant.
 
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