Laptops Is MacBook screen really bad?

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I checked out a MacBook at the Apple store at Ansal Plaza, New Delhi. I was surprised to see that the quality of the screen was not up to the mark. It was blurred, and the black fonts had a grey tinge to them. I also checked out the MacBook Pro, The MacBook Air, The iMac and the Mac Mini. But I found that it was not an OS problem as the others were fine. The screen resolution/clarity of the MacBook seemed to be lower than my 26K Compaq Presario laptop, despite an declared higher resolution on paper. Also, I found the same thing on the MacBook black -- same slightly blurred icons/fonts.

Do you suppose it is a one-off incident, or is it all MacBooks have the same issue?
 
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But both the MacBook and the MacBook black (BlackBook) had the same screen issues. My laptop has 1280 x 800 rez, but looks so much better than what I saw. I'm kinda disillusioned as I was lusting after the MacBook.

PS: I loved the MacBook Air. It's not very practical, but it's something u'd buy with ur heart, not with ur head :)
 

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@^^ thanks :) i am quite surprised by what I've seen. Two Macbook models with the same slightly blurred screen. That spells trouble, especially since the other models (iMac, Mac Mini et all) are fine.
 
superczar

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I have played arnd with a bunch of Macbooks including the air

except for the base macbook, the rest come with pretty decent displays

The macbook pro screen is nothing extraordinary, but they typically do not have light bleed issues that affect most budget Inspirons and even Latitudes

The air though has one of the best screens I have seen, equal if not better than the LED backlit XPS 1330

that was a number of colors issue. 16.2 million was claimed but was by software dithering i believe.
Click to expand...

as for the whole color depth controversy, pretty much every laptop on the market uses TN panels with 6 bit color depth and would thus have the same color depth as a macbook ...

The screen resolution/clarity of the MacBook seemed to be lower than my 26K Compaq Presario laptop, despite an declared higher resolution on paper.
Click to expand...

one possible reason i can think of is that some joker may have set the res. at lower than the native resolution ...needless to say, that would pretty much screw up the disp. on any LCD

That wouldnt be very surprising either because more than 75% the people in my office set their 17"/19" LCDs to 1024X768 resulting in a blurred display...theye however prefer the larger text size over the loss in clarity and crispness (which it seems most people most arent able to percieve, and the some who do still feel the advantages of bigger text size more than offsets the supposedly minor drop in clarity)
 
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Party Monger

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^+1 the screen resolution must be the thing..
If its a 14inch display, at higher res the text is quite small and to general masses, big fonts is clarity...haha..
 
YoGi-Sama

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I'm not sure if it's really that bad, or it's universal problem with MacBook. Everytime I checked Macbook at imagine store (even at croma when they had it on display in their early days), I never came across issues you've mentioned.

Besides, I have noticed this many times.. even with windows laptops, that resolution is set to different than native display in many showrooms. Someone gotta teach those numbnuts working there about this. Most common is setting 4:3 display resolution on widescreen laptops, making it look stretched and hideous.
 
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Anish

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Yep, I haven't had this issue with any of the Macbook I've checked out. Check the resolution if you seem to visit the store again and also turn up the birghtness of the screen. The Imagine store where went had their displays turned really dull (no clue why!) so that can be a turn off as well.
 
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Well, hope it is a bad rez setting issue. But I guess Anish used the perfect word here "dull" -- that exactly defined the screens I saw. Yes, I agree with Superczar that the MacBook Pro screens are not extraordinary, but better than the MacBook. And they were all slightly sluggish (and I'm not surprised -- have read abt their sluggishness quite often in CNET Reviews). But the font's were regular, not big, quite small actually; so I doubt if it was a rez setting issue. The screen was quite bright, though lacked in contrast. but "dull".

+1 to Anish & Superczar
 
vishalrao

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superczar said:
That wouldnt be very surprising either because more than 75% the people in my office set their 17"/19" LCDs to 1024X768 resulting in a blurred display...theye however prefer the larger text size over the loss in clarity and crispness (which it seems most people most arent able to percieve, and the some who do still feel the advantages of bigger text size more than offsets the supposedly minor drop in clarity)
Click to expand...

a workaround is to keep the native resolution and increase the DPI setting and font/icon sizes in the OS, thats what i do, at least on windows at home, for my mom to be able to read clearly :)
 
Dinesh_Malhotra

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vishalrao said:
a workaround is to keep the native resolution and increase the DPI setting and font/icon sizes in the OS, thats what i do, at least on windows at home, for my mom to be able to read clearly :)
Click to expand...

how to increase DPI @ vista ??
 
vishalrao

vishalrao

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i dont have vista in front of me at the moment, you can look around in control panel for display preferences, i believe you can increase the DPI and also font/icon sizes. i have done it for my 12 inch HP tablet's 1280x800 screen on Home Premium :)
 
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