Dell M6500: A Precision Strike on Bling
by Jarred Walton on March 9, 2010 3:00 AM ESTDell M6500 LCD Analysis: Beautiful but with Quirks
The LCD is the real wild card in this review. First, we need to make a note that there are several LCD options, and we're only looking at the anti-glare WUXGA panel with RGB LED backlighting. First impressions are extremely favorable: it's bright, with a good contrast ratio, and colors look vivid. Viewing angles are also among the best we've ever seen with a TN panel: you'll still get problems from above and below, but the usable angle is a bit wider than most laptops. The colors definitely look amazing, and there's no doubting Dell's claims of 100% Adobe RGB color gamut. (Note that you'll need to use an Adobe RGB color space to utilize the wider gamut; otherwise, the colors can look oversaturated.)
So the good news is that the LCD looks great, easily besting just about any laptop LCD I've used. The problem is that calibrating the LCD to display proper colors was… just… doesn't… work. I don't know what the problem is, but the LCD after calibration is still clearly off. Dell provides the ability to set the panel to NTSC, sRGB, or Adobe RGB color gamuts, but regardless of setting the calibrated results are off the charts. I tried ColorEyes Display Pro, Monaco Optix XR Pro, and LaCie Blue Eye Pro, all to no avail. I tried both a DTP-94 (it caused a BSOD in Vista and Win7) and an EyeOne Display 2 colorimeter. Nothing seemed to work right. At best, average Delta E is 6.5, even after calibration, with individual colors peaking at over 14.0.
There's definitely a cool (i.e. blue) tint at the default sRGB/aRGB settings, and regardless of setting I couldn't get the LCD to calibrate in a fashion that I would deem acceptable. I've had this problem only once before… on a Dell XPS M1730. In general, using the NVIDIA color control panel and turning down the blue about 20% gives a good result to my eye, but it's not possible to test that setting (any color profiling software overrides the NVIDIA control panel).
Update! You can see the above results for our original calibration attempts in gray. After posting the review, a helpful reader named Stephen gave us a pointer that allowed us to finally get a good result. (As an M6500 user/owner, Stephen noticed the same issues with the default settings.) He suggested we try a 1.8 gamma instead of the normal 2.2 gamma, and the change makes all the difference (see the added red line). If you don't know the difference between 2.2 and 1.8, here's a good explanation. The short summary is that Macs defaulted to a 1.8 gamma quite a while back while most other displays have stuck with 2.2. But that begs the question of why a Dell notebook running Windows appears to target a 1.8 gamma! Perhaps Dell wants people to make a Hackintosh out of the M6500? :-)
Regardless of the reason, using the NTSC profile (which appears to have no "tuning" of the LCD colors by Dell), and with the LCD brightness set to 40%/140nits, the color calibration results are polar opposites. We dropped from an average dE of 6.5 with peaks of 14+ to the best calibrated result we've seen from a laptop! How's that for a case of multiple personalities? The new result has an average dE of just 1.14, with only three of the tested 24 colors coming in above 2.0 and all of the colors coming in under 4.0. Wow! Thanks for the pointer, Stephen, but the real question is why Dell didn't address this in the first place?
We know from experience that Dell can provide exceptionally accurate colors if they choose—witness the uncalibrated results of the Dell U2711 for example. The problem is that more likely than not, the people involved with creating the color settings in the U2711 had nothing to do with the M6500 (or the M6400 before it). A BIOS/firmware update ought to be able to correct the problem, but we'd be surprised if Dell actually went that route. We've passed along our findings to Dell, so we'll have to see if a fix is forthcoming. Getting a good result at 1.8 gamma is nice, but when the standard for Windows is 2.2 it would be better to stick with the same settings that everyone else uses. In color managed applications, the final result will be great, but in non-managed applications you'll still get some wonky colors. That's too bad, considering everything else with the LCD is absolutely superb. It seems a waste to have a laptop with sRGB and Adobe RGB presets that appear to have no correlation with providing accurate colors. At the very least, the Adobe RGB profile (accessible from the Dell ControlPoint software) should be updated to give a result closer to the Adobe RGB setting in the U2711.
If you have appropriate calibration tools and software, I now feel comfortable saying that this is a great laptop for imagining/video professionals that depend on accurate colors, though desktop LCDs like the U2711 and 3008WFP are still better. Of course, that's only if you get the same LCD as our test M6500; we can't comment on the other panel options, and it's possible there will be a panel lottery resulting in differences between the "same" laptop configuration.
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FXi - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
The M17x sure could have used some touches to bring it more along the looks of the M6500. I have a M6400 and it's really a fantastic machine. It gets looks and questions wherever I take it.Why did the M17x lack a latch, USB3 and some of the other subtlety that the M6500 has in spades? It's not that the M17x is "bad", not at all. It just could have had a more subtle elegance with so little additional effort. And moreover, the M17x "could" have used the very same docking station as the M6500. Same chipset, same overall form factor. The grill bottom of the M17x could have taken a docking port without making it too weak.
Anyway I have a M6400 and it's really a fantastic machine. Moreover I get about 2-2.5 hours on the battery which is wonderful for car appointments sitting in the lounge getting work done.
Great machine. Only sadness is the case is so packed they can't fit SLI Quadro's. But that doesn't keep it from being a Class A machine.
hko45 - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
I have an M6400. I like it's clean, serious look. Not like the over-the-top "fashion" toys I've seen from other laptop purveyors.As I said in an earlier post, the E-Port and E-Port Plus docking stations make Dell Precision & Latitude laptops my only choices for now. (Other docking stations that I know about do not offer multi DVI/DP options and require a USB connection, as opposed to the dedicated docking port on the Dells.
Although, I've heard rumors that NVidia is considering offering an external graphics card option (that I presume will use USB 3.0). If so, they'd be crazy not to include multiple monitor capabilities.
wicko - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
Would be nice to see a consumer version of this, I'd be completely interested if it weren't for the abnormal price range.geekforhire - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
Goofy question, but would your opinion change if this machine were $3000 rather than about $6000? Check my review above.Lothsahn - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
We use about 20 of these (M6400) where I work, and they are extremely fast, but their quality is absolutely horrible (despite what the article says). We've had nearly one problem in each laptop within the first year (some worse, some better).My laptop was completely replaced by Dell due to 10 separate RMA requests, likely resulting from a defective powerbrick that Dell could not diagnose (even with my suggestion that they replace the power brick).
Some of the problems we've seen:
1) fan failures (requiring replacement of the ENTIRE graphics card daughterboard, not just the fan, because they're integrated together
2) battery failures
3) Motherboard failures
4) Power supply failures
5) Display issues-- the contrast is EXTREMELY poor on the displays ( http://www.google.com/search?q=M6400+display+color">http://www.google.com/search?q=M6400+display+color )
6) Numerous driver issues causing BSOD's in WinXP-64.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
Hopefully Dell provided good service at least in terms of getting things replaced? I did tech support for a giant corporation at one point, we had hundreds of Dell PCs and laptops, and they would send someone out within 24 hours to fix problems.Obviously, I can't comment on long-term stability when I only have a unit for a month, but I didn't have any stability problems at all. The PSU is now updated relative to the M6400, and for sure the LCD doesn't have "extremely poor contrast"... I tested this one, and it rates 670:1, which is great.
As for the color tint, that's partly a problem from too bright a backlight (run at ~40% and you'll be a lot closer to 6500K; 100% is likely in the 9000K+ range). For calibration, you do need hardware and software, but with a 1.8 gamma setting (see above and updated text in article) that issue is now addressed.
Lothsahn - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
Dell provided excellent service. No complaints there. But I would be terrified if we didn't have a 3yr onsite warranty--these units are all out of a typical 1yr warranty now and given the current failure rates, I would expect most of them to be dead within the next year if we didn't have them repaired.I should clarify the LCD issue--it's not "contrast" in terms of brightness of white to black. The monitor is extremely bright and contrasty. However, certain colors have NO grey definition whatsoever. There are details in this post:
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19243123/195...">http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19243123/195...
If you look at the yellow pushpin on the M6400 monitor, ALL greys in the yellow pushpin are nonexistent--the pushpin is one solid color. For graphics editing, that is clearly unacceptable. Thankfully, we don't graphics edit, but some webpages are still more difficult to see because of this problem.
People reporting this error have calibrated their displays, but that does not resolve the issue. It's more than a software or a calibration issue.
I have adjusted gamma and brightness settings in the Nvidia driver (from the default settings), which has been good enough for web browsing, although the problem remains. However, when you pay 4-5k for a laptop, you shouldn't have these sorts of problems.
mino - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
Just give me DUAL NIC for VMware worstation dual-node operation and I be in heaven.The node2 being something in x200 tablet class ...
Lazlo Panaflex - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
POS screen with unfixable blue tint, no DVI (vga? LOL!) and lack of other ports, expensive price tag and bland asthetics...sorry, but this is epic fail for Dell.Jarred, methinks you were a bit too kind in your overall assessment of this lemon.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
See above: LCD issue is "fixed" now and I updated the article. Docking station provides two extra DVI ports I believe, but it's still irritating. Still, that's not "epic fail" by any but the most limited perspective.