Dell Studio 17: When Gaming Isn't Enough

Dell Studio 17: A Halfway Decent Screen

This might be a good time to note that Dell offers three different screen types for the Studio 17, and that the one we're reviewing is the low man on the totem pole. You can upgrade to a touchscreen or a 1080p "B+GR" LED backlit screen.

I've had a chance to review standard notebooks with built-in touchscreens before and I've been utterly unimpressed each time. The form factor doesn't seem to lend itself to any kind of useful touch-based interaction, and so the touchscreen that puts a $400 premium on the Best Buy unit available is probably not worth it. Those of you itching for a 1080p screen, however, will probably do well to go with the Dell "B+GR" upgrade.

One major drag in the industry is the fact that you pretty much have to buy a 17" notebook to get a screen with a higher resolution than 1360x768 for a reasonable price. That low resolution wasn't even the result of customer feedback, it was just foisted on us because it was cheaper and easier to produce 768p screens than the older 1280x800 ones. In the process, they made the screens that much less useful for doing media work, where vertical real estate can often be even more important than horizontal (timelines don't exactly run vertically).

Oh yeah, we were reviewing the screen on the Studio 17.

So the "halfway decent" part of the display is that it's reasonbly bright and isn't saddled with a low 768p resolution, but then most 17.3" LCDs are at least 900p. The color accuracy is about par for the course, and color gamut is okay as well. The contrast and black ratio are, as is so often the case, where the LCD falls flat. 200:1 contrast ratios aren't even remotely acceptable on high-end laptops, though with a price south of $1000 we can't complain too much here. The 1080p upgrade should be quite a bit better, and if that's what you're after we certainly recommend spending the $150 to move to the B+RG panel. Note that there's a $25 upgrade 1080p panel available as well, but we suspect contrast will take a dive there just like the 900p default display.