Dell Adamo 13: Display Analysis

The LCD display of the Adamo is pretty sweet. It has a Gorilla Glass screen, which is an alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass that is used to protect screens on mobile devices. Gorilla Glass is also used on the Motorola Droid, the Dell Streak, and a device from Apple that nobody's ever heard of, the newly released iPhone 4. Basically, this means that even with such a thin display which may not offer the most protection for the screen, this chemically hardened glass covering will ensure that the screen sustains no scratches or damage of any kind.

Which is all pretty cool, but what about the quality of the panel itself? The first impression is that this thing gets BRIGHT. At maximum brightness, you're looking at a white level of 389 nits. That's just about on par with the Apple MacBook Pro line, which have some of the higher quality notebook displays we've tested recently.

Laptop LCD Quality - Contrast

Laptop LCD Quality - White

Laptop LCD Quality - Black

Laptop LCD Quality - Color Accuracy

Laptop LCD Quality - Color Gamut

However, the display falls off after that, with contrast ratio just about average and unspectacular color accuracy. And though the white level is pretty high, the black level is just as high, so at the upper brightness levels, the screen can appear washed out. Colour accuracy and colour gamuts are pretty mediocre but aren't terrible. Really though, the screen's brightness is it's trump card, and overall, the display looks pretty good, even with the reflective glass covering the display.

Dell Adamo 13: Awesome Industrial Design Dell Adamo 13: Standard CULV Performance
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  • afkrotch - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link

    Remember back in the day when the Longhorn Alpha came out? Then those same features showed up in OSX. Then Longhorn got canned and had to be rebuilt all over again. Why not a single word from Mac fans about how they stole Windows features? I'm sorry, but both Apple and MS will steal whatever from each other. Apple is probably the worst of the two. Everything they build is just someone else's work, shined up to be pretty.

    OSX is the preferred platform in the Art profession? Really? When? 1990s? The only ppl you see bothering with it is stupid college kids or just regular home consumers. Go out into the real professional world and tell me how many ppl still bother. Even all your big companies have long since dumped Apple.

    Unix underpinnings. What's the point even mentioning it, when they took all that was great about Unix and threw it out the window. I played with OSX a while ago. Ya, a toy for home. I can't possibly see it being used for any real production work. Right now, I'm a sys ad for our Solaris 10 workstation/servers, Linux google server, Trusted Solaris 8 server, and a couple Windows 2003 servers. Guess what our custom built software is now being created for? I'll give you a hint. It's created by Microsoft.
  • jkostans - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link

    I work for an engineering firm, and no one uses OSX. Linux for some engineering apps, and windows for everything else. This is the way 99% of the world works, get used to it. OSX is not superior to windows. If it was businesses would use it more.
  • mojohacker2010 - Saturday, July 10, 2010 - link

    "The Lenovo may be a nice machine but... (other than fanboy nonsense) Windows 7 definitely does play second fiddle to OSX in the majority of serious comparisons"

    LOL...please cite some sources or you sound just like a fanboy yourself. Rather you sound like a very defensive and angry fanboy. Almost all of the head-to-head comparison articles/tests I've seen show windows 7 beating OSX overwhelmingly...

    "Anyhow, one can just do a simple poll of satisfied, hassle free OSX users vs Windows (xp/vista/7). "

    Really? So you're gonna compare an ecosystem with billions of users vs. OSX, which no one uses, and use that as an argument? LOL
  • retrospooty - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link

    "More reliable? A cheap plasticky Lenovo? Puh-lease. Plus you run the archaic Windows OS on it"

    Uh.. Yes, Lenovo is the most reliable in the buz, and that included Apple. The X301 rocks. Its solid, lightweight and Has Win7, which is far better than OSX in my opinion.

    Also, the MAcbook air is its competition. THe X301 is a thin CULV notebook and has an internal DVD player. Yes, its FAR better than the MAcbook air, or regular 13 inch macbook, or dell.
  • chrnochime - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link

    Didn't really want to waste time reading when your name even includes osx. Guess the more patient commenters out there took your bait and wasted their time LOL
  • IvanAndreevich - Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - link

    I find it offensive when someone calls a high end Thinkpad "cheap and plasticky". If a Thinkpad and Macbook Pro knock heads I'm sure the Thinkpad would survive more often than not.
  • erple2 - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link

    The Envy's suck? Huh. I like mine just fine. It runs circles around any MBP that's available today. And runs quite a bit cooler at that. Granted, that's comparing the 15" MBP...

    The MBP doesn't get that good of battery life in Windows, btw. At least not significantly better than other C2D based laptops with NVidia processors...
  • adhan - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link

    I'm not trying to be too much of a fanboy here, but how about a MacBook with Windows running via Boot Camp.
  • sleepeeg3 - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link

    Both colossal ripoffs.
  • Wander7 - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link

    thanks for all the comments. I know about boot camp and also the crappier battery life running windows under it. I don't like the Envys because of the bad touchpad ( I have a dm3 now...). My main attraction to the MB Pro are the hardware aspects of the machine and the battery life.

    I found out Sony makes some nice laptops, but WAY overpriced tho.... I'll just keep waiting.

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