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Monday, June 02, 2008

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GBM Shortcut: Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC LED and DLV Head To Head

- Rob Bushway

I mentioned last week that Dell was sending me a replacement Latitude XT Tablet PC due to some intermittent problems I was experiencing with the digitizer. I asked them to send me the LED version instead of the DLV that I originally ordered. I'm glad I did.

It is remarkable how much lighter and thinner the LED version is over the DLV. To be honest, I cannot tell any difference in screen brightness, clarity, viewing angles, and outdoors viewability. I know the DLV is supposed to help with outdoor viewability and fluorescent lighting, but the testing I've done does not show any significance gain with DLV, even though the DLV has 400 nits and the LED has 220 nits. All tests were done with full brightness. I also conducted some battery tests between the two units using the same power scheme ( Dell Recommended ). After an hour, each showed 75% battery remaining. So, I'm not seeing any battery improvement between the two screen types.

My recommendation: get the LED version. It feels so much better in the hands, and offers a much better tablet experience in my opinion.

Watch the video review, and view the comparison pictures below.

Watch the embedded version below
Download the wmv version here ( 34 mb, 4:28 )
Download the m4v version here

Dell Latitude XT (DLV) right side	Dell Latitude XT (LED) right side
Two Dell Latitude XT's side by side. LED in the foreground	Two Dell Latitude XT's, screens closed. LED version in the foreground
Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right	Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right
Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right	Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right
Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right	Dell Latitude XT screen comparison. DLV on the left, LED on the right
Dell Latitude XT screen comparison, outdoors. DLV on the left, LED on the right	Dell Latitude XT screen comparison, outdoors. DLV on the left, LED on the right
Dell Latitude XT screen comparison, outdoors, portrait mode. DLV	Dell Latitude XT screen comparison, outdoors, portrait mode. LED
Dell Latitude XT DLV version - 4 lbs 4 oz	Dell Latitude XT LED version: 3 lbs 11 oz

Technorati Tags: Dell,Latitude XT,Tablet PC,LED,DLV

GBM Shortcut | Hardware | Dell | Tablet PC

6/2/2008 2:11 PM MST

GBM Shortcut: Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC LED and DLV Head To Head Comments [10] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Monday, June 02, 2008 3:51:31 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Whimper - I was feeling good about using my DLV in the sunshine today. Thanks for "throwing light on this" Rob!

gottasettle

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 7:11:46 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

someone needs to write an article and get it on the front page of every blog out there.

"How to attenuate your volume."

person

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 10:46:17 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Full brightness on both seems like perhaps the wrong way to compare these objectively. As I understand it, the DLV is a reflective screen, so you could actually turn the screen's light _off_ when it was outdoors and still see it just fine. Then the trade-off would include the battery savings for turning the backlight off, which should work out to be quite significant. I believe the power saving associated with _disabling_the_backlight_ is the basic advantage of the DLV, and the way it is intended to be used.

Scott L.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 11:37:51 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

So it looks like the LED screen does not have the ambient light sensor. I don't know how much of a big deal that is, but seems that is part of the difference.

Brian

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 12:24:08 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Dell mentioned nowhere that the DLV screen is a transreflective screen and if you look at the pictures which are made outdoors then you will see that it looks like both are transmissive displays. It would be also stupid to add a bright backlight to a transreflective display which does not need such a bright backlight. So both are the same displays with different backlights. That's all.

Frank

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 1:25:00 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Dear GBM team: I just tried to post a comment that had a link in it, as I hadn't noticed the “HTML not allowed” stipulation – sorry! I got a message something like “your post is under review for possible violation of site guidelines please do not resubmit”. Could I put it up again as plain text?

gottasettle

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 1:27:59 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

"It is remarkable how much lighter and thinner the LED version is over the DLV. To be honest, I cannot tell any difference in screen brightness, clarity, viewing angles, and outdoors viewability."

Add to this much more rugged LED technology, better uniformity and longer bulb life. Plus better brightness throughout the life of the bulb.

All this makes this option a no-brainer for me.

LEDs are relatively new still and are improving in brightness and color reproduction at a fast pace.

Dognip

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2:29:08 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Yes Dognip, LEDs seem to be the SSDs of backlight technology; I was surprised and disappointed when the XT outdoor screen format was announced, but got it because outdoor viewability is really important to me in a (semi-)mobile device. A post on the tabletpcreview forum from 11 March in the “Dell Latitude xt LED or CCFL screen” thread (by “ITS”) makes the same observation as Rob, and puts text to the thoughts I dare not write, because I don’t want them to be true, viz: “Maybe DELL is just selling off CCFL inventory? … aren't LED screens more expensive than CCFL? Is it a marketing gimmick to price the CCFL more than the LED version?”

Brian – true about the light sensor, but I don’t think I personally would miss it, and would give it up in a instant for a thinner lighter machine.

(+Just to confirm Frank’s clarification re the actual screen type – it’s definitely not reflective/transflective!)

gottasettle

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 3:19:14 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I can see why the LED is preferred, they look the same brightness outdoors, so much for the DLV.

Jake

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 4:29:26 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

LED is so the way to go from those screen shots. Saw Robs comparison posted on Engadget so came to take a look at the whole shabang.

Donald

Comments are closed.