Benchmarks: Display
Some of the biggest advancements in modern laptops revolve around the capabilities of the display panel. To provide a more meaningful overview of panel characteristics, we're deploying Datacolor's Spyder 4 Elite professional monitor analyser to return a quantitative assessment of display quality.
We start by verifying Dell's own claims. The IGZO IPS panel is indeed a rare breed in that it manages 100 per cent of the Adobe RGB space. An impressive feat for any display, let alone one built into a laptop, and for creative types there's a bundled PremierColor software utility that lets you switch between colour space at the click of a button.
Being able to display a wide gamut of colours is helpful, yet the colours themselves still need to deliver in terms of accuracy. In the above chart, the Delta-E figure corresponds to how close the displayed colours match up with real life.
A lower Delta-E is better, meaning closer reproduction, and any figure below 2 is considered good. Dell's 4K XPS 15 once again delivers excellent results.
At its maximum setting, XPS 15 can deliver up to 330 nit brightness, which is more than sufficient for any indoor usage scenario, and we like the fact that brightness can be lowered to less than 20 nits for extending battery life or nighttime viewing. A black level of 0.46 (lower is better) is also decent, resulting in good contrast, and when you factor in the resolution and the wide viewing angles, it's hard not to come away impressed.
We suspect Dell's standard 1080p would be sufficient for most users, yet if you do feel the need to splurge, the 4K option makes for a stellar upgrade.