I purchased a Dell XPS15 9570 some months ago now, primarily because I wanted a laptop that could, if required, replace my desktop in terms of performance. I chose the Dell XPS15 because it had the newly released Intel Core i9 CPU with 6 cores, 32GB RAM, 1TB of SSD Storage and an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti Graphics Card that would help with 4K video editing. The final deciding feature was the 15 inch 4K display. In short, it is a total powerhouse for the road.
Having loaded all of my apps and testing things such as 4K video editing, I was absolutely happy with the XPS15’s performance, and that 4K display was simply gorgeous. Some months later in January 2019, I go on my annual family holiday to Tasmania and I took my Dell with me so that I could offload images from my SD cards and check my images at the end of each day.
The first day, I happened to use a new Polarising filter that I bought prior to the holiday, and was somewhat horrified when I looked at my images in Capture One. Greens and blues were so over saturated and of course the effects of the polarising filter on skies was not great as it looked like the sky was a dark blue to light blue vignette. I figured OK, big mistake never use it again.
The next day I shot without it for most of the day and could not wait to see the results that evening. It was at this point my elation turned to concern. Even the images without the polarising filter were so over saturated to the point where I felt I needed to reduce saturation in Capture One, but having never needed to do that on my desktop, I knew something was wrong.
Fast forward a month, I start to compare the Dell XPS15’s screen to the HP Z27s display on my desktop setup and they were worlds apart. I always thought the colour on the HP display was excellent, colours looked natural and realistic. The Dell in comparison was significantly brighter, and so much more saturated. After much searching online to see if it could be rectified, it became increasingly clear that many people switched to the Dell XPS15 from MacBooks and did so primarily for the 4K screen. Many of them however, like me, were disappointed with the colour for photo use. Some, recommended the use of screen calibration systems from the likes of Datacolor and X-rite.
