I know - I own a 5080 Kuro and appreciate dark, inky blacks. But not if they come at the expense of muted brightness (i.e., good black levels because of a high quality panel vs. good black levels as a result of a dim backlighting system).
On a related note, I went through 4 MBPs trying to find a panel without excessive bleeding, poor black levels, or dead/stuck pixels and was unsuccesful. The Apple panel lottery can be be very annoying.
Is your older machine running Leopard? Because if it is then that could be a gamma difference between Leopard(1.8) and Snow Leopard(2.2).
And I own a Samsung B8500 with great black levels, but still a rich, contrasty picture. I hope this report is isolated.
How did you go "through 4 MBPs" without incurring a restocking fee? Or did you exchange them as defective? Was that the new MBP that was so flawed?![]()
Ok so I went to the Apple store to exchange the laptop, they exchanged no problem but it has the same issue.
After comparing both computers side by side I have noticed that the new screen has a reddish hue to it (which I hate), it is not as bright and the colors are more dull. My 2.53Ghz MacBook Pro compared with my 27" iMac and the new i5 MacBook Pro, I find that the 2.53Ghz MacBook Pro's screen looks almost as good as the 27" iMac (in terms of brightness and color).
So I did not have a defective machine, I can honestly say that the panel they are using is somewhat inferior than the previous revision.
The fact that "half-brightness" on these new screens is dimmer than the old MBP's is a moot point if they're just as bright on the max settings. Notebookcheck's light-gauged readings correlate with the last revision, give or take 10 or so cdm^2.