09-03-2014, 05:17 AM
sekker wrote:
The screen on the 13" MBA is excellent, IMHO. My son has one, and I have a MBPR. I have no trouble using the MBA's screen (except for the smaller font!), and I consider myself a monitor snob.
Isn't the MacBook Air a TN panel versus an IPS display on the retina. If you can't see the difference, I would be shocked.
From the MacWorld UK MacBook Air 2014 review:
"We used a Datacolor Spyder4Elite display calibrator to test and measured just 63 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. That’s a particularly disappointing result, which was borne out subjectively by off-key screens colours visible to the eye. The wider Adobe RGB gamut was measured with only 48 percent coverage.
We found that viewing angles for this twisted-nematic (TN) glossy panel were limited, with marked colour inversion effects evident as we tried to view the screen from the sides and above/below.
Contrast ratio was measured using the Datacolor calibrator, to gain an idea of the display’s contrast quality. We recorded at the display’s highest peak output of 308 cd/m2 and discoverd contrast ratio was 600:1, rising to 680:1 at its nominal 75 percent brightness setting (corresponding to 143 cd/m2).
Delta E from 48 spot tones averaged a poor 8.39, with the highest deviation of 13.75 coming from the test’s ‘3E’ swatch (lilac tone).
This is all quite disappointing, but while a Retina display for the MacBook Air would be nice, it's probably not essential for the majority of users. Anyone who would benefit from the extra pixels can upgrade to the MacBook Pro with Retina display but beware that there will be a sacrifice in battery life. Read our Retina MacBook Pro reviews here. "
While some of that info would only be interesting to the more discerning users, I'm shocked someone wouldn't at least notice the awful color shift on the TN panels on the Air. It really isn't a very good display.