ThinkPad W700 tops indie test of laptop color quality

Unless you're a digital artist or professional photographer, you probably don't give color accuracy much consideration. But if you've ever wondered why little Johnny looks a bit green when you're flipping through digital photos on your laptop, maybe you should. While the color accuracy of your LCD remains a topic largely of interest to the pros, digital photo expert Rob Galbraith found that even inexpensive laptops can have great color... and some of the sacred cows of the business may not be as sophisticated as you'd think.

Galbraith took four laptops -- two ThinkPads, including the new ultra-pricey W700, which includes an integrated color calibration system, a recent 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro, and a cheap Dell Insipiron Mini 9 -- and used a range of professional-grade color sampling and correction tools to measure how accurately colors were being displayed on the laptop screen. Galbraith also measured how well colors held up when the viewer wasn't front and center before the laptop, looking head-on at the display.

The results: As expected, the ThinkPad W700, with the integrated color management system, was the winner on both counts. But a surprise was in store regarding the placement of the Apple MacBook in Galbraith's tests: Dead last, finishing up behind even the Dell netbook, which by all expectations shouldn't even come close in this kind of testing.

That's shocking, especially considering Apple's reputation in the digital art and design community, an industry where it enjoys a virtual monopoly.

The picture was a little different if looking at viewing angle as a prime consideration: The two ThinkPads swapped places, and the MacBook earned third in Galbraith's testing.

As a side note, Galbraith notes that even the best laptop screens won't hold a candle to a good external monitor, so anyone making serious design decisions should hook up an external display whenever color representation is important. All other laptop users -- unless you have a W700, the only machine Galbraith rated as "above acceptable" -- should expect color accuracy to be iffy at best and plan accordingly.