Dell Vostro 130 Review – the svelte business laptop

The Dell WLED screen on the Vostro is perfect for office work, offering modestly saturated images and clear, sharp text. It does fall down a little when trying to create a vibrant platform for viewing high definition video files, but this is clearly a decision from Dell to balance this product towards the business professional. We noticed no motion blur and viewing angles were perfectly acceptable unless sitting off to the sides or looking down from above. Overall the first impressions are positive.

We used Displaymate to test the monitor and we were quite happy with the overall image quality. Gamut range in GamutVision was below average and we recorded a slight blue tinge to grey screen which is not really that noticeable under real world conditions. This is slightly more pronounced at the edges of the screen which is something we are seeing more recently. The gamut is wide enough to deliver a realistic image, however the dull anti glare screen doesn't help to enhance the colour depth or overall contrast saturation. For text based purposes however it is great.

To test the screen today we are using a LaCie industrial measurement gun.

There is a slight shift when testing black definition and minor leaks are recorded from all corners of the panel. It does look bad in our technical data image, but under real world conditions its only slightly noticeable from the bottom of the panel. The shift was just above 15 percent in the bottom sector which is actually rather good for a laptop screen.

The minor leaks recorded on black definition testing are basically mirrored here with minor shift between 5%-20% across the width with slightly higher levels recorded at the edges. In real world terms however the results are actually good and whites tend to look quite clean although we did notice a little hue at the bottom of the screen.

Good overall results for a laptop screen and while a high definition media enthusiast might not be overly impressed, the business professional will not find a fault with the display. The anti glare coating works exceptionally well, even in high ambient light conditions.

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