Dell XPS 13 screen resolution question

Hi, folks. I'm going to be purchasing a Dell XPS 13 laptop. I don't care about the touchscreen but am trying to decide whether to get the 3200 x 1800 or 1920 x 1080 screen version. Does anyone have thoughts as to whether the extra resolution is worth it for light photo editing? Also, has the higher screen resolution caused problems with super small text in certain applications?

I appreciate any insights!

Cheers,
Greg Basco

3200x1800 on a 13" screen would be essentially what is known as a retina display. So unless software was specifically written for it, everything would look really tiny. You will have to do some investigation. In the Mac world, most software has been written to be aware of this small pixel pitch and the Mac platform itself gives you options for on screen size of things. You will have to see if these Windows based systems and the programs you use have such options. If not, everything will be really tiny, like icons and tools in programs.

Thanks, EJ. That's what I suspected. I might just go for the full HD display (1920 x 1080) -- should be plenty for what I'm asking of my laptop and apparently gives better battery performance besides saving me some money.

Cheers,
Greg

Support for "retina" display resolutions in Windows is still hit and miss, for instance CS6 will have unusably small menus. CC has only just now issued an "experimental" fix to scale everything 2x. It seems bizarre that PS has trouble scaling things, but they've just spent 2 years blaming Microsoft for slow progress in addressing this. In the meantime people buy a new laptop and discover CS6 is unusable.

Thanks, Chris. That is what I've gathered too from reading online. I'm not sure the benefits of the higher-res screen will outweigh the hassle at the moment, even though I'm on CC.

Cheers,
Greg

I tried the XPS13 QHD+ touchscreen model in the local Microsoft store, thinking it would be a great light weight laptop for use on trips. The issues I found were many of those that are discussed on the Notebook Review forums.
1. The track pad is not very good for exacting work and has a tendency to jump around.
2. Visible light bleed on the screen.
3. Dell has implemented "Adaptive Backlight Control" on this model and there is no way to turn it off.  This basically means that there is no way to properly calibrate the screen.  This is the issue which sealed my not purchasing this otherwise acceptable laptop.  According to the Dell forums, the issue has been reported to Dell, but has not yet been resolved in a BIOS update. 
4.  Fan noise.  Recent BIOS update has reduced the speed of the fans to reduce noise, but this is at the expense of higher temperatures under load.

In the 70 pages of posts about this laptop, a number of posters said they have tried multiple copies of the laptop and had the same issues.  People who wanted to use it for Photoshop, like me, have returned it because of the current inability to calibrate the screen.

The above is why I plan on ordering a Gigabyte P34W V3 and a Dell Precision M3800 when I return from my trip that starts Monday.  I will be comparing the two and then keeping the best one.  Both are very high performance laptops with larger screens and still only weigh about 4lbs.

Liz

Thanks, Liz. That's definitely a dealbreaker. I just read up on this, and apparently there may be a fix in the works by Dell but who knows. I'm trying to keep my laptop to Air type weight so I'll have to keep looking

Cheers,
Greg

Greg,

If you are not in a hurry and are after a really, really light weight laptop, you might want to keep an eye out for the release of the Lenovo LaVie series.  Like the XPS13, they are going to be available in FHD and QHD screens.

If they turn out to be good, I will probably get one to use for field Photoshop and to load photos from my cards to external drives. 

Liz

Thanks, Liz. I will definitely do that. I'm also looking at the Asus UX305, which has gotten good reviews and seems to be a bargain for the price. They are also releasing a version with QHD in April. At least we PC users finally seem to have some solid Macbook Air alternatives

Cheers,
Greg

I've been happy with my Toshiba Kirabook, really light weight, you can get a base model with 1366 x 768 res, though the display is glossy and could be better. The Lenovo X1 carbon looks nice too though you have to accept 1920 x 1080 res for the 14" screen, they have decent screens.

Thanks for the suggestions, Chris. Tough choices ahead!

Cheers,
Greg