Dell Inspiron 5558’s display – IPS panel with high color reproduction accuracy, but less than great color gamut coverage

The Dell Inspiron 5558 is a new 15 5000 series mid-range multimedia notebook. It features a 15.6” screen with an IPS panel and a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Even though the laptop features an IPS panel, which is usually a sign of a higher quality screen with very good color reproduction, it offers poor color performance. The display has only 62% sRGB coverage and 46% Adobe RGB, which is a very low result compared to the usual high color gamut coverage of IPS panels. It is mainly lacking in the reds and purples, where many colors have to be replaced with the closest match, which visibly dulls the image.

Gamut-Pre-Dell Inspiron 5558 (15 5000)

The figure below is the same, but it also includes measurements from the screen before calibration,  with the factory settings. The colored circles mark the colors that are supposed to be shown, and the white ones – the colors that are actually reproduced on the screen. The white arrow indicates the most significant difference between the measured colors and the reference values. In our case blue has the biggest deviation.

Colors-CIE-Pre-Dell Inspiron 5558 (15 5000)

Our standard 24 color sample tests include commonly used colors for dark and light human skin, blue sky, green grass, and others mostly in the center of the color space. With those the screen has a high color accuracy – average DeltaE is 0.87.

Result-Dell 5558

In conclusion – Inspiron 5558’s colors are accurate, which is important for multimedia consumption, but due to the lack of sRGB coverage it is not suitable for color-centric work like photo editing, image processing, or web design.

You can expect a full review of the Dell Inspiron 5558 really soon. In it you’ll find a more in-depth analysis of the display.

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Antonio Marcheselli
7 years ago

Hi Boris, Thanks for that. I should have the same panel (Inspiron 5559) and I also noticed the awful gamut. As you say it’s a shame because the panel is otherwise quite accurate. I wonder if that is due to the backlight or maybe there is some hidden menus which could improve the final result…

Edward Kelley
Edward Kelley
6 years ago

I really hate that I wasted my money on the low end Dell 5558. Besides the monitor issues, I’ve had to the sorry keyboard with an aftermarket from Amazon. Thanks for publishing this…I was hoping there was a solution to the color problem to make it a bit more accurate when editing photos.