by , 8:50 AM EDT, July 9th, 2007

Photography pro Rob Galbraith put the LED backlit display in Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Pro through its paces, and was thoroughly impressed. So impressed, in fact, that he called it the best laptop display available.

Mr. Galbraith stated "Okay, let's end the suspense: the new Macbook Pro 15 inch's screen is very, very good."

On the pro side, the display responded well to color calibration, offered decent color accuracy, tended to avoid over-saturated color problems, and offered a wider color gamut than the CCFL backlit display found in the previous model MacBook Pro. In short, it is a perfectly usable display for pro image editing in the field.

On the down side, it has a very tight viewing angle -- meaning colors shift and become inaccurate if you move your head off center of the display. Also, even though it does offer a wider color gamut than the previous model, it is still substantially smaller than the color gamut found on Apple's desktop displays.

Mr. Galbraith said that the LED backlit MacBook Pro display was "the best laptop display we've seen and one we'd use in the field without reservation," and added that despite the display's limitations, "the MacBook Pro 15 inch with LED backlight is definitely a step up from any laptop display we've looked at before."

[Thanks to TMO TMO contributer Photodan for the heads up in the forums.]