Fix:

The color pallet on my new dell 7420 inspiron plus kept changing and the display looked horribly washed out or with horrible contrast. This took me too long to diagnose so I’m making a post about it. The post below was super helpful in diagnosis this so I am linking to it.

Problem: Washed our colors and contrast on a laptop with Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Solution: Disable Display Power Savings

https://superuser.com/questions/1487069/how-to-disable-intel-display-power-saving-technology

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Washed-out-or-faded-colours-on-Intel-Iris-Xe-Graphics/td-p/1448656

I tried taking a good picture but it was difficult to capture the fine details. Contrast was way off and pixels appeared blurry. On the left is with the settings enabled and on the right with the settings disabled. Pay attention to the details on the cloud, you can’t tell the detail on it on the left side. the details are also blurry and washed out.

What feels like one of dells last laptops with modular RAM, I decided to give this computer a try until something more modular and repairable comes along (Framework maybe?!) I bought the RAM and SSD below and upgraded the laptop. Be sure to disconnect the battery cable first! I tried disconnecting the cable connecting to the motherboard but it was stuck in there and I was nervous to apply much force. Luckily there is an additional connector on the other side of the battery cable, you can slide that metal tab down and pull the battery cable out.

Swap out the RAM and/OR SSD and it will boot up to a black screen. Be patient and wait about 5 min, it will eventually it will boot into the BIOS telling you hardware changed. I worried I fried something but fortunately that wasn’t the case. Hopefully this post helps you not freak out that something went wrong. Enjoy the upgrade ram and ssd!

• Crucial RAM 32GB DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Laptop Memory CT32G48C40S5
• Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 Gaming SSD, up to 6600MB/s – CT1000P5PSSD8 Solid State Drive