S96J vs Z96J: Question for those who prefer 1280x800

Question: Have you ever used a 15.4" notebook with a 1680x1050? I recommend you try it before making up your minds that you want an S96J!

I run 1400x1050 on my 19" CRT, but on a 15.4 notebook 1680x1050 is the only resolution I'll settle for.

 

Its all about gameing for me. Games today can barely handle 1680x1050 let alone everything on med/high settings. You can always turn down the resolution but who wants a fuzzy picture? Once you get used to 1680x1050, playing games at anything lower just isnt going to cut it.
Thats why i went with WXGA.

 

Using higher resolution displays can be detrimental to your vision over time due to increased eye stress and concentration on smaller objects--this is chiefly why I prefer WXGA.

 

I prefer WXGA at 15.4". I had a 14" notebook at 1400x1050 and it drove me crazy, too small. Many people love higer res.

Gaming at native resolution is a huge benefit as well. I much prefer gaming at native resolution on fixed pixel displays like LCDs. The X1600 will not be able to play newer games with high settings at 1680x1050.

 

Can you point me to the study? I want to keep my eyes but I prefer the higher dpi.

 

Lol, it's obvious. Try and stare at a small object for a long period of time, you'll notice your eyes will start to hurt, vision gets worse because your eye muscles are tired and if you keep doing it, they won't repair themselves.

 

i run 1680x1090 on my 20.1" dell 2005fpw and my brothers 24" 2405fpw runs 1920x1200..i find those resolutions perfect for that screen size....1680x1050 on a 15.4" notebook hurts the eyes...1280x800 is also good because i can run native resoluion while playing games with some settings turned up higher.

 

Staring at anything up close for long periods of time is bad.

 

Higher resolution is set, more range of screen and area can be supported. 1680x1050 is a highest one for 15.4" LCD screen now and it is good to open a few windows to do the jobs at the same time. The icons and characters can be adjusted the size if the users feel that they are too small to see even moving a cursor for clicking......

 

You sit much closer to a notebook though. If you're using those LCDs properly, you're sitting a good distance away to reduce eyestrain, so the pixels should appear just as small. When I'm using a laptop I tend to look around at distractions, so I've never had my eyes hurt. I believe it balances out the focusing on small text. Besides, you can always resize icons and text.

 

Yea, but if it's also small, you'll strain your eyes much more.

 

Actually you can get a 1920x1200 15.4. Dell has used them for years.

 

For all of you guys saying to resize small font and small text...

What's the point going to WSXGA+ if you're going to reside it? Im my opinion it's a loss-loss situation
1) you lose because resizing from WSXGA+ fonts to larger fonts achieves the same as having WXGA
2) your games will look like crap if you don't run them in native res (and native WSXGA+ is way too tough on games)

 

No, but one of my friends has one. Things are just too small to justify the difference in real estate. 1280x800 is just more comfortable, and provides the perfect balance between screen estate and readability.

 

I asked Chaz what he thought about wsxga and he said it was perfect. He also said his games look great even if they are scaled down?

 

BS. I've tried it on a 500$ Samsung 19" LCD with native @ 1280x1024.. We ran COD2 @ 1024x768 [dx9 rendering, high settings, 4x AA, 4X AF] and it looked like crap, while on the native resolution the graphics quality and the clarity simply blew me away...

On 10x7, I couldn't aim whatsoever, especially in secondary fire. It looked so blurry, when the oponents were crouched, I couldn't even tell their helmets apart from the background.

Unfortunately, my friend's card 7800GTX couldn't handle Dx9 rendering with those high settings without lagging and we winded up turning going down to DX9 and using 1280x1024.

Dx9 rendering with 10x7 and highest setting looked like crap compared to the inferior DX7 rendering with 1280x1024...

The simplest way I could put this is, running games at non-native resolution is NEGATIVE Anti Aliasing/Anisotropic Filtering. In FPS games it's extremely distracting, while in third person games, such as strategy it almost made my eyes tear blood from the ghosting mixed with blurriness. (8ms response on the LCD, while most laptops have 16-24ms, which is much worse)..

I'll pick WXGA over any other resolution for a 15" with X1600.

 

Games look fine scaled down; you won't be able to tell the difference b/w native and scaled down. However scaling down to anything besides native in windows makes everything look blurry. after going wsxga, I can't go back

 

There are two different ways to upscale an image, video card upscaling and monitor upscaling. That may be where some the perceived differences come from. One may have better quality than the other.

The 6600GT in my desktop was able to handle HL2 at 1600x1200 just fine with medium settings (plus high quality textures) so I don't see why an x1600 can't handle 1680x1050 with much faster processors than my ol' Athlon XP.

 

I used to have a BFG 6600GT OC vid card. It could get 4400-4500 in 3dmark05 (which is more than the X1600 can).

HL2 is very light on the system, i was able to play it at school on a 2.4Ghz Celeron with Radeon 7000 (dx 7 card) on 10x7 medium settings.

Trying to play Fear on 1680x1050 even on low settings is ridiculous, not to even metion oblivion. It would also look crappy. You could be playing it on 1280x800 and be able to tune up the graphic detail to the max to the point where it looks extremely realistic.

You people are being so stubborn, it's not even amusing anymore. Here's my point: if you're going to be stupid and chose WSXGA+ over WXGA because you think you need the workspace, go right ahead, make your own mistakes, it will amuse me to see you a few months down the road complaining "My X1600 can't handle games on native resolution, what can I do?"

 

My bad, I thought the x1600 was quicker than that. No need for name calling man.

 

The BFG 6600GT is:
-8 pixel pipelines with GDDR3 memory at 525Mhz core/1050 Mhz Memory.

The X1600 is
-12 pixel pieplines with 700/350 or about there.

Bandwidth wise they get the same scores, but the 6600GT is PURE RAW power because of its GDDR3 memory that is clocked so high. If you don't turn on AA/AF or HDR, a 6600GT performs really close up to 7800GTX. It's quite an amazing video card for what it costs. Last summer, it was the best deal in town. It was about 200$ and able to handle every game in the market without a hitch.

I would asume the X1600 should be able to handle AA/AF beter than the 6600GT, but as far as raw power goes, it won't beat the 6600GT if they're both set without eye candy.

 

damn you guys are crazy. I have a NEC 19" screen for my desktop and using 1152 x 864 is already straining my eyes. I don't think i could settle for anything less (not a gamer, just occasional CS).

I'm guessing because of this, the wxga is the best for me

 

Vi! Emacs!
Macintosh! Windows!
Pen! Pencil!

Hear the cries of the holy warriors, prepared to lay their lives down for the cause.

edit: my point was that i know quite what i'm doing. the real estate is *that* important to me. i'll be sure to give my impression of how the scaling down goes when i get it, too.

 

Wait, wait, wait.. You guys are running anti aliasing? No wonder your video cards can't run games at 1680x1050. When the pixels are that small, there is no reason whatsoever to use FSAA. Besides that, FSAA is blurring... the process is similar to scaling an image to another resolution.

By the way, if you run games at 840x525 on a WSXGA+ screen, there wouldn't be any kind of blurring.. I wonder if any games support that resolution.

 

Personal preference buddy. How many complaint threads have you seen for the Z70Va, Z71V and all the other bunch of high res screen laptops from various manufacturers? Not that many.

You are right though about the gaming, if your primary use of the laptop is gaming, low res is better until upgradable modular vid cards are common...except if u really just bought ur laptop for gaming, I would bet that most people (but not all of course) would've been better off with a cheaper and faster gaming desktop or SFF PC.

For me, the lack of desktop real estate with WXGA is much more annoying than smaller text and icons. And in the future, once image scaling in the OS doesn't screw up the formatting, high res screens will be even more demand since everything will look nicer with the higher dpi for those who like everything huge.

 

Just from skimming these posts - it seems people are trying to rationalize why they are settlings for a lower res screen. From "theory" eye complaints, to games, to not being able to eventually go BACK to a lower res screen.

I use a screen that is 1600 x 1050. It is the only reason I am waiting for the Z96J (coudlnt agree to W3J or A8J because res was too small)


The joys of having an extreme res are just too many to count. Viewing webpages, visibility, full windows side by side. I really love it.

 

Which is why I went from a 12 inch to a 14 inch laptop (although I LOVE the size of the 12 inchers).

 

Ok, i'm gonna jump into this.

Many here can agree that a high res screen (WSXGA+) is good for:
- web browsing
- word documents
- audio and video editiing
- Windows usage

The cons for a high res screen are:
- Eye strains
- May be a little too hard to read icons and stuff

HOWEVER there's a solution to the CONS, which is DPI changing, which we all know of and use if our eyes are poor.

So with that said you already know the flip side of a low res screen (WXGA).

However, the main arguments is about GAMING and SCALING.

CAN LCDs SCALE? Properly?

This answer can only be solved with a Z96j, Z70va, Z71v, and other High res laptops.

However, we can somewhat test it right now.

For example, I personaly took my friends Z70va, and tried 3 lower resolutions, WXGA+ and WXGA on the desktop (wallpaper). The SCALING was PERFECT!

However i did not test games.

Next, I went to my friend's house and play COD2 on a 19" Samsung LCD with a X800XT, i played at Max resolution and then slowly dropped down to 800x600, guess what, it looked the same as my 17" CRT when i play Cod2 at 800x600.

Meaning the scaling was good. Just an FYI i'm used to playing gaming at 800x600 because i'm playing on a Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb, and it looks good to me.

Now here's where things get confusing, Mystery claims that gaming under a lower resolution will make the image blurry. Is this true? YES, Mystery has also given an example of how bad it can be, like on his friends LCD that he mentioned above.

So what happens now?

Here's one thing me and Mystery can agree on, the ASUS Z70va definately has one heck of an LCD, must be extremely high quality or something.

Aside from that, Danny from MilestonePC did say the Z96j does have one AMAZING screen, yes it is WSXGA+ GLOSSY!, the reason why it is getting a 1 month delay is because of the Screen, Taiwan does not have them yet.

So now what can you do? Ideally wait, but when you do go to a store and have a look at the Z96j, take 3 games with you, a FPS game like Fear or Cod2, take a Racing game, like NFS U2, and one other, like sports or RTS or RPG.

TEST all three games! at all resolutions, at different settings! AA or no AA. Once you complete this test, if you are satisfied with the Z96j's LCD, buy it and report to us here, with SCREENSHOTS proving either BAD or GOOD scaling. (depends if you want the Z96j first)

If you decide you don't like the scaling on it, tell us too, and look to purchase a different laptop.

Hope everything is clear now.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

MysticGolem,

I guess it depends on the person and the hardware. I have a nice 19" widescreen desktop LCD (Viewsonic VA1912wb) connected via DVI and a 6800GT. It is very noticable to me when running below 1440x900 (native res).

This is also the case with my S96j. I can really see the difference when I run at lower resolution (not that I need to ).

I have gamed on 3 other LCDs that I remember and it has always been the case.

Aside from gaming I still prefer the WXGA res on a 15.4" notebook

The best scenario is if someone can try themselves before buying.

 

Like i said, you guys do whatever you want to do. Have fun when you can't play the games you want because the blurry lines will be too distracting

 

So does my wife!

 

I can notice the difference on both my desktop and notebook LCD but it's not anywhere near as bad as you make it out to be. You'd have to be pretty picky for the scaling to prevent you from enjoying a semi-decent game. I don't see how anyone that likes their desktop real estate would settle for a low res screen just for games, likewise, nobody should get a high res screen if they can't handle the smaller text.

 

^ well put.

Just to clarify some more, when i decreased the resolution on the 19" Samsung LCD for the game Cod2, there was no noticable blurryness when you look at it, but if you look extremely closely, you can see it at a distance.

For example, im on one edge of the map, i looked at the stairs at the other side of the map, and the lines were not clean, hence the res distorted the steps.

Yes i was still able to snipe the heads of my opponents in the building across the map where those distorted steps were.

Then i came home and played Cod2 and noticed those same stairs being distorted when i dropped the res on my CRT, and i was still able to snipe the heads of my opponents.

HENCE, that 19" Samsung LCD my friend had, displayed Scaling done perfectly and almost seamlessly.

The reason i say almost, is because the ammo indicator which would say how many bullets in ur gun, was definately less clear, of course readable, just takes time to get used to.

Then on my CRT its the same, the ammo indicators, were not as clear, they seemed a little blurry, but trust me after about 10 mins, or not even, you can't really tell the difference if you play at such low resolutions. hehe

Another interesting thing to do is take a S96j and put it beside a Z96j, Z70va, Z71v and compare a game like Cod2, with a resolution of WXGA, and see which one looks better, and how much worse is either one.

My personal opinion is that since some people have never played games at lower resolutions like 1024x768 or 800x600, they automatically assume the game is all blurry and ugly, when compared to a higher resolution.

I personaly have not seen a CRT or LCDs yet, that has shown me motion blurr when dropping the resolution of a game, in which it would make it unplayable.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

just to add my 2 cents...from a medical point of view:

Eyesight typically decreases with age...the RATE at which it decreases is variable and depends on alot of stuff...one of them being how u "use" ure eyes, if u strain them alot the rate MIGHT increase...again it's a different story from one person to another.......i went though med school without a problem and dont wear glasses till this day...friends of mine were wearing them half way through...others even before they started.

This is kinda dramtic but....we all know that smoking causes cancer...but how many smokers acctually GET IT?? u just become more prone to it....same deal with straining ure eyes.

Some ppl might have less than perfect eyesight to start off with so a higher resolution will "hurt" their eyes.....or they might have perfect vision but just feel uncomfortable with it to begin with.

last point....we all like extra resoution.....get more on the screen and all that but did u know that going over 70-90 characters/ line acctually slows ure reading speed and comprehension and asks for uncomfortable eye movements!

So it's all subjective but ofcourse i'de recommend NOT straining ure eyes that much and getting something u feel comfortable with (LOOK at the screens before u buy them)...and for EVERYONE out there staring at ure screen right now try to take a break every now and then and focus on something that's >7 yards (21 ft) away....at that distance (and beyond) ure eyes r most comfortable so give them a break too!!

As for my opinion on the gaming issue.... i've heard everywhere that LCDs r best at their native resolution...yea they r probably functional on lower resolutions but not as good as the native resolution...so if ure buying this lappy MAINLY for gaming then ide recommend the WXGA...if not then it's really about what u feel more comfortable with.

Enjoy!!

 

What I find silly, having looked at many LCDs on laptops around laptop boutique shops
in the LA area (ranging from ASUS, Acer, Quanta, Compal, etc), is the total lack of
1440x900 matte in a 15.4" laptop. This nails the comfort level with both my favorite X11
fixed fonts, shell/editor size, and is plenty small for an x1600/7600. The Macbook Pro
has the best LCD (for my taste) in resolution, backlight, and matte. I just wish the
Z96J or equivalent would go that route (1440x900 matte).

The Compal HEL80 and Quanta TW3A (the other 15.4" CBB models) high res options
also looks to be 1680x1050. However, the high res version of the 14" Compal HGL80
looks like it may be 1440x900.

 

ScubaDoc, i'm gonna havta agree with you, for every 20 mins you looks at ur screen, you should gives ur eyes a break and stare at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

The reason for this is because our eyes are blinking half the amount of times than not looking at a screen. Without blinking our eyes become dryer, and increases strains. Overtime this will cause damage.

The problem is the world in the future will only looking at screens, TVs, Computers, Cars will have screens, Theatres, before you know it we may have those Minority Report paper which are screens, kinda like a tablet pc on paper.

orangutan, I've seen the MBP, and I was amazed at the screen, it was amazing!!, awsome brightness, and amazing viewing angles, can't go wrong with one of those screens. The revised MBP is alot nicer, but in general the MBP is warm all around, no cool spots anywhere. But that's what you get for such a thin and light machine

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I used an E1705 for a while with UXWGA+ and it was hard to read easily. Not hard to read.....just hard to read easily. Increasing DPI is NOT a satisfactory solution as I noticed very bad blurriness on several websites I tried. This is likekly caused by certain CSS implementations.

With my S96J I can sit at a range of distances and be doing lots of other things and quickly refer to the notebook without needing to focus on it.

And, seriously, 1280x800 is plenty of space. Photoshop images are always scaled one way or the other, so it doesn't really hurt. For web browsing, it's easier to read, for me, to scroll down through lines rather than look at fewer longer lines.

 

I really recommend people trying on a higher DPI (96->120) and seeing how often things break.. it just isn't an optimal solution tho those who think that text in extreme resolutions is hard to read. To prevent eye strain, a lower resolution is far better for the time being. This may change in the future when operating systems work with ALL vector-based objects and can scale things properly. I agree with hyperlumnious that 1200x800 on a 15.4 is already a lot of screen estate. It's the perfect balance IMHO.