LED or Full Hi Def LCD

Hi, how much difference between LED 1440 x 900 and Full Hi Def LCD 1920 x 1200 in terms of
a) weight
b) battery life
c)quality

Can't decide between the 2. Planning on watching bluray and programming (lots of time in front of screen), no gamming.

 

a) LED is lighter. but how much I don't know
b) LED is again a fair bit better
c) depends on how you measure quality, I personally would rather have a lower res one that is bright and clear. I preferre that over a high res one that is not as bright. One thing to note on a full HD screen is the text is very small and could be problematic for programming for long periods of time. unless you ajust the resolution

 

led is better

 

I have the LED and I love it!
1) I cant compare weight on the 1530, but i know its light weight
2) I get any where from 2.5-3 hrs with basic tasks only on the battery
3) I have gotten MANY comments on how good this screen looks! The LED panel is made by opitronics I think, I know its not sammy, who makes the grainy sandy screens, none of that here with this model. Its a little blocky on some icons, but then I realized I was 2 inches from the screen when I was critiquing it! Also there is some bleeding but not bad at all its liveable.

I think the Full hig def screen res is nuts on the 15.4(however those who have it love it). 1440x900 is not native to blu ray res but I watch widescreen movies all the time in 720p and it does not bother me at all(usually i hook up to the tv). I watch blu-ray rips(I think the price of the player is insane, plus I have a ps3 and can download any blu-ray rip and they look awesome on my 42 inch plasma!) and they actually are over kill on a 15.4 inch screen, the regular def is fine for the screen size and resolution.

 

a) considering the weight of the rest of the laptop, the screen difference is insignifficant though I think the lcd is supposed to be 2mm thinner.

b) Can't tell you what the diffence is (I don't have a 1440*900 as well to compare) Though with the 1920*1200 at full brightness (9cell battery) just browsing the internet, it gets a little over four hours.

c) If you have good eyesight (as in your able to read a newspaper print easily without squinting) you will LOVE the hi-def.
It looks amazing, especially if you wan't to watch blu-rays at full hd.

However if you don't you'll probably end up setting it a lower res anyway so why bother paying more for something you won't use.

 

LED's are generally thinner, lighter, and use less energy than CCFL screens.

nobody should EVER run their screen at a lower resolution, or anythin other than the screen's native resolution. if u have the WUXGA (high-res) and feel that the text and icon sizes are too small. all u have to do is enlarge yur text and icon sizes via DPI settings.

games will usually rescale themselves. if u decide to manually adjust game's resolution, then adjust it according to what yur machine can handle. i play CS @ 1920 x 1200 resolution and tf2 @ 1440 x 900 resolution. everything looks and works fine.

here's a link to a more recent WUXGA-screen discussion. there's some screenshots of WUXGA screens in there if u wanted to look.

 

I have an LED and Love it. I think I'll marry it. I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough screen realestate for my windows/tools using Adobe software, but I have never felt like I needed more space. From what I hear, the Full HD screen will make everything much smaller; giving you more realestate, but at the same time making text small and hard to read.

If you plan on getting the Blue Ray drive then I can see your dilema. But if you are not...Definitely go with the LED. You will not be disappointed.

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Interl(R)Core(TM)2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4GHz
250G HD @ 7200 rpm
4GB, DDR2, 667MHz
WXGA+ TrueLife LED LCD (incredible screen. This upgrade is a must!!)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

 

Here is a screen shot of a bluray rip of the TBU. 1440x900 LED the blakc bars are there, but they dont bother me. They are bigger depending on the aspect of the movie too.

 

i wish u guys would quit makin such biased comments and actually spoke from real experiences.

LED's are great. they're lighter, use less energy, generally brighter than CCFL, and last longer. LED's are especially great when usin outdoors cuz of the extra brightness.

WUXGA (1920 x 1200 resolution) screens DO display smaller fonts and icons. BUT all fonts and icons can be enlarged using yur DPI settings. WUXGA will have a more vivid color display than a LED. web pages can be set to display in any size font u want. vista rescales almost perfectly so u don't need to worry about programs that run in lower resolutions.

my only gripe about 1920 x 1200 resolution is that some websites aren't formatted correctly for it. u will see some page content displayed a little out of place. not a big deal to me. ctrl + wheel scroll usually remedies that problem.

 

The 1920x1200 would display full 1080p bluray better I would assume since you could fit the full video on the screen without having to scale it down at all. Also you could easily enlarge text while browsing doing what houstoned said and Ctrl+Scroll wheel or zooming in and out. If you plan on hooking your laptop up to a bigger screen though when watching videos (like I plan on doing) then I would take the LED because I could use the bigger screen if I needed more room. Also the LED will give you a little more battery and a little less weight.

However a bigger resolution is ALWAYS nice. The more room the better is my motto so if you want to compare 2 documents you might find the larger resolutions much easier and you can always scale down the LCD to the 1440x900 while you can't scale up the LED to 1920x1200.

 

What you want to look at is the brand and model of the panels and then research the individual specs. Some panels have far better viewing angles then others, generally I find higher-resolution displays have better viewing angles. The increased luminous is nice but it is not a significant increase with the panel that dell uses. I would opt for the higher resolution display.

 

led is so much better than pure high resolution, back in 2007, dell actaully listed specs on some of their lcds.
wuxga+ on dell 1720 was 150 brightness, wxga+ w/o led was 300 brightness.
wuxga screen dont get updated as quickly as wxga+.
the current wxga+ with led is 1 generation or 2 ahead of wuxga+.


font size on wuxga is still very small with 120 dpi, u need to turn on accessibility to have a readbale text size.

 

^^ That is the exact reason I went with the LED. If I watch hi-def with bluray ray rips its on the 42" plasma. If I got the 17" laptop I could see watching hi-def on it but a 15.4 is just useless IMO for watching hi-def movies. If I plan on watching the movie on my pc I only download the regular dvd rip.

 

when it comes down to it, its all comes down to personal preference. it IS yur custom laptop, u know what i mean?

but sometimes it's good to be open-minded. go out and try new things before u make such a concrete decision. u might discover somethin that u might like even more.

my last 3 XPS laptops (15.4" - (2) 17") have had WUXGA screens. i don't think i can ever go back to a lower resolution screen. with today's technology, the WUXGA screen will only get better with time. most people that have switched to WUXGA will tell u that, they will never go back to a lower resolution too.

 

Generation? huh?

TFT LCD panels are continuously improving, yes, however it is the panel resolution/viewing angles/anti-reflective properties. The backlights are not really considered, nor are they "advancing" in any way.


There are several LCD panels that have CCFL tubes with higher brightness than LED panels due to the polarizer materials as well as the optical films/wave guide. Many modern LCDs use a mirror like finish on the polarizer that covers the TFT side of the panel (back side of panel) in order to reflect stray light around to increase luminance so to speak.


Needless to say, LED is not necessarily "so much better" than higher resolution.


I am not familiar with what LCD panels Dell is using but review the specs for the panels that you would receive depending which route you went to get your answer.

I will measure the luminunance of the LCD in my 1530 next week at work to use as a reference.

 

Wow! thanks for all the help! I've been considering buying the LED over the HI DEF only for the weight and battery life, but if the difference isn't really noticeable, i'll definetely choose HI DEF.

 

If you use the 120dpi feature it kinda kills the benefit, You end up lookinng at a screen like its in non-native mode, Unless you're able to read the small print I'd advise against buying it, Though if you can its Briliant!!