Suggested Resolution for strain free 15.6"

Hi,

My company recently provided a Latitude e6440 (14" with 1600x900 HD+ resolution). I had a hard time using it on its native resolution due to too much eye strain (being a developer, what I deal with most of the the time is TEXT). Lowering the resolution was useless as fonts appear fuzzy (Its a known windows8 and DELL issue) and increasing DPI looked odd often with menus small and text large.

Now, upon my hard insist, I'm asked for a model for replacement. I still want high res, but this is the last chance with me for replacement. Please suggest, what would you suggest (on native resolution and no DPI change) so as to have least eye strain (with good view as secondary).
- 15.6" x FullHD 1080p (Precision M4800 OR Latitude 6540)
- 15.6" x HD 1366x768 (Precision M4800 OR Latitude 6540)
- 14" HD 1366 X 768 (same laptop e6440 but with HD instead of HD+)

Thanks.

 

Being a developer, you will really want as much resolution as you can get. That said, 1080p would be a bare minimum for that sort of work, imo.

At work, they gave me a 768p machine and it's just awful; at least they pair it up with a 1024p monitor to make that a bit more "bearable". On the other hand, all my home machines (except my tablet) are 1080p and those are a joy to develop on. Wish I had 1440p monitors, but those are a few pretty pennies to buy...

 

This post might not be very popular, but after having had 1400x900 on a 14", my recommendation is not anything larger than 720p widescreen on a 15". 1080p, 3k, 4k, those are best suited for large display monitors and TVs not laptop screens!

(Btw, I myself am a develop of sorts, and I find that even 1400x900 on a 14" is already hard to work with...)

If you absolutely must have the larger screen resolution, I highly recommend getting 720p native for your laptop and dock it (via a port replicator) to a large monitor with your desired resolution... No need to attach/detach messy cables everytime. Just undock it and you're mobile in 5 seconds!

Source: I currently own a 15" 720p and absolutely love it. Raising the resolution to 1080p would instantly make me hate it!

EDIT: If you're going for anything larger than 720p, might as well get 4k. Windows 9, when it comes out, will make your 15" look better in 4k than at 720p or even 1080p b/c it will be the first true scalable OS! Other programs will have to play catch up though, but your latter 4k years will be well worth it!

 

I would agree with hirobo2. For me, 1600x900 seems to be a sweet spot for 15.6"--get this whenever available. 1080p is a very nice resolution for 15.6", but you will struggle with reading or programming in text for sure. I know this because I am a web developer and am using a 1080p laptop.

P.S. And to think I had an Asus Zenbook 13" with a 1080p resolution a year ago for work (because of portability reasons). That was insane!

 

I don't understand how one could struggle to read text on a 1080p 15.6" display. The pixel density isn't all that high (relative to QHD displays), and just my experience, I can read text and write code just fine on such a display (in fact, i do the same with a 12" 1050p display as well). And that's with the disadvantage of having very bad nearsightedness!

Hell, people can use smartphones with higher DPIs than 1080p 15.6" just fine...

 

Thanks for the replies. Seems most are in favour of 1080p if not QHD or just HD on a 15.6". Per my Co. Policy, they can only provide DELL. Since I had a very bad experience with e6440 HD+, I'll surely go for a 15.6".
My main purpose of laptop includes (In highest to lowest priority, without a monitor) - Coding, Gaming, PDF Reading.

Just a little more help please and I believe I'm very near to suggest a model for replacement.

Q1) Someone mentioned, non FullHD (say 720p or lower) movies look worse on FullHD and supoerir on HD. Is it a real fact?

Q2) I can think of only Latitude E6540 OR Precision M4800 for my needs. Please suggest if you know of a better DELL 15.6" (except Alienware - My Co won't buy me a gaming machine ) or recommend one of these based on my needs. Unfortunately neither has 1600x900. The one which has best display and least strain on eyes wins for me.

Thanks alot.

 

A1) A 768p movie will look alright in a 768p display (native resolution and all that), whereas on a higher-red display you have to upscale the image to fill all 1080p pixels (or whatever it happens to be, like 900p). Though honestly, 768p video looks less sharp than 1080p video (both in their native resolutions) and id watch 1080p+ video on a 1080p+ display over 768p video any day of the week.

A2) There's also the Precision M3800 to consider.

 

^This. I was about to suggest the Precision M3800 (or XPS 15 9530) as well. The specs states 3200x1800 resolution, but 1080p looks just perfectly fine down-scaled in Windows 8.x. Search the forums for discussions about these two similar laptops. There are several threads on which one is right for rendering multimedia vs. gaming.

 

FINAL HELP!!!
Checked with my IT and they're not willing for M3800 and XPS (policy & price constraints)...

Finally, I'm left 3 options (viable to my company).
M4800 1366x768 (HD) AntiGlare with AMD5100
M4800 1920x1080 (FHD) Ultrasharp Wide View with AMD5100
M4800 1366x768 (HD) Antiglare with QuadroK2100

Which one is recommended? Please help me by picking one based on your experience and thoughts (One which doesn't strain eyes and can play 720p movies beautifully as I've more of them than 1080p)

Also, any thoughts on what's the difference between Ultrasharp Wide View screen and normal HD anti glare screen (I believe former is glossy and later is Matt). Is there any dimension difference too?

Thanks a ton.
Deepak

 

All because you have more 720p videos than you do 1080p videos, doesn't mean you can't play 720p videos on 1080p beautifully. Hell, that's what I do with most Youtube videos on my computers (since a lot of what I watch on there is 720p..).

IIRC, the Ultrasharp Wide View is an IPS display, whereas the others are TN displays. IPS > TN as far as color quality, contrast, viewing angles, etc. goes, so even ignoring the fact that the FHD M4800 has a much better screen resolution, IPS itself is a huge upgrade over TN.

 

--Duplicate--

 

Thanks JarHead... I take it as a recommendation for M4800 FHD Ultasharp AMD5100 . Natively (without playing with DPi) do you see any issue with fonts M4800 FHD screen (too small to put strain)?

 

Well, for 1080p screens in general and at default DPI settings (usually 125%), I don't see any issues with text, and it certainly doesn't strain my eyes to read from such a screen/setting. In fact, I make the text on my computers even smaller by changing the DPI to 100% from 125%, in order to fit more on the display at once (for what I do, it's pretty important to have a lot of information at my disposal at once).

Mind you, I have terrible eyesight and have to wear glasses/contacts to see anything. So even a person with 20/20 vision should have no issue using a display like that.

 

JarHead,
Sorry to eat your head... but definitely last query and I'm done...
I see many threads where they mention screen door effect on M4800 (I'm not sure if they were FHD Ultrasharp screens)... Do you find any screen door effect issue on FHD laptop?

 

I guess I'm a little confused about why you're talking about buying a whole new laptop because of the text being too small. You can buy a 32" 1080p external monitor. You can also adjust text size (zoom) in Eclipse... and probably most other IDEs A monitor (TV) will cost you about $120USD