1680x1050 worth it?

I will be ordering a Dell 1520 since Sager 2090's don't have glossy coated 1680s yet. But that brings me to my questions. 1680 is going to be too high for anything but games so is it worth it to pay for this high resolution and the extra strain it puts on your hardware? The most demanding game I will play is BF2 btw.

 

1680x1050 res is very small (text wise) and depending on your screen size, other things besides games may be very hard to read. I have a 15 inch w 1280x800 and it's a nice size vs resolution.

 

I think 1680x1050 is way too high of a resolution for just a 15.4" widescreen. I have a 17" desktop monitor here of 1280x1024 and a 1520 of 1280x800. Both are too high resolution, text is pretty small.

 

I was worried about 1680x1050 being to high on my 15.4 G1S, however now that I have it, I couldn't live without it. By the way high resolution is better for development or design tasks and less useful for gaming.

 

Since you feel that it will be too high for anything besides gaming, then in no way is it worth it. You're better off gaming at 1280x800 native with higher performance than at 1680x1050 native with lower performance, and obviously better off at native than non-native resolution. Also, if you run the desktop at lower-than-native resolutions, it will look varying degrees of blurry (I don't notice the blurryness in games as much).

If you're thinking about using it for regular desktop use though... it's completely worth it. You can see a lot more than with 1280x800.

 

I wouldn't get the 1680x1050 if your main intent is gaming. Higher resolution=harder for graphics card=lowering settings for future games

You may only be able to play newer games on medium at 1680 whereas you are much more likely to be able to play them on high at 1440.

BF2 is pretty lame in that you cant natively use widescreen resolutions without modification which in turn stretches the HUD.

 

No way for a 15.4" screen.
And no way if you 're gaming..

To give you a clue..
I use 1680x1050 at my desktop pc with 20" wide monitor and 8800GTX highly overclocked..

 

This laptop will also be used for computer science classes in college. I know I will be creating graphics. Do I need high res for this? The school recommends 2 laptops. a 15.4" 1680 and 14.1" 1280.

 

remember that because it is higher res, even if you have to play at a lower res, you wont notice it so much because the pixels are smaller and it will interpolate the lower resolution more smoothly.

higher res definitely helps in development work.

 

Personally, I like 1680 x 1050 on a laptop. It is a little high, but as long as I am close to the screen I can read fine. 1280 x 800 is too large for me, and I can't get enough info on the screen at once. Too bad the don't have the 2090 with 1440 x 900. I think that would be the best. I like 1680 x 1050 because it allows me to view more code at once, or larger spreadsheets, which is very helpful in what I do.

However, in your case, if you are only getting it for gaming I wouldn't do it. Your games will run much better at 1280 x 800 than 1680 x 1050.

 

1680x1050 is the perfect resolution for a 17" notebook (what I have). So a 15" shouldn't be too bad with a lower resolution. But of course if you multi-task a lot (ie coding, graphic design) getting a higher resolution just might be worth it.

Go to a local electronics/office store and look at their laptops. Check what resolution you would like for a 15 inch.

 

Yes, I meant to say that. Go to a store and check out the resolutions for yourself. In the end, it is all up to user preference, so you should see what you would like for yourself.

 

Wow, what are you people smoking??? Screen resolution is like CPU speed - more is ALWAYS better. Why the heck would you choose a lower resolution if a higher res option is available? If 15" screens came in 4096 x 2580 I'd buy one in an instant.

Your font and icon and window decoration sizes are all scalable. Hello?? On a higher res screen, you adjust them larger to make them readable. On a lower res screen, you adjust them smaller to fit more on the screen. Sometimes, you can just leave them at their default sizes. You set them to match the size and resolution of the screen you're using.

Buying a lower-res screen because you want the fonts to appear larger is like buying smaller speakers because you want the audio volume to be lower.

 

No, 1680x1050 is not worth it. For any screen smaller than 17", the things on screen are extremely small. If you are a gamer, you won't be able to take advantage of that high of a resolution. Also, if you do a lot of multi-tasking and spreadsheets, etc.....THEN it is worth it.

 

@lupin..the..3rd

It's not the same...Because TFTs when not running at native resolution have very bad quality..

 

So is native res on all 15.4" TFTs 1280x800?

 

I am not smoking anything and I don't agree with you. I wouldn't go as far as to say more is better. More also comes with a price tag too. I think a resolution needs to be bought for what is best for that particular user. I could equally say to you, why buy a high powered speaker system if you are never going to turn it up, especially when it costs more? My opinion is that people should get the resolution that is best for them. If you don't agree, that is fine, but I am not going to ask you what you are smoking or roll my eyes at you.

 

Nope, native res is whatever it is. If you buy a 1680 x 1050 screen, that is it's native res. Same with 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900 and the rare 1920 x 1200 (on a 15.4").

 

I have looked at pros and cons of tft vs matte and poor quality when not running native res has not showed up. Is it really noticeable?

 

I'm a workspace junkie so I always go with the highest resolution available, I think 1680x is pretty much the optimal resolution for 15.4. My eye sight is far from 20/20 but I have never had any problems reading text using the default DPI.

If the laptops main function will gaming then I'd consider getting a lower resolution screen. Though that depends on what kind of games you play, even my 7700 handles CC3, TitanQuest and similar games where FPS isn't absolutely vital without a hitch at 1680x.

 

if u got the graphics card, then go with the highest possible resolution....what graphics card do u hav?

 

I have a 1680 x 1050 matte screen on my laptop. If I run at non-native resolution, I do notice a difference in quality.

 

So your saying that if you run a 1680 at 1280 it will look worse than a native 1280? btw I am a compsci major and my card will be a 8600m GT

 

Why do laptops all have such high resolution screens? 1280x800 on a 15.4" widescreen is just too many pixels. The taskbar is a 1/4 of an inch! My ideal res on a 15.4" widescreen would be something like 1024x640. I'd opt for the most pixels I could buy if software scaled up correctly, but nothing does.

Stuff looks mushy if you use a non-native resolution on a LCD, even one with the same aspect ratio.

 

Let's clear up a few facts here. You can't run higher than your native resolution, which makes you question not make sense. So if your native res is 1280 x 800, you won't be running at 1680 x 1050. Assuming that doesn't matter, the answer to your question is tricky. At 1680 x 1050, you would have to probably bump some setting down in order to push that resolution. At 1280 x 800, you could probably enable those setting without issues. Getting games to run on laptop is all about playing around and optimizing. Some people like more resolution and less quality, while others like less resolution and more quality.

Please let me know if I answered your questions correctly. I may have misunderstood.

 

1650 x 1080 is the best resolution for 15.4 inch notebooks. anything lower makes you have to use the side scrolling bar on alot of websites and it just plain looks better than anything else. if you have poor eyesight i would say go for 1440 x 900. any of the 1200s though look bad imo.

 

I think he means if you run a native 1680 at 1280 will it look worse than the 1280 at native.
And the answer is yes, but depending on your eyesight and personality you may not care, the quality difference is noticeable, not unbearable.

 

How do you stand the tinyness? Most websites have no scrolling if you're higher than 1024x768 BTW.

 

You got it right.

 

The concept of scalable fonts must fly right over your heads.

I'm not suggesting anyone run an LCD at non-native resolution. LCD's should always be run exactly at their native resolution, or at an integer divisor of the native resolution, otherwise, it'll look like crap.

Anyone who complains that something looks "too small" on a high resolution monitor simply doesn't know how to operate their computer.

 

Agreed, not many folks need the uber-ultra-extreme-edition of a given component. But since we're discussing the gamer demographic here, typically the 'best' is always the most desirable.

volume and quality are two very different things. I paid $2,600 for my sound card and speakers - that's more than my laptop cost. And I typically keep the volume set rather low. But I digress.

My point was just that you don't buy new speakers because the ones you have are "too loud"; rather, you simply turn down the volume - it's adjustable after all. Same goes for screen fonts and other gui elements - you don't buy a low-res screen because the fonts are too small - you simply increase the size of the fonts - it's adjustable after all.

 

Agreed, not many folks need the uber-ultra-extreme-edition of a given component. But since we're discussing the gamer demographic here, typically the 'best' is always the most desirable.

True, but I think that since we are talking about the 8600GT here, the highest res screen wouldn't be the best choice for gaming necessarily. The GPU may not like pumping out 1680 x 1050 for games.

volume and quality are two very different things. I paid $2,600 for my sound card and speakers - that's more than my laptop cost. And I typically keep the volume set rather low. But I digress.

My point was just that you don't buy new speakers because the ones you have are "too loud"; rather, you simply turn down the volume - it's adjustable after all. Same goes for screen fonts and other gui elements - you don't buy a low-res screen because the fonts are too small - you simply increase the size of the fonts - it's adjustable after all.

Agree on the volume issue. Quality and volume are different things. Nothing stinks worse than turning up some speaker and listening to a bunch of static.

For LCD resolution, you can adjust the size of thing, but running in non-native resolution leads to a lower quality image from my experience.

 

I guess ill just have to go to an electronics store and see for myself.

 

That is the best thing to do. Go and see the resolutions for yourself. Then you can see how big/small the text, icons, etc really appear.

 

... not so much. Fonts aren't everything, and have you ever used Windows with the dpi set higher than default? It's unpleasant and annoying, much like your post.

 

Mine has reso of 1680x1050 and i like it. I dont c why ur bothered by small letters and stuff, i dont think they're that small The reso is just handy to get more stuff on ur screen at once. I do find it handy if i'm doing lots of stuff at the same time etc.... Not a big of a deal this reso is...

 

my new laptop has 1680x1050 for native for a 15" screen. Looks great to me, lets me keep most of my realestate I use on my bigger monitor at home and things are not hard to read since your so close.

You can however just increse the size of whats on screen and keep the better resolution. In vista just increase the DPI setting. 125% seems to be a good number for some. On xp you can just manually change the size of various things like text.

When you go to watch a hd movie or something you will be glad you have the higher resolution.

 

Yeah most font and icons, but does everything scale, cleanly? Images? Text and objects contained within images?

Though I still prefer wsxga+ on 15.4", I can see why some people wouldn't.

 

I think the other thing you need to remember is that if you're doing any gaming 1680x1050 takes quite a bit of graphics power to avoid any slowdown.

My main system has an 8800 GTX and even this can struggle at native resolution (1680x1050 20") with all the options turned on. The 8600M GT isn't going to stand a chance!

 

Ye but when ur gaming u do not have to put ur reso to 1680... I juste play em in 1280 etc.

 

To scorpio: Non-native resolutions look mushy, especially when gaming.

lupin...the...3rd: Text scaling is just awful, it just looks bad. If my taskbar is only 1/4 of an inch high, my text can only get so big before getting cut off. Websites are designed for 1024x768, so they look too narrow with more than 1280 horizontal pixels and various buttons, form fields, images, and elements are just too small.

I really wish I could get 1024x640 on a 15.4" widescreen, but i'm stuck with 1280x800.

 

Odd maybe my eye vision sucks but i'd never had games looking bad or mushy or whatever. But then again i'm not a hardcore gamer Anyways the reso of 1680 is in my vision not really necessary. So worth it --) not really.

 

Yes this is true, hopefully this point has gotten through by now!

This is true also, except games do look better when the LCD is run in native resolution IMO.

 

If you just play games with your laptop, a lower resolution of 1280x800 will suffice. But if you also do more productive and worthwhile things such as video and photo editing, a higher resolution is a must. I video and photo edit, which is why I use a WSXGA+ screen despite the physical screen size of 15.4".

And oh, scaling on LCD monitors suck. That's why they recommend playing games on a LCD monitor's native resolution, and laptops today barely pull off 1680x1050 at max settings, given the requirements of the newest games.

 

I went to best buy today and clearly noticed the blurring when turning the res down. Not sure what it's like in games but on the desktop it was very noticeable.

 

Yes, it makes quite the difference, doesn't it. I haven't really gamed much in non-native resolution, but I would imagine you would get pretty poor quality, just as you saw on the desktop.

 

I always game in non-native resolution rofl... then again my eyes are always blurry so i probably dont notice : P

 

I, unfortunately, have never had a graphics card good enough to play games at a native resolution. I have never noticed that much difference on my LCD monitors when playing games at low resolution (640x480, 800x600) with low settings than the same settings with native resolutions (1280x1024). I've always felt it looked fine.

Now, when not playing games, but rather word processing, web surfing, photo editing, etc., I find running at a non-native resolution digustingly blurry. I've always preferred ultra-high resolutions as I like having the extra workspace.

If you don't want the extra workspace and want things to be large, running a lower resolution, don't get the WSXGA+, and you probably don't want the WXGA+. WXGA will be just fine.

I've never had a 15.4" WSXGA+ screen before, and this is one of my main qualms about the 1520 I'm thinking of ordering. I want the high resolution, but I don't know if the screen is wide enough, so I did some measurements.

A while back, I had a 17" CRT monitor that was capable of running a 1600x1200, and that was my preferred resolution. It was a fine size and worked wonderfully, I could read size 10 font from several feet away no problems.

It was a 4:3 ratio on the monitor, so we can make a triangle with a hypotenuse of 16.5" (viewable) with a tangent of 3/4. The arctan of 3/4 is about 37°. The sin of 37° times 16.5" is 9.9". The cos of 37° times 16.5" is 13.2".

Thus we have a screen which I am very comfortable with, running 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels, at 13.2" by 9.9".

Now, 1680x1050 is roughly equivalent to that, only have 80 more horizontal pixels, and the 150 of the other is lost by the widescreen.

The ratio of this monitor is probably 16:10, and the arctan of 10/16 is 32°. The sin of 32° times 15.4" is 8.2". The cos of 32° times 15.4" is 13.0".

So, now we hve a monitor 13.0" by 8.2", running 1680 pixels by 1050 pixels.

1680/13.0" is 128 pixels per inch, and 1600/13.2" is 121 pixels per inch.
1050/8.2" is 128 pixels per inch, and 1200/9.9" is 121 pixels per inch.

Dividing 128 p/in by 121 p/in give me a ratio of 1.058, which is an increase of 6%.

Thus, there are 6% more pixels per inch with this laptop versus my old CRT monitor which I was very happy with the resolution. Therefore, I figured that I can indeed handle this resolution very easily, although I have been using 1280x1024 on a 4:3 17" LCD for the past few years.

If you want to, you can do calculations yourself, comparing past monitors to the new one you want to buy, especially if there are no 1680x1050 15.4" screens for you to see.

 

I just posted this over in a Dell thread about resolution. I figure it might help some people decide over new laptops:

The line marks the math and after that there is a data table.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Typically, I would suspect that most people nowadays use a 17" 4:3 monitor with a 1280x1024 resolution and an aspect ratio of 5:4.

arctan(4/5) = 39°
sin(39°)*17" = 10.6"
cos(39°)*17" = 13.3"

10.6" x 13.3"

1280 pixels/13.3 inches = 1024 pixels/10.6 inches = 96 pixels per inch <- This is the important number

For a 19" monitor:

sin(39°)*19" = 12.0"
cos(39°)*19" = 14.8"

14.8" x 12.0"

1280 pixels/14.8 inches = 1024 pixels/12.0 inches = 86 pixels per inch

For a 17" 1024x768 monitor:

arctan(3/4) = 37°
sin(37°)*17" = 10.2"
cos(37°)*17" = 13.6"

1024 pixels/13.6 inches = 768 pixels/10.2 inches = 75 pixels per inch

For a 20.1" 1600x1200 monitor:

arctan(3/4) = 37°
sin(37°)*20.1" = 12.1"
cos(37°)*20.1" = 16.1"

1600 pixels/16.1 inches = 1200 pixels/12.1 inches = 99 pixels per inch

For a 15" 1024x768 monitor:

arctan(3/4) = 37°
sin(37°)*15" = 9.0"
cos(37°)*15" = 12.0"

1024 pixels/12.0 inches = 768 pixels/9.0 inches = 85 pixels per inch

Now to compare the laptops:

They all have the same ratio: 16:10, so I can use the same angle from my previous post: 32°.

17" Wide

sin(32°)*17" = 9.0"
cos(32°)*17" = 14.4"

1440 pixels/14.4 inches = 900 pixels/9.0 inches = 100 pixels per inch
1680 pixels/14.4 inches = 1050 pixels/9.0 inches = 117 pixels per inch
1920 pixels/14.4 inches = 1200 pixels/9.0 inches = 133 pixels per inch

15.4" Wide

sin(32°)*15.4" = 8.2"
cos(32°)*15.4" = 13.0"

1280 pixels/13.0 inches = 800 pixels/8.2 inches = 98 pixels per inch
1440 pixels/13.0 inches = 900 pixels/8.2 inches = 110 pixels per inch
1680 pixels/13.0 inches = 1050 pixels/8.2 inches = 129 pixels per inch

14.1" Wide

sin(32°)* 14.1" = 7.5"
cos(32°)*14.2" = 12.0"

1280 pixels/12.0 inches = 800 pixels/7.5 inches = 107 pixels per inch
1440 pixels/12.0 inches = 900 pixels/7.5 inches = 120 pixels per inch

13.3" Wide

sin(32°)*13.3" = 7.0"
cos(32°)*13.3" = 11.3"

1280 pixels/11.3 inches = 800 pixels/7.0 inches = 114 pixels per inch
1440 pixels/11.3 inches = 900 pixels/7.0 inches = 128 pixels per inch

12.1" Wide

sin(32°)*12.1" = 6.4"
cos(32°)*12.1" = 10.3"

1280 pixels/10.3 inches = 800 pixels/6.4 inches = 125 pixels per inch

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that the technical jargon's all done, here's the useful part.

Find your current desktop monitor on the table below, and if you like the size of icons and text on your current monitor, compare it to one on the laptop table and find the numbers closest to it. If you want text and icons smaller, find a bigger number. If you want text and icons bigger, find a smaller number.

a table:

Standard Resolution
15" XGA (1024x768): 85 p/in
17" XGA (1024x768): 75 p/in
17" SXGA (1280x1024): 96 p/in
19" SXGA (1280x1024): 86 p/in
20.1" UXGA (1600x1200): 99 p/in

Wide Laptop Resolution
12.1" WXGA (1280x800): 125 p/in
13.3" WXGA (1280x800): 114 p/in
13.3" WXGA+ (14404x900): 128 p/in
14.1" WXGA (1280x800): 107 p/in
14.1" WXGA+ (1440x900): 120 p/in
15.4" WXGA (1280x800): 98 p/in
15.4" WXGA+ (1440x900): 110 p/in
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050: 129 p/in
17" WXGA+ (1440x900): 100 p/in
17" WSXGA+ (1680x1050): 117 p/in
17" WUXGA (1920x1200): 133 p/in

Remember: the smaller the number the bigger the text and icons and vice versa.

If anyone wants me to do any calculations for a monitor I don't have listed, just ask.

 

A very good argument, but this is the first time it's been raised. Everyone is complaining about font sizes so that's the issue I've been speaking to.

Text scaling does not look bad. I think maybe you have font anti-aliasing turned off or something misconfigured. Open up Microsoft Word and type something. Now change the size to 10 point font. Now change it to 28 point font. Now change it to 40 point font. The quality is unaffected. Fonts are designed to be scalable and look great at any size. If you taskbar is too small for the font you've selected, increase the size of your taskbar to match.

Maybe Vista is just really Really REALLY awful at using fonts. On OSX, Linux, and Windows XP, you just adjust the size of all the fonts and window decorations and icons and everything scales to precisely the right size that you're comfortable with. It's all anti-aliased and looks crisp and smooth no matter what size it's set to. Doesn't matter what applications your using, whether your browsing the web, working on a spreadsheet, or typing commands at the command line. It doesn't matter.

I have a hard time believing that Vista can't do the same thing. Heck, my XP business laptop has a 1440x900 screen and it's 15". I found the fonts and icons and window decorations waaaay too small to see at their default sizes - so I adjusted them all larger to a comfortable size. It looks very very nice. They're all sized about like they would be on a 15" @ 1024x768, everything is crisp and smooth and anti-aliased.

Your problem with font sizing sounds like user error.