1680x1050 vs. 1280x800 Screen

Wait....on the actual screenshot, it says the monitor screen is at 1680*1050 on both of them lol

 

Yes it is 1680x1050 using 1280x800, people say it's fuzzy or something else weird, but i cannot in any way at all see the difference in sharpness or anything else, not even my friend i just showed it too, i just asked him which looks better, he said the first pic looked better (the 1280x800).. So what's all this hype about!?

 

A couple notes - you can always change the default font size in your web browser if you want it larger or smaller. Well written web pages always use relative font sizes, so they'll adjust proportionately to your setting.

Personally I find the default font sizes to be too large, and always drop them a bit (default to 10 or 12 points usually, typically they start at 16 points which is like reading something written in crayon...)

I have the 1680x1050 on my dv5z, I think it's a really good size for most of the work I do, in US ASCII. I recently had to work with a lot of text in Cyrillic, and in that case my normal font setting of 10 points was too small for me to see the difference between several of the characters, so I upped it to 14 point to be able to work with it comfortably.

As for fuzziness from scaling down - the higher the native resolution of the LCD, the less of a problem this becomes. Since the individual pixels are so much smaller, and the video card's anti-aliasing hardware is so good, the card can smoothe things out so that you don't really notice any fuzziness. Likewise, a 15.4" 1920x1200 display would downscale even better/more smoothly, because its native pixels are tinier still. But if you start with, say, a 1024x768 display and downscale it to 800x600, of course it's going to look like hell because the native pixels were kind of chunky to begin with, and no amount of anti-aliasing is going to smoothe out all the artifacts going down to 800x600.

All in all, My Opinion is that finer pitch / higher resolution is *always* better / more versatile than lower.

 

Well I also fail to see that much fuzziness in the down scaling as shown in those screenshots.

I do wonder though where the "gaming at anything but native resolution is bad" ideas come from(those from the gaming section here at NBR) because judging from these screenshots, there is little if any difference. Unless game downscaling is particularly bad compared to the Windows desktop or something

Anyways, the OP seems to have a budget(I'm assuming its' 1000$ since he speaks of 999$ in a post) so if the 1680*1050 is affecting the budget, I'd say don't bother since he doesn't seem to really need it(and he seems to prefer it), but if the budget allows it, I'd say get it and downscale(it doesn't seem to look that bad) since worse comes to worst, you can always upscale the resolution later if you feel like it. The main con with my idea is that if you never feel the need to upscale the res, you basically kind of spent money on an upgrade you'd never use

So someone tell me, am I just bind for not really seeing any difference between a 1200*800 resolution, a 1680*1050 and a 1920*1200 resolution other than the actual size of the stuff >_>

 

Something just occurred to me about those screenshots. We wouldn't see a difference since we are not looking at the actual laptops LCD. I thought I saw fuzziness but since I looked again I don't.

highlandsun, I am assuming that since you didn't mention it, when you downscale you display to 1280x800, it still looks clear to you?

 

Of course you won't see any fuzz because it does not show up in screencaps; it is a physical limitation of your hardware, so you're not going to see something that is not there. You really have to see one in person to get a feel for it. I have never seen a higher res downscale to a crystal clear image, but of course I have not seen every lcd ever made either.

 

Get the 1680x1050. You can always increase the DPI if its too small.

 

Well, it's not perfect, you can obviously tell that it's been scaled, but it's not drop-dead ugly. 800x600 on a 1024x768 LCD from 1999 was extremely ugly.

Hm, funny thing, taking a photo of the screen won't tell you a whole lot either, especially if you're using a digital camera, unless the camera's resolution is *much* higher than your LCD display's ...

 

I advise you to see if you can call up some local college bookstores and see if they have any laptops on display and ask them about what resolution they have. I went to a local college bookstore and it answered a lot of my questions. It can be very difficult to find a higher res notebook at any of these Best Buy type stores. In fact it was funny, I saw a WSXGA+ screen at a Dell Kiosk, and they all closed down. I went to BestBuy and they had one ASUS with WSXGA+ and that disappeared the next day; they stopped carrying it.

 

I disagree. When you adjust the dpi a lot things re-size themselves , and although certain things look ok, other's don't. I use reading glasses and am an old fart, so what I like may not apply to you. I advise that anybody thinking about getting a 1680x1050 screen, that he or she actually try one out to see what suites them. It really is a matter of personal preference and you cant "tell" someone which one to get.

 

My personal experience with 1680x1050 (15.4") was that it was a bit distracting after 3+ hrs of usage. I have read comments saying that some other users were not able to use it at all and had to replace their laptops.

I am using a 1440x900 (14.1") right now and this looks a lot better.

If you are gonna buy a new laptop but are not sure about the resolution, visit any BestBuy and take a look at the machines there. A better way is to borrow your friend's machine and try to use it for 5+ hours. The longer you use the better idea you will have...



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Thanks for everyones help, but the order was already dropped at the factory (thought it says it will ship the 19th?) and nothing can be changed. Oh well, I was leaning toward the lower resolution anyway. I wear glasses and my sight is already crappy. lol

 

Yeah it says it will ship on the 19th but it says my order has been dropped to factory. Which I have no idea what it means

 

One example of how adjusting dpi settings can have a negative effect is: If you go to AOL's home page, there is a revolving series of news stories in the center of the page with accompanying photos. On my Lenovo T61 1680x1050 screen, if you adjust the dpi settings for a larger font size, there is a very noticeable degradation in the quality of these pictures in the center of the web page. The rest of the web page looks fine. If you view the web page in the Lenovo's native resolution of 1680x1050 the pictures look fine, but still doesn't look as good as the quality on my Compaq 1280x800 screen. (although the Lenovo T61 has a brighter screen than the Compaq V6120us, when plugged into it's power supply) There is no degradation in the appearance of print when you adjust the dpi settings on the Lenovo T61 1680x1050 screen. My general impression about the differences between the Lenovo T61 1680x1050 Vs. the Compaq V6000 1280x800 Screen is that for Business and word processing the Lenovo is better, but for multimedia the Compaq is better. I guess there really is a method to the madness for the Compaq was advertised as a Multimedia Laptop and the Lenovo T61 is advertised as business laptop!! (this was my first unofficial mini-mini-review/comparison of two different laptops)(P.S. The Lenovo has a much better CPU than the Compaq. If I could just remove that CPU and put it into the Comp................... )

 

Agreed. I have both screens 1680x1050 and a 1280x800 and let me say this, unless you have real good eyesight pass on the high res option. I made the mistake of ordering my T60 with the WUXGA screen and I regret it as everything is just too small.

As John said 1400x900 for a 15.4" laptop is a very good choice and I would not consider it a compromise.

 

Looks like you have the WSXGA+(1680x1050) resolution not the WUXGA(1900x1200), or is this another machine than the one in your sig?

 

I'm sure it's too late to make a difference for you, but 1280x800 is horribly low res. I've been using 1680x1050 on my Dell 15.4" laptop for over 3 years now and won't buy a new one with less resolution. I'd actually never consider a 1280x800 unless it was a 9" screen; on a 15.4" you might as well save your money... It's that bad....

If you buy (or have bought) the low res version, I think you'll grow to regret it unless you have money to always buy another. Dell is offering 1280x800 because it's cheap, not because it's good. It's the lowest common denominator in today's laptop market. Low purchase price for Dell equals higher profits when uninformed people buy them... Don't be one of those people...

Here's an easy way for anyone to see what the low resolution looks like if you have 5 minutes and use Firefox (assuming you have a monitor with resolution higher than 1280x800). Download the "Web Developer" toolbar from the FF addons page (don't worry, you can always remove it). Itstall it and make the toolbar visible. On the bar you'll see a button called "Resize"; click the button and from the menu that pops up, select "Edit Resize Dimensions". When the dialog pops up, click the "Add" button and enter "1280x800" for description, and the right values for width (1280) and height (800). Click OK and return to the regular browser view. Now click on the toolbars "Resize" button again and select 1280x800. Voila! You now have distorted reality and possess a crummy 1280x800 view of the world. Why not just poke out an eye?

Other thoughts on why you wouldn't want a low resolution screen.

1) Resolution is increasing everywhere (except on bottom of the line laptops) and you'll end up scrolling sooner rather than later. Why choose a "bottom of the barrel" (and it is) solution when for a little more you can get something decent?

2) you may want to watch a movie some day, and it sure looks better in higher resolution.

3) you may want to use your machine for, here it comes, something "other than games/web" one day. Work, web development, whatever. 1280x800 sux all the time.

4) you don't have to fill the screen but when you need more room, you've got. low res screens are always "maxed" out and there's no room to grow.

For those that say they can't see the 1680x1050 type with a font "normal" setting then increase it slightly; in XP - R click on the desktop, R click properties, select the appearance tab, then click the "font size" drop down. Scale it up if you want.

If you really can't read it, and I'm not joking, you probably need to start thinking about getting glasses. Happens to the best of us, and I had to bite the bullet too.

Just say "NO" to low res, cheap panels that mfgs use to increase profits...

PS - and user, on any modern browser, can override the fonts/appearance of any website with a user CSS file. Beyond the scope of this post, but don't let someone stop you from seeing what you want to see...