Is laptop screen techonology lagging behind???

Hello guys, just want to hear your comments on this subject...
I am researching for a new laptop and I was surprised to find out that 5 years after my previous purchase, laptop screens seem to be very poor and there seems to be very few progress compared to other components and even compared to screens in phone or tablets.

My actual laptop is a Dell XPS 15 (L502x) bought in 2011. At the time I paid additional 200$ for having the best screen option and I am in love with it. Even with the premium screen, however, the laptop was around 950$ with very good specs... great value for the money and still working great.

Researching now I see that some cheap laptops still use ridiculous below Full HD resolutions, while my 200$ phone (a very cheap mid range Chinese Xiaomi) has a good, very bright and vivid FHD display.
Most machines around 700-1300$ are equipped with rather poor FHD panels. For instance, I bought an MSI GE72 Apache Pro and found a Chi Mei screen with very poor and unpleasant colors (and I returned it!).
Higher end machines might have above FHD resolution and better panels, but even in that case you end up having issues with OS text scaling, after paying a consistent price for the upgrade.
At the same time, displays in phone and tablets have higher resolutions and better quality and seem to be improving extremely fast...

How is it possible that on a similar price range, I could get a better screen in 2011 than now?
Is it just my impression?
What do you think?

Cheers!

 

Because around 2011, people were making and selling high gamut, good-contrast screens. Mostly TN panels, though. 95% NTSC gamut with nice deep blacks wasn't uncommon in 2011-2013 for 15", and 17" had nice 90% NTSC gamuts and a lot of good 72% NTSC gamut panels with even some 120Hz offerings.

People didn't care enough about high gamut and nice colours. They stopped making and selling them, because not enough demand. Now, people are chasing them, but they're also chasing "IPS", because the general public got word that IPS panels look vivid and bright and have great contrast, and great viewing angles (important for a laptop). So they started making IPS panels, but compared to the desktop panels they're a joke. 25ms response time as opposed to 4ms-10ms on desktops, as low as 60% NTSC gamut instead of 72% NTSC + near 100% sRGB and Adobe RGB on desktops, high contrast but unimpressive black levels or white levels at times, etc. People seem to jump at them though, because IPS.

Now, I always butt heads with some other members here who say that IPS is great and all, and I would be inclined to agree. But what's available now is either low quality TN (like the Chi Mei you returned) or low-quality IPS compared to what desktops have, and I don't think the available panels are even close to the quality of what we had two or three years ago in plentiful abundance. Maybe in a few years better panels will hit the market, but as of right now, your best bet is hunting for a machine with a decent IPS panel in it, and doing lots of research beforehand about what the best panels are and which machines offer them. Or, you can pick a laptop, and inquire about its screen from the manufacturer or ask around on the forums for the panel numbers, and check up the panel itself on panelook.com and decide whether or not you like it.

Also please note that like IPS, high resolution is a HUGE craze. HUGE. So you're likely going to also find a lot of very high resolution panels once you hit the "gaming" and "premium productivity" tiers of notebooks.

 

Well, first of all thank you for your reply.
Honestly, I feel better knowing that I am not crazy and that someone else noticed this issue.

I am curious to see what others have to say because I really don't understand what's wrong....
Your point about demand driving this technology is certainly valid and I did notice myself the craze for high resolution.

At the same time, I am still quite surprised. Most screen technologies are very mature and production costs for standard FHD resolution should not be that high, considering how fast screen quality is growing on smartphones and how very good screens are now mounted on even relatively cheap phones and tablets...

To tell you the truth, when I first turned on the MSI I bought, it was sort of ridiculous... I had a brand new 1200$ machine in front of me that mounted the worst screen in the house!
My very cheap 200$ phone had a more pleasant, bright and vivid FHD screen, my 5 year old 950$ laptop has a far better FHD screen, my Samsung tablet has a much better screen with higher than FHD resolution (2560x1600).

I am not obsessed or anything, but a good screen is a fundamental component for a laptop in front of which I will spend a ton of time and that also serves as my TV. The idea that it is difficult (very, apparently!) to find a good screen on a 1000+ $ laptop drives me crazy....and sad, since I guess I will have to compromise and see pale yellowish images for the next few years.

I will keep researching, but look forward people's opinion on this.

Cheers

 

Any opinions on the 17.3" UltraSharp™ UHD IGZO (3840x2160) Wide View Anti-Glare LED-backlit, with camera and microphone [add $170.00] for the Dell Precision 17 inch laptop?

 

The problem is with desktop LCD's you are buying just the LCD. It's a market in itself. With laptops the LCD is part of a larger package. The focus is how thin can they make the laptop and "quality construction" of the laptop and materials, but LCD and other components get the "good enough" treatment. Probably for 95% of the laptop user base the IPS LCD's provided are good enough for their use. It would be nice to see though if laptop manufacturers offered there regular LCD's but offered an upgrade to a higher gamut, faster response LCD for $100 more what the response would be.

It's unfortunate but that's how market supply/demand and features work. If they had enough complaints about the LCD they *might* consider improving. But most people are enamored with the LCD's they get that I'm sure that's bottom of their complaint list.

Unfortunately most buyers are lemmings, they buy what's offered without batting an eye. I don't mean that negatively, just that most people don't care enough to spend their personal time and resources on such matters. It's the serious video and photo editors and die-hard gamers that care, but are a small minority.

 

Video and photo editors will generally be using professional workstation notebooks that still offer those high-end screen options, and when they're not on the road, they will be connected to an appropriate external monitor.

 

We are seeing some light from OLED laptop panels, but that will take a while. (2-3 years till initial batch of high-end offers and 5 before mainstream?)

The problem is even WS laptops are, in general, offering worse screens than what was available a few years ago. And that's when we only worry about gamut/contrast/view_angle. If you also worry about blur/lag, there's basiclly nothing to buy.

 

There are almost none in production. Any "still high end screens" are out of production for years. Unless there are in-house screens that are made specifically for business-class notebooks and will not be sold for, or usable in, other notebooks. But if you're buying from LG, AUO, or Chi Mei, etc, you're not going to find amazing new products for reasons I and HTWingnut have explained above.

If good screens were available to buy and use, I wouldn't be complaining about the default panels so much. It's that choice seems nonexistent these days.

 

Betteridge's Law.

Spoiler

That said, there are great laptop displays out there, but you're not going to find them in your Walmart specials.

As a baseline, the XPS line is still boasting decent displays. Then there's Apple, who's making decent displays as well. Most business-class laptops offer great matte display options, and if you want really really good color quality, look into Dreamcolor and PremierColor displays.

 

I don't think you can call Apple and most non-DC/PC WS screen options "decent". Maybe better than Walmart laptop average but not "decent".

While I agree with HTWingNut's comment that laptop screens are sold as parts of larger packages and tend to get the "good enough" (or "not bad enough") treatment, it's still reasonable to compare them with desktop counterparts from a technical perspective. And when we do the comparison we are not happy.

 

Well, maybe a better word could be "baseline", as in I wouldn't even consider a Walmart special solely based on the display. While their color qualities aren't amazing, the resolution for the higher-end options of XPS/Apple/etc. make up for it imo (though obviously for a graphic designed it'd be a turn-off).

 

With eDP becoming standard in most notebooks, there might be a chance for better options. The might stands for - if anyone dares to make one (decent display) in first place. The current top-of-the-line displays are 8bit and WLED (the latest 4K DreamColor, PremierColor and lenovo's P-series options) - the ones that were phased out were 10bit RGB LED... and the response time hasn't improved either. So I agree with the OP, even though there's some progress made, it's more like leveling and equalization (bumping the quality a bit in the consumer lines, degrading it in the WS), than overall improving. I'm looking forward for the day when a new display technology would be introduced and widely available, and this LCD nonsense would be buried for good.

 

The Dell XPS mentioned above seems to mount a good panel (according to what I read, I haven't seen it in person). Apple has good screens. I am sure other options can be found as well. However, that was not exactly the point I was trying to make here...

Other laptop components are improving really fast. Just by focusing on my usual price range (around 1000USD, with some flexibility), here are some examples:

• A laptop ten years ago mounted a normal (slow) hard disk, while now you can find options with fast SSDs and even NVMe ready
  
• My 4.5 years old graphic card gives me 3-5 fps in some games that a new card could run easily (maybe not on very high details, but you get the point)
• CPUs improve steadily with a 5-10% speed increase per generation and other side benefits (heat, power consumption...)

Two elements did not really improve much: batteries and screens.
For batteries, it seems progress is slow also for mobile phones and so I accept it (and, still, they didn't get worse)...
Screen, instead, are improving really fast on everything but laptops, and we're talking about a technology that is similar (if not the same) among products: desktop monitors, TVs, phones and tablets. I would expect quality to go up easily and production costs to go down as easily. Honestly, I would imagine phone screens production to be the more challenging, given the smaller size (and, by now, much higher PPI when compared to laptops).

A few people here lament the quality of recent screens and going through the forum there's plenty others buying a laptop and then looking for a screen replacement. I find it crazy because a basic panel of relatively high quality, should simply be the standard in 2015.
The "market" explanations someone gave here are valid, I understand them and I understand that it does not make much sense to put good screens on laptops if people don't ask for it. Still, considering the progress for screens in other products, it should be really easy and cheap to buy a decent panel (easier than find a crappy one!)

I repeat what I already said, my cheap 200$ Chinese phone has a better screen (same resolution, better brightness and, by very very far, better colors) than the 1200$ MSI laptop I sent back. CRAZY

 

eDP doesn't change the tech much. What needs to happen is response times need to go down, contrast needs to improve, and colour coverage needs to improve, and refresh rates need to improve for gaming-tier panels. Hell, I'd go so far as to say *EVERYBODY* would benefit from a 120Hz/144Hz panel by default.

 

@Diegor

Battery improvement is way harder. There are some inherent physical limitations on chemical battery density and almost every possible element/ion that can work under the existing framework has been tested. Until some paradigm shift happens, this will remain a balancing game.

The problem with screens, on the other side, is purely lack of desire to do better.

 

Agreed! Very true! I'm happy with the 60Hz LG IPS Screen I have but something better would always be welcome!

 

Basically what I said. We need a quality display options and there are none. The eDP would make it easier to upgrade to this hopeful save-us-all display, again, if it ever comes. It's not like a few years ago when one had to count wires, then to make sure (s)he's not dealing with a proprietary panel, then single/dual lamp, LED, RGB LED (!!!) and etc. Display upgrades were a little science.

 

You've looked at the
17.3" UltraSharp™ UHD IGZO (3840x2160) Wide View Anti-Glare LED-backlit, with camera and microphone [add $170.00] for the Dell Precision 17 inch laptop?

 

Well, at least now I know that the choice is indeed poor and that I will have to, somehow, compromise...
Personally, I care mostly for decent colors and for a panel that doesn't make my eyes too tired. An IPS 60Hz would be fine for me too, I hope I will find a well balanced machine mounting something like that... (it seems some new Asus have IPS options, but I am not sure they will sell them here in China)

Thank you for the discussion anyway...it was interesting to discover how things evolved in the last years.
Cheers

 

There is indeed a huge gap between what's available for laptops vs desktops. Not to mention that, if you shop around, you can get a pretty good deal on desktop panels, while the same $ will get you a pretty average laptop panel.

I recently picked up a Dell UltraSharp U2515H (25" 1440p IPS panel, 99% sRGB, 6ms response times, 350 nits brightness) for around $280 USD after tax and shipping. You'd be hard-pressed to get anything even remotely close to those specs for that price in a laptop (even ignoring the size difference) these days. That display also comes with a 3 year warranty (even a single defective pixel is enough to trigger an exchange) and you get advance exchange, where Dell will ship you the replacement display first, then you send your old one back.

There's just no comparison. While laptops now can use desktop CPUs (and some of them even desktop GPUs), they use the same SSDs and RAM is about the same, display panels are one area where laptops currently fall flat. Not to mention the modularity of desktop displays (you have to consider the laptop display as part of the whole package, while you can pick whatever desktop monitor you want).

As mentioned previously in this thread, at some point in time laptop manufacturers realized that a lot of consumers were somewhat indifferent to the quality of the display - they were more interested in cost, and how thin/attractive the machine was. I sometimes use my relative's laptops, and am appalled at the piss-poor screens they come with. Low-res, bad contrast, dim, poor colour coverage - just abysmal. Yet, given their usage, they don't seem to mind.

I, on the other hand, use my machine for playing games, watching videos and viewing photos. I require a high-quality display (though I'm ok with not have G-SYNC or high refresh rates at this point in time).

OEMs give the masses what they want, and what they currently want is a cheap, thin laptop that's "good enough". Even the new generation of laptop gamers seems ok with a sub-par display, so long as they get a reasonably powerful laptop in a thin package that doesn't cost too much. They aren't willing to pony up the extra cash required to add a high-quality panel to the mix.

I personally don't get it though. Far too little attention/money is spent on your system's I/O devices, and these are how you actually interact with your machine. The keyboard, mouse, speakers and display essentially ARE your machine from the end-users perspective - the hardware inside the desktop/laptop are just there to process the data you input and then send the output to the display/speakers. Yet people often try to get the cheapest I/O devices they can so they have more to spend on the RAM/SSD/CPU/GPU. There needs to be balance in any system, and you don't match a $1000 display with a $200 Wal-mart special, just like you don't spend $3K on a machine and then pick up a $100 monitor/keyboard/mouse cheapo combo.

 

I fully agree! The I/O has to be solid, but obviously that's where the most corner cuttings occur recently. Take the new Precisions for example, the keyboard layout is terrible, could barely care about the typing quality with such layout. All that most people care about are numbers. Be it benchmarks, specs, whatever. Can't be bothered how they are going to make use of them (input), or how they are going to see them (display) as long as they (the numbers) are high, there's no problem.

Of course I've looked at it. Two things - as mentioned - 8bit WLED and secondly - 4K. Sorry but for me at least 4K on 17", let alone 15" is over the top. Windows doesn't scale (good), and that's the main reason to not like these gimmicky resolutions (if you can't use it all, it's gimmick for me). At Macs picture at least looks REALLY sharp. Windows - running at native would make you blind, lowering the res makes everything ugly, so no thank you. As for the panel's internals - my current display is 10bit WUXGA (yeah, 16:10) RGB LED IPS (a mouthful, I know), everything that's on the market currently is a downgrade for me.