Screen resolution wars

Laptop manufacturers have always said, when asked, that their choice of laptop panels, 16:9, low resolution etc were dictated by panel makers.

However, in the past year, courtesy of the ipad, and people wanting a pie of that $$, we have seen
a slew of tablets with very high resolutions at very low cost.
--Amazon kindle fire 9.7" at 1920x1080
--BN Nook 9" at 1920x1280
--MS Surface 10.6" 1920x1080
--Nexus 10" at 2560x1600

So, were the story we told by the laptop manufacturers just a load of [BEEP]?

 

Retina displays, 1800p are comming in 2013. But they will probably be very expensive.

I know that problem why arent there just high resolution laptops with cheap hardware?

 

10" and smaller hi-res 'toys' are not notebooks with usable 14/15/16/17" screens.

We weren't lied to - but we definitely weren't told the truth either.

And don't forget how many years it took to get these low cost 'toys' too.

We're still not there yet with hi-res displays (on the notebook front) but even when we are - I hope that Windows 8 implements it better than OS/x does.

 

Those high resolutions on handheld devices are all marketing. Is it really necessary for a 9-10 inch device to have such high resolution screens when laptops are still being sold with 1366x768 resolution screens primarily. There's a disconnect there. Larger screens need higher resolution moreso than a tiny one. You also can be more productive on a high res screen on a laptop/desktop where on a handheld tablet it just looks a little better to watch your reality TV shows and reading romance novels.

 

I'm hardly opposed to large resolutions on any screen (even though we could have had them much sooner)... however, I do agree there's a disconnection between the smartphones, pads and laptops in that area.
As you pointed out HTWingNut, a lot of laptops are still sold with 1366x768 resolution, and smartphones, given the hardware they currently have, wouldn't seem to benefit from such large resolutions - whereas laptops could because they have ample power to run demanding content at such resolutions.

The manufacturers seems to me are cutting corners wherever possible. They probably want to retain the notion that lower resolution displays are 'cheaper' to make, or they save up some costs themselves (even though ALL manufacturers jack up the sales prices well beyond manufacturing costs).

 

You already said it: the disconnect is due to marketing. And right now its the small devices that are what's selling. Manufactures will do whatever it takes to keep that ball rolling. Laptop sales aren't just aren't motivated that easily

That's logic. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it?

 

This is what I am asking. That the previous his res screen "shortage" and the move to 16:9 was not motivated by supply constraints by the panel makers, but rather by the marketing boneheads.

 

Honestly, things look so small with retina display that I am not big on going to anything more than 1080p or 1200p now.

 

You can always increase font size/dpi to maintain a large physical size, but much much clearer images/text.

 

I would love a computer screen (notebook or desktop) with 30K x 24K resolution and the O/S to scale it back to anywhere I need (around 1920x1600 for my eyesight...). With the available high MP cameras available and the requests from clients for smaller, more 'reasonable' files - I can deliver astonishing images at 8x10 or smaller with no visible imperfections (chromatic aberrations, noise, lens distortion, etc.) even when viewed on an LCD/LED monitor at 100% (equivalent to an almost 10 meter print on certain monitors) - why? Because I can down sample my original 150MB+ RAW images to a super crisp ~5MB to 12MB jpeg.

Notice the much more preferable 5:4 aspect ratio of this 'dream' monitor I'm envisioning.

With that high resolution (small, small, small lcd 'pixels') we would finally have the same type of scaling we once had with CRT's along with all the benefits of LED/LCD's we enjoy now.

Win8 is able to do that now - (I don't know of any video cards that can handle this yet). The challenge is

 

As tiller said, there is one problem with high resolutions: you need a GPU/IGP that can deliver for a modern OS at that resolution.

The move to 16:9 was definitely motivated by marketing, it's likely that panel manufacturers were moving to 16:9 due to the way "HD" was being marketed, but laptop manufacturers could definitely have stuck with 16:10 and the manufacturers would have delivered. Instead they jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back, likely for both marketing driven reasons as well as monetary reasons.

My personal opinion on this is that rather than going for ridiculously high PPI, go for higher quality displays.

 

Laptops have low res screens becuase laptops are a matured product that does not have alot of buzz, they are not "in" right now. Laptop sales are not surging, tablets and smart phones are. So manuf's are making their products stand out by using high res screens. If laptop were a growth market we would have more high res screens. Laptop profit margins are thin, there is not a lot of room to add in goodies and make money, when 90% of consumers buy cheap 15.6 laptops with low res screen and don't care about high res screens. From what I read Intel was happy when the manuf's switched to 16:9 screens over 16:10 because it made battery get better because of less screen to light. If people demanded high res screens, we would get them, but people like us on these forum are a small percent, we do not count. The best that laptop makers can do is make XPS and Envy latptops, but they cost more, and even people who are on this forum do not get the best, the majority of people here, the enthusiast have basic laptops. At the end of the day its business, and money is all that matters, 15.6 inch laptops with 1366X768 screens make money. 1080P screen do not.

 

I agree, lets stop at 1080P screen and make them all high quality, who needs anything over 1080P, it is the highest needed for retail videos. The ~1 percent that needs there laptop for work can use an external monitor, or a Retina Mac.

 

[beep] macs.
I want 2560x1600 screen on my windows and linux non-exhorbitant priced 17" laptops to work at home in bed.

There is actually a 15" IPS QXGA (2048 x 1536) panel for the R50p thinkpad.

 

that panel works in the t60/t61 as well. husband has it in a T-60

 

Oh it does??
SWEET. I gotta get me a T61 and that panel.

 

you have to mod it in. all directions are at one of the lenovo forums. in Canada they actually offered it as an option for t60/61

 

NICE! Go Canada!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Never!

tencharacters

 

and those laptops with 1366x768 SUCK, surfing the web has to be torture.

 

Only thing I can say is I buy notebooks with good screens or mod them myself (M17x R2 WUXGA RGBLED, WUXGA swap into my Vostro 1500, my X61 tablet had SXGA+ for 12" 2nd highest PPI in a massed produced notebook, my Sager has a 1080p LCD).

The MSI Whitebook I bought for my friend didn't have the greatest 1368x768 panel, but the viewing angles were decent, kinda too blue.

Yeah the QXGA+ mod can be done in any 15" 4:3 ThinkPad IIRC.

 

Presuming one is young enough to have the eyesight for it...I don't anymore and am therefore sticking with UXGA and WSXGA+...

The one I recently built and sold...click on the attachment in the second post here:

My FrankenPads... - Lenovo Community