What screen resolution for a 17" laptop?

Hi
I wasn't sure whether to post this here or under "What Notebook Should I buy", I hope my question is ok here.
I'm planning on buying my Dad a laptop for his 75th Birthday, one with a nice big screen. I'm open to suggestions but the one I'm currently looking at is the HP ENVY dv7-7203ea.
It has a 17.3" screen and the resolution is 1600 x 900. I noticed an old thread on here saying that a 1600 x 900 res screen made the writing very small to read and the reason I want a large screen for him is so it'd be easier to read, so is 1600 x 900 innappropriate? If so, what'd be the best resolution to go for, with a 17.3" screen please?
Thanks!

 

I would agree that 1600 x 900 would be hard on a 75 year old (congrats to him, btw!).

While most here would say 1366 x 768 is much too low resolution for a 17.3" screen; it will give nice and big readable fonts for your dad.

If you can't find a setup like that the next best thing would be the same low res screen on a 15.6" or 16" screen size.

Good luck.

 

Haven't seen any 768p 17.3" displays since... forever. 900p is the standard for 17.3" laptops, and it's comparable to 768p in 15.6" laptops (roughly the same PPI).

Anyway, I'm doubtful that either 768p or 900p would be hard to read for an older man. My vision is absolute garbage (-4.5) and I can see just fine with either my contacts/glasses (use a laptop like any normal person) or without them (I have to lean in a bit, but not unreasonably close).

 

And, you can always increase the display size of icons, text, etc., so things wouldn't necessarily have to be tiny.

 

To me, there is a distinct difference in font size of 1600x900 17" screens and 1366x768 15.6" screens, with the latter being much easier to read. It is not only the ppi that matters - it is also the brightness of the pixels/screen too; as we get older we need much more brightness to see 'easily'. So while privatejarhead may have 'garbage' vision, he is also (guessing) much younger and the brightness aspect of vision isn't coming into play for him as much as for a 75 year old.

I would not want to run into the hassle of increasing the size of fonts and icons and risking 'breaking' a program - I would much prefer to get the proper native resolution for the intended use (your 75yr old dad).

 

Correct, still in college I can only speak for vision clarity, not how brightness would affect usability since I don't have the experience of a 75yo.

 

Thanks for confirming (age)!

Also need to mention that along with acuity and brightness, different people see very near, near, far and very far differently too.

The 'need for more light' to see things as effortless and detailed as we need to as as we get older is something that sneaks up on us around middle age for most people but keeps getting worse each year along with other effects that we might otherwise blame on other things.

See:
Adult Vision:
41 to 60 Years of Age | American Optometric Association

See:
Aging Eyes - Age Related Eye Problems - RealAge

 

You can easily adjust the DPI of fonts in Windows so resolution isn't an issue. I'm personally using a 17' Acer laptop with a 1600x900 resolution and 125% higher DPI fonts myself and it is definitely readable (moreso than 1920x1080 even, while not being too big). Have perfect near vision but I do it out of preference since it makes most text look much smoother. Has not broken any applications or games that I've used over the course of 1 year either. Only places where you will see such "small" text are apps that don't support DPI scaling, but then the text would be small even in larger resolutions.

EDIT: Though yeah, on second thought, 1366x768 might be better since the user interface can't be scaled like that as far as I know...if image quality isn't such a big deal and you just want usability, you could even consider downscaling the resolution on a higher res screen.