When would 4k laptops be variable?

Have been using Dell 7720 since January 2013 (i7-3630QM, 1080p, 8GB, 256 SSD +1TB HDD, 2GB 650M). Once I upgraded to 840 Pro SSD - the machine is a pretty much a perfect workstation. I have been looking for the next laptop with lighter build, much longer battery & 4k screen.

The first wave of 4k laptops are just surfacing. I'm really hoping that the they would hit it off from the start - though I think that's perhaps a bit optimistic. E.g. The Toshiba P55T seems to be decent until you realise the battery (43W) and GPU (AMD 265) both leave something to be desired (so far there doesn't seem to be any 17" 4k laptop getting announced).

What would be a sensible call?

-Wait for the Winter when Broadwell arrives.
-Get a 4k laptop before August

Ideas welcomed

 

Does all or almost all the software you use regularly scale well? Or do you have amazing eyesight?

I bought a hi-res laptop because my last one died and I want this one to last 3-4 years. It sounds like yours is only a year old, so maybe wait?

Otherwise take a look at the razer blade and/or MSI ghost pro. Or the M4800 or XPS15.


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Might want to wait a little bit longer. For 2 reasons

Most of the current laptop 4k screens are actually pseudo 4k (something to do with subpixels) which apparently do some funky things to Color accuracy and image clarity. True 4k screens are not far away and if IGZO takes off, then power savings will be worthwhile too.

GPU horsepower. It takes a hell of a lot of ROP output and memory bandwidth to satisfactorily drive a 4k screen to do anything other than word processing, videos and browsing. Broadwell, preferably with the 128mb on die cache and/or DDR4 will allow you to do much much more with the high res screen. Software scaling support will be nice too.

 

There will always something better down the road, such is life in the computer world.

If you can wait, I would imagine by mid or end of next year there will be many more True 4K laptops released.

If not, here are somethings to consider, if you were to buy 4K laptop today:

-Scaling issue, despite windows 8.1 has excellent scaling feature, there are still many software has scaling issue. i.e. Photoshop, Kaspersky....etc.
There are work-around online, so the question is are you willing to spend time to look for it.

Anand has good article on this:
AnandTech | Scaling Windows - The DPI Arms Race

Over time scaling issue will go away, albeit slowly.

-Most "4K" laptops today are actually not 4K, i.e. Razer Blade has 3200 x 1800, not 3840 x 2160. The ONLY true 4K laptop is Toshiba P50T. It is also the only laptop has good color accuracy and image clarity, see link below.

Technicolor:
Toshiba Laptop Display Technicolor Color Certified - Technicolor

-GPU
It really depends on what do you want to do on your laptop. But I think it will be couple of years at least before laptop GPU is actually powerful enough to push anything 4K smoothly, because not even that 870M on Razer Blade can push BF4 on Medium settings over 60 FPS consistently. Even then, there is heat issue with powerful GPU, I saw people reporting that Razer can get really, really hot.

By the way, if you are interested, head over Toshiba forum and you will find out more about that Toshiba laptop.

 

To bad they Toshiba are re-using last years model chassis to put the 4K display into. The screen is looking to be pretty amazing, but the laptop is not. Couple of immediate lets downs are the battery capacity and touch pad is as about as slippery as a coarse piece of sand paper.

 

Touch pad does not bother me since I use my own high precision mouse.
Battery capacity does not bother me since 99% of the time I use it at cafe where I can easily find power socket.
But, to each of their own.

 

That's because they're not "4K" they're "3K", and advertised as such. But I agree, Windows laptops just aren't ready yet both on software and hardware side of things. Battery life is always a concern and all those pixels require extra power. I think we first need battery technology improvements, and then alternate display technologies to take hold like OLED before we even should consider 4K displays in laptops.

 

Not only that, but for all intents and purposes 4k still just a novelty. The only practical real-word application at the moment would be gaming. In that case, all of the above requirements would apply at maximum capacity.

For now, for right now, your laptop is at the top of its field and will remain so for the foreseeable future.. Since any machines coming out right now would be in the transitional stage -- and likely short lived -- making a change right now would not be a prudent decision.

At this stage, its much better to wait until hardware and software (at least the OS) have agreed on standards that will make sure everything works well together and keep your new machine from becoming obsolete just months after you get it.

 

From my standpoint, I think there are a number of practical real-world applications that could benefit from a 4k display, and gaming isn't one of them. Anyone who is working with high-resolution photo and video editing could benefit, as well as 4k video consumption, graphic design and architectural software.

The trick, as stated above, is scaling is not yet where it needs to be to make 4k more accessible to a wider variety of programs.

 

Personally I'd hold off; you said it yourself that you pretty much have the perfect workstation for your usage. Besides the upgraded screen, you're really not gaining much with a new notebook; the fourth-generation Intel CPU's offer a marginal performance increase over your third-gen, certainly not worth the cost of upgrading to a new notebook unless money grows on trees.

Besides that, second generation products tend to iron out the kinks; the 1080p+ laptops right now have their scaling issues as noted.

 

tbh anything higher than 1080p on a laptop is overkill unless you dont plan to do anything gpu intensive. the fastest mobile gpu gtx 880m cant even do 1080p without lagging in many new games.

 

I haven't run into any issues doing CAD design work at native 3200 x 1800 on my M4800.

 

That's different than processing many GB's of textures and vertices at 60FPS real time.

 

I do CAD on my ultrabook with i5-3317u and 1366x768.. What it needs is not really GPU but CPU...

 

You still need GPU for manipulating the models in the viewport in real-time with a decent frame rate and VRAM will limit amount of detail (poly/vert counts).

 

Windows 9 when where every piece of software become an app .

and snapping some branding on a laptop doesn't automatically make a screen good~, and glossy? nvm...

edit: the phase "portrait displays" comes up, not a good sign either~