is 1920 x 1080 worth it on a laptop?

are the differences huge on a 15.6 inch screen? the sager np5165 and the hp 4v6t quad edition are the only ones i can ind with that screen resolution. im looking into lenovo also, but they do not offer a screen resolution that high. should i rule out lenovo because of this?

 

Compared to what? Compared to a 1366x768 screen, it makes a huge difference. Compared to a 1600x900 screen, it makes a smaller difference, but personally I would still opt for a FHD screen. There's many 15.6" notebooks with a FHD panel, including (but not limited to):

Business Grade:
Lenovo Thinkpad T520/W520
Dell Latitude E6520/Precision M4600
HP Elitebook 8650p/8650w

Consumer Grade:
Dell XPS 15
HP Envy 15
HP dv6t/dv6z
Sony Vaio S
Acer G53

 

what exactly is an fhd screen? how does that compare to a 1020 x 1080 screen

 

FHD stands for Full High Definition, which is the short name for a 1920x1080 screen.

FHD = 1920x1080
HD+ = 1600x900
HD = 1366x768

 

Really go for the 1900x1080 screen, it's much clearer looking than any other resolution on a laptop other than 1900x1200 which seems to have been outsourced now a days.

 

I love the 1920x1200 screen on my lappy...I can just save everything to my desktop

 

Most 1080p screens look a lot better than the generic 768 ones that come standard, and having more viewable space is always a plus if you like doing more than just Facebook.

If only people paid more attention to it...

 

1080p all the way

 

I'm with the rest of our members here: 1080p makes quite the difference. Now, I won't settle for less than 900p even on a 13-14" notebook. You will get a better quality display and you will have more screen real estate which mean more data displayed on screen. For example, on a 1080p panel when i use MS word, i can have the navigation pane and two pages side by side at a viewable zoom level, i prefer that to review my documents. Even browsing NBR is a lot more pleasant on 1080p, large images are less of a pain even though they should still be resized .

The 768p panels are the cheap option used by laptop manufacturers these days and as such the quality is often less than stellar as the only concern with those is the cost. I've rarely seen a bad 1080p panel, i'm assuming panel manufacturers make the assumption that if you are willing to pay the extra dough for a 1080p lcd, you want at least some decent level of panel quality.

 

The higher screen resolution makes a difference only if your works or viewing pleasure necessitates it. In other words, if all you do is us it for Word, or programs like that, then no. In the simplest terms, if you have to ask, then you probably don't need it.

 

on a 15.6 I personally cant see the difference between 1080 and 720.

on a 17.3 I can see a dfifference with 1080 vs 720. hard to tell the difference between 1600x900 and 1920x1080 on a 17.3 though.

 

I prefer 1080p only on 17" or larger screens. For less than that, 900p does the trick for me.

 

I think that 'full hd' is a bit pointless on 15" screens.
DPI is still a big issue if you try to modify it... so not really worth it.
1600x900 seems like a pretty good option for 15" screens.

 

Depends on the price.

I bought a Lenovo T520 in October. The 1600x900 screen upgrade was about $50 however the 1920x1080 version was $250. That's too steep on a ~$750 notebook. I went with the 1600x900.
I also have 1600x900 on my work 15.6" notebook and it's more than fine for general usage. You can easily use two windows side-by-side unlike 1366x768.

Just steer clear of the 1366x768 panels. The resolution is too low as other members have commented; and in my experience they have poor picture quality. The higher-res panels are generally much better in that respect.

 

I'll give you two good reasons why you should go for the 1920x1080 screen:
1. Can view 3 WORD letter size documents side by side @ 12 font clearly.
2. Can view 1080p video.

 

I'll never understand how you guys can handle such high resolution on the smaller screens...

 

I love my 6 yr old Dell E1705's; both have 1920 x 1200 17" screens. I hate what happened to modern laptops with their low resolution.

I have a 1920 x 1080 24" monitor, as well as 3 1920 x 1200 monitors, + 1 30" 2560 x 1600 Dell monitor. Each upgrade in screen size make a big different. After getting used to 2560 x 1600, now I think 1920 x 1200 is LOW resolution!

 

1080p for three reasons:

1. You can fit more on the screen when working with documents / apps
2. It looks more crisp since you have twice as many pixels in the same surface area at a 1366x768 screen
3. Most stock 1366x768 screens are complete and utter crap. Poor viewing angles, washed out colors, bad contrast... 1080p screen upgrades usually give you much better quality all around.

Look at them side by side, difference is night and day. My dad and my sister just bought new laptops, both ended up with HP's, one a DV6t with 1080p screen, the other a DV6z with 768p screen. Side by side, you'd have to be blind to not tell a difference. Part of that was the 1366x768 screen was just a crap screen, which most manufacturer's throw in most machines to keep costs down, but the other thing was the clarity of the 1080p due to higher pixel density. If you do any amount of mulitasking on screen, then the higher resolution is a necessity.

In HP's it's a $150 option for the 1080p, but usually you can get 25-33% off the laptops so that's really a $100-$115 upgrade only, well worth it.

 

prefer 1200p but those are almost non-existent at this point, so 1080p all the way!

 

of course it is worth i have 18'4'' and full hd and its great

 

1080p screen is a must if you even have the slightest idea of multi-tasking on a laptop, the 720p screens will make you cry out in pain if you ever want to do any kind of productivity work, e.g. photo/video editing, comparing word/excel documents, etc.

 

Given the notebooks you mentioned in your OP, I'd think that your budget is at least $800. If that is the case, I wouldn't settle for anything less than 1080p. The only scenario in which you should opt for anything lower is if you are looking for a laptop that is sub $750.

 

These are a few scenarios where the choice is a nobrainer since it fills a definite need in your daily computing. Otherwise, it's purely a matter of convenience and balancing the cost of the upgrade with how much you will use/need it.

To put it in other terms, if you already have a boat or a trailer, you pretty much already know you're going to need the towing package option when you buy a new vehicle.

Can you even still get these models without it?

A great point. A lot of upgrade come as a package. Still, I'd only pay for it in my primary computer. It would be a waste in the kids room or for general computing.

 

they never been produced with lower resol.