The Best Thinkpad Screen

What is the best Thinkpad screen - the Maxbrite on the Z60M or the Flexview on the T60p (with the high powered video card?). How does their best compare to the best of the commerecial laptops from the manufacturers (SOny, etc)?

 

Any SXGA will do (brite or flex). IBM screens are the best non-glare coated LCD for color reproduction as far as everybody I know say (me too;@)

As bright as it might be or not be, I personally work on 3d or 4th setting out of 7 all the time. At night I even go to 2 to have less strain from too much light. Movies are at 7 of coarse. I would go for a better view than brightness. Hope that helps.

 

Yes it does. Thank you!

 

in some of ibm lcd panels, similar to IPS technology is used, while almost all others (laptop makers) use TN lcd panels...

EDIT: hmf, not sure about ibm, is it IPS or *VA...

 

Figured out:

ibm models t43, t43p with 15" SXGA+ and 15" UXGA use lcd panels with IPS technology
(that is true also for models T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p with 15" SXGA+ screens)

(IPS = wide viewing angles and good colors)

 

Except that T40/p and T41/p don't come in 15" size. And it is also true for R50/p, R51 and T60/p.

 

Both, the widescreen Z60M MaxBright and the T60-Series 15" Flexviews, are very good anti-glare/non-glare TFT-panels and both offer good viewing angles and constant colorings (the MaxBright too). So related to Thinkpads it's all in all more a matter of taste and the decision of the panel formfactor one prefers.

Some of the better Sony TFT-panels in contrast here, are very good in the glare TFT-panel domain and offer very high luminance and contrast values. Sony was and still is the leader in the glare and LED based TFT-panel sector, followed by Toshiba, Fujitsu-Siemens, LG and Samsung, which also offer some higher luminance/contrast panels for some of their notebooks.

However, since Thinkpads are more meant for the serious business segment, they always have anti-glare panels, which do meat better the overall business users expectations.

BTW, it's of course not true that almost all other notebook makers use just TN based TFT-panels, there are manufactors which also use IPS or VA based TFT-panels for some of their specific notebook models.

As just one little example, here is a comparison of a 15" LG LP150U1 UXGA (1600 x 1200) panel with an IDTech IAUX14 UXGA (1600 x 1200) panel, which can be both also found in a bunch of Clevo D500/D800 (Sager, Eurocom, and so on...) notebooks. - Both of these panels can also be found in a bunch of T-Series and R-Series Thinkpads.

Finally it always depends on if someone individually prefers a non-glare or glare TFT-panel and a widescreen or standard formfactor notebook display. For all of these TFT display-types you can find good and bad ones.

 

Here are some comparisions of 15", 16" and 17" notebook TFT-panels, where one can easily see some viewing angles and color contrast differences among those panels.

Here is another one of a rare non-glare 16" SXGA TFT-panel, AFAI remember this must be the Hitachi panel, there was also one panel available from Sharp which was much better (or was it vice-versa, don't remember exactly which way around it was...).

Maybe I should add, that in the meantime (nowadays) the TFT-panel quality has partly made big steps ahead since those shown above from 2003.

 

I think it's best said that "almost all other notebooks use TN-based panels". It's true that almost every manufacturer has a few select models with non-TN panels, but you'll be hard pressed to find them.

 

Even the majority use TN-based panels, since these are overall cheaper to get, there are also vendors who assemble VA/MVA-based and still IPS-based panels. All better and higher resolution widescreen panels are mostly VA-based here.

 

I was wondering about T42p screens. These ThinkPads come with SXGA+ resolution and 128M Video card, but ... will the screen be sharp at 1024 x 768 resolution as it is at higher resolutions?

I have TP 42 with 32M video memory for work, but would like more video ram for home (to play car racing games mostly).