Thinkpad Z Series SCREENS

Are the Z series screens bright and of high quality compared to other Thinkpad models as well as other high quality screens (eg. HP Pavilion)? I have heard good things about a "FlexView" screen from IBM but I am not sure if any of the Z series offers it. Please share your insight. Thanks.

 

The 14" screens on the Z60t that Andrew Baxter has reviewed are definitely not FlexView or anything similar. The 15" MaxBright screens that will be offered on some Z60m models might be, but no review units are available yet.

 

Doesn't look like MaxBright is offered on too many models.

 

abaxster (just read your review), or anyone else who's handled a Z-Thinkpad - is the Z60t's screen the same brightness calibre as the current T4x models?

 

the z60t is rated at 200 nit brightness, for outdoor viewing you need about 400+ nit which you'll get in some Panasonic Toughbook models. The Z60m will have a 300 nit screen option called "MaxBright". Thereby you can conclude the Z60t is half as bright as you'd need for outdoor viewing, and 2/3 as bright as a better Z60m screen. The Z60t screen appears slightly less bright than the T43.

 

Well, I have to disagree here slightly.

First of all, the term outdoor viewing is much stretchable, since outdoors you will find different lightning conditions, dependend on the time of day, if you stay in direct sunlight or not and so on (...every photographer can tell you about these things).

A more lower rule of thumb is, that notebook panels with a brightness (luminance) of >150 nits (cd/m²) start to be quite usable in let's say shadowed outside areas, meaning not inside the direct sunlight.

However, so usually one would expect that a brighter lcd panel is more usable outdoors, but there are also other issues to take into account here. Fore example many high glare panels, even they might have very high brightness/luminance >300 nits (cd/m²) --as some Toshiba Qosmio panels or Sony X-Brite panels etc.-- do mirror/reflect this much, that they aren't really this usable outsides.

So in my opinion mate anti-reflecting panels with a *real* brightness of let's say >= 200 nits will often do better outdoors than most even brighter high glare panels.

Finally let me say, that all those advertized brightness specs in nits (cd/m²) by most of the notebook vendors are also not to be expected to be true reality values.

Independent test lab measurements have shown, that the real nits values for most panels are much lower than advertized. - So I'am pretty sure that the a Z60t panels doesn't have real 200 nits, these are too dimm therefor. Since T-Series panels, which are advertized to have ~200 nits only have a max brightness of 156 nits, the Z60t panles will be more in this max ~150 nits range at all.

 

well spoken vkyr, I guess when I think of outdoor viewing I don't expect an LCD panel to work to well if say the sun is over my shoulder and directly on the screen, but if it's an overcast day or the sun is not shining onto the LCD then for it to be "outdoor viewable" I should be able to read text (black on white background text that is) without problem. I recently saw a Panasonic Toughbook rated at 450 nits and *that's* what I'd call outdoor viewable, it was blazing bright and absolutely designed for field work.