Why I regret getting the 1600x900 screen.

Jumping on the advice of some people on these forums, I opted for the 1600x900 display for an extra $50. However... the results weren't as great as I thought it would be.

Don't get me wrong - this is an excellent display - good viewing angles, and no dead or stuck pixels. But, there are some caveats.

At 1600x900, the text is often too small to read. I had to raise the DPI from 100% to 125% in Windows just to read everything comfortably.

To conclude, 1600x900 may be worth it if the display is 15-inches or larger, or if you multitask heavily between windows and need the extra space. However, given my personal usage patterns, I personally wished that I went for a 1366x768 display and pocketed the difference to spend on an SSD instead.

 

Sux you had to learn the hard way. I learned my lesson when I ordered my T60 and chose 1680x1050, big mistake, text was way too small even for a 15.4" laptop.

For a laptop under 14" the default 1366x768 is just fine for most. It's small but not too small.

 

I learnt my lesson by using 1600x900 on a 13" laptop.

 

Do you have bad eyes?

I'd still reccommend the 1600x900 screen for anyone who doesn't have eye problems.

 

Yes I do !

 

You do know that you can change font sizes in Windows and Linux, giving you larger fronts with a sharper image?

 

I had very good eyes before I used 1600x900 on 13". Now I suffer from myopia.

Changing font DPI is a bad idea - it looks ugly; furthermore it makes some applications unusable, e.g. even Microsoft Office 2007 suffers from icon/button disappearing problems.

 

Already did that. 125% DPI FTW!

 

I have a 1680x1050 resolution on my 15.4" screen and will be getting a 1920x1080 on a 15.6" screen. I think the more screen real estate is always better, and you can increase font sizes if you can't read it.

 

What's your screen size? I don't even know which computer you have.

Increasing DPI does the trick though (even though not all apps coded well enough to take full advantage of it, e.g. skype) + you get extra space. Also, reading PDFs works better on a high-res screen.

 

I have a T410 and I think that a 1400x900 resolution is pretty good. I'm not sure whether a 200 horizontal pixel increase would effect anything. I wished Lenovo had an option for 1680x1050 although that might be difficult to read for me and my eyes are pretty bad (about -5.0 for both).

However, I am glad that I got the higher resolution because it makes reading websites/PDFs and doing office work (Word/Excel) so much easier.

 

I personally would've liked something between 1600x900 and 1920x1080 on my W520 (maybe something like 1820x1024). I like the PPI of 118-ish on my W520, but I can live with 130 ~ 135-ish, and think that 140+ is just too small. I can't imagine using a 14" laptop without at least a 1600x900 screen. I looked at a couple of them the day before, and my eyes were bleeding from the lack of screen estate.

 

I'm trying to understand why this is an issue.

Enlarging the text makes it readable, and you still get the advantage of 1600x900 for high-resolution graphics. It's exactly what I do with my system; I ordered it knowing I'd probably need to up the font DPI once. Having done so, I'm now very happy.

 

Clearly you've never really tried doing that. Way too many programs fail to scale their screens properly when you start changing the font sizes. It seems like it ought to work.... but it doesn't.

I would NOT get a FHD screen that small. The pixel DPI is just too high and makes it hard to read for any length of time (on that small of a screen, that is). On a 24" desktop montor, sure, it's great.

 

Man, I was looking over my friend's m11x and his 1920x1600 resolution, boasting how awesome it was. I looked over it and I was like, "I'm I going to need a stronger glasses because I can't even read that text". My friend was a bit frustrated and I laughed a little bit inside. It was a nice screen, very clear but too small text for my taste.

 

m11x with 1920x1600 ? There's no way this is true, you wouldn't be able to see the mouse pointer at the biggest setting hah. You probably mean m17x.

Anyway, i'm used to resolutions like that.
An old company laptop I used to have (the famous dell latitude d800), some 8 years ago had already then a magnificent matte screen 15.6" with a 1920x1200 resolution..
Still much better than the 1600x900 one in T420. These 14" are *** , the angles are laughable and colors suck. It's not that they are not usable, but it's funny to see that 8 years old technology is clearly much better (I have them side by side right now)

If you want to test it yourself go here: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php and just look at those colors, and what you see on your screen when you tilt it just a bit up and down. Make sure to scroll down, there are many tests

 

Yea, it's probably m17x, It's about 15 " screen, about the same width as my laptop.

That link was pretty cool moving back and forth to see the words with clarity, but I don't know what I'm suppose to find out from that.

 

this advice is more valid for macbook users or potential hackintosh users as system font size is NOT changeable in mac OS.

 

m17x has a 17" screen :>

The test with the words, on a normal good screen with wide viewing angles, appears uniform on the whole screen.
Looking straight at the screen you shouldn't be able to distinguish the text from it's background - and this is what happens for example with the screen of my old dell laptop, or with a samsung 23" tft I have.
On the lenovo, looking straight at the screen, I cannot distinguish the text from the background only at the middle (vertically) of the screen. Above that and below the text is clearly visible even without tilting --> bad.

The other tests on that page are funnier, those with the color accuracy that depends on the viewing angle. On normal screens colors shouldn't change *much* when you tilt the laptop screen a bit..
On T420 it's like the color changes completely This TN panel sucks.. Still usable, but pretty bad, especially the viewing angles.

 

Can't you change resolution to 1280x800?

 

True. In fact it defaulted to a zoomed in view but I set it back to 100% because I liked fitting as much on the screen as possible and didn't have trouble reading it. Guess I shouldn't give advice without having tried it first

 

Two reasons why I wouldn't recommend that are (i) running LCDs at their non-native resolution means everything is interpolated and becomes less sharp; and (ii) 1280 x 800 is 16:10 so there is also distortion.

I'm managing to get by with 1600 x 900 @ 14" but wouldn't want it any smaller. This format of screen has smaller pixels than 1440 x 900 because the same vertical pixels are squeezed into less height.

John

 

, it's an alienware with 1920x1600 resolution. That's all I know, well...maybe not 1600 pixels but somewhere along those lines. I don't really have a huge problem with my 1366x768 resolution, if anything, I had worse resolutions before and this is actually better than before.

 

That's unfortunate. I personally cannot use 1366x768 as its just too painful for me as I am constantly scrolling.

Damn these crazy eyes!

 

I had 1680x1050 on my T500 and now I have 1920x1080 on my Sager and it is the greatest.

I will never go back to anything less than 1920x1080 and I think it is perfect for a 15.6 inch screen.

Invest in some glasses or something.

Low resolution is my biggest pet peeve in laptop screens and I would never invest any money into a low resolution laptop.

 

The 'problem' is not the high resolution. It's crappy software, both applications and desktop environments.

 

Btw, M17x(R2) has 1920x1200 resolution on a 17" screen. In any case, I've been using it with 113% DPI settings in Windows for a bit now and got used to it. I love the amount of screen real estate you have on this resolution.

I'd stick with 1600x900 on 14" and try to use it longer with higher DPI setting... 1366x768 is ok for using with normal DPI but the image quality is obviously worse due to lower pixel density. On the other hand, both are probably fine. I alternate between 1920x1200 on 17" (laptop) and I think 1440x900 on 19" Dell monitor at work. Its pretty crappy but all the other screens we have are CRT, so I don't really have any alternative.

Exactly. Hopefully Win8 will have decent GUI set up for higher DPI on monitors built after 1990.

 

The old 16:10 were perfect:

12.1" - 1280x800
13.3" - 1280x800 or 1440x900
14.1" - 1440x900
15.4" - 1680x1050
17.1" - 1920x1200

 

And have gone the way of the dinosaurs...extinct.

 

They are still available - it's just that panel makers charge more for them.

 

I bought a Dell Latitude with ther 1600x900 based on all the recommendations to get it over the 1366x768. Luckily the screen went bad after two days with a bad panel. I sent it back to Dell for a refund. I hated the screen. While I didnt have to scroll as much I just found the everything too small. I am back in the market and have been looking at the T420 I find myself wondering if I should try the 1600x900 again. But when I see the audio issues of the displayport and connecting to an hmdi tv/monitor, I think I may look for a less sophisticated HP Probook and save the money difference. Thoughts?

 

Go buy the HP and try it. Let us know.

 

I used a Dell Latitude E6420 fitted with a HD+ (Samsung) panel and in my opinion I did believe it was better than the AUO HD+ panel fitted on my ThinkPad T420 ( review), so if you're dissapointed with that then you probably not going to like the ThinkPad's either i'm afraid as I felt the screen on the T420 was the inferior out of the two.

I haven't seen the HP HD+ screens but I have used the HP ProBook fitted with HD anti-glare panel made by Chi-Mei and I found it to be vibrant and sharp when I used it for a short while.

 

Off topic I know but are the Displayport - HDMI audio issues STILL a problem on the T420? It's an issue that plagued me on my T410!

I see no real choice but to get the 1600x900 resolution screen on the T420. I really like the 1440x900 on my T410 and I don't think I could tolerate a significantly lower resolution. But I'm not looking forward to that nasty wide-screen implementation. I don't know why consumers and notebook manufacturers didn't fight harder to keep the squarer aspect ratio which is obviously superior for work-related applications.

 

Money is probably the main reason. All the panel manufacturers can just gang together and say that they'll sell 4:3 panels for a ridiculous premium over the 16:9 panels, and consumers will go for the cheaper laptops.

 

Why is making 4:3/ 16:10 panels more expensive than 16:9 panels? It just doesn't make sense to me.

 

Area and wasted panel space and stuff like that. They can cut more 16:9 panels out of a sheet than 4:3 or 16:10 panels. Physically, 16:9 panels also take up less area, so besides the shape being more well fitted to the sheets, they can also produce more panels in the same area.

 

Not sure if there are still audio issues on the T420 displayport. Could have been reading older issues. Anyone know for sure?

 

Also, since TVs, desktop monitors, and laptop displays are now all 16:9, there is less wasted area when cutting different screens of different sizes from the same sheet (doesn't always apply, though, since TV screens generally have lower DPI values). Standardization does always make things easier in manufacturing, though.

Offtopic in this thread, but no, audio-pass-through on the T420's DisplayPort works. With the proper DP to HDMI adapter, you can also get audio through HDMI if needed.

 

No offense but I don't believe this. They didn't make 4:3 and 16:10 for years then all of the sudden flip the switch just because is was more cost effective. They did it because for marketing purposes consumer laptops started selling the almighty HD widescreens to suck in all the n00bs.

Once that started rolling THEN it became the smart move to shift everything to a single ratio.

But it was the stupid 1920x1080 "1080p" marketing that created this mess.

 

But, what can you do about it? I like 16:10 more than 16:9, but I am honestly not really bothered by the ratio change.

 

What can I do about it? Nothing.

Unless of course I was able to launch a successful multi billion dollar computer company that makes thin computers people really want with 4:3, 16:10, and 16:9 ratio screens.

 

OK how have we gone five pages and the OP still hasn't told us what size screen they have. 1600x900 on a what screen, 14"?

 

Sigh. Another 16:9/16:10 debate...

 

Can we just all agree that 16:9 and 16:10 are both horrible?

I believe the OP has a 14 inch screen. He said that it should be for 15inch+, which means he has something less. Lenovo doesn't have any 1600x900 panels smaller than 14 inches, as the X220/X120e/X1 use 1366x768 and Lenovo didn't start using 16:9 until this generation.

 

16:10 offers the perfect compromise between width and length. After using widescreen displays for so long, I find it hard to go back to 4:3 or 5:4 displays.

 

ew ew ew

14.1" standard screen here, 1400x1050.

loving it.

- cough .. I'm still having external 20" monitor with that same resolution though, but when I travel I'm using the laptop display pretty fine. 1000+ vertical lines, priceless

I haven't changed the DPI, but I do use the Large Fonts option. Works fine for me.

 

I've currently got a 1400x1050 14.1" as well (DPI is around 124). I'm looking at moving to a T410s w 1440x900... dpi of 120.

dpi of 120-125 is my sweet spot. I prefer 4:3 over 16:10 but 16:10 is acceptable. 16:9 is good for an HDTV, not for a computer IMO.

I'm not much of an apple guy, but I'm really jealous of the screen on the 13" MBA.

 

I won't say 16:9 or 16:10 is horrible. They all have their purposes. most movies are even 2.x :1, think about that.

but the fact that all laptops/monitors made today are in 16:9 is simply terrible as many other applications benefit more from smaller aspect ratio, such as reading forums like this one, or text editiing. In some cases a rotatable monitor comes in handy so instead of 16:9, it becomes 9:16, perfect for those needing more lines per page instead of more characters per line.

 

I feel that 1600 x 900 was a great choice for my T520. Thanks to those here who suggested it.