Matte LCD HEL80 Users....

How does that matte screen handle other than native resolutions? Are text and graphics still sharp or is there any noticeable blurring? Do any of you have your desktop resolution set to something other than native for everyday use? How comfortable is it? I'm just not sure I'm 100% sold on the glossy screen quite yet, but I personally prefer to not have such a high native resolution so that the screen can be used at its usually optimal native resolution for most of my uses (except some games and such). Decisions...decisions.....

 

There will be blurring. The best option is to scale while keeping the aspect ratio the same, so there's no distortion and only slight blurring. I use it for gaming, mostly (some games don't understand widescreen aspect ratios). I prefer having a higher resolution because it lets me see more things on the screen at once. 1280x800 (which is what I have) is way too low-res for a 15.4" laptop, and it's almost too litte for my 14.1" screen. What I may try to do in the future is replace it with a 1440x900 display. But that's lots of money and it may not even work. I have also had matte, and I have had glossy, and I really like the glossy. The colors and everything are just brighter, and it's especially good for gaming.

 

Thanks for the feedback Pita. I spent a while at Best Buy this morning and ALL the laptops had glossy screens. It was easy to compare to the desktop LCDs which were ALL matte. I also have a matte LCD on my home desktop PC so I'm quite familiar with how matte looks and works. I have to say that I did like the look of the glossy screens, even with the glare that they did catch. I didn't find the glare to be obtrusive and the sharpness and colors were very nice.

I have to disagree with you on the 1280 X 800 being too low res for a 15.4 inch screen. I mean it all depends on what applications you frequently work and multitask with, but I find the icon size and text at that resolution ideal and I have very good eye sight and have never needed corrective lenses (knock on wood). It also still gives good screen "real estate" to move things around and view a good amount of data onscreen at the same time.

I know there is a lot of personal preference when it comes to displays, but the icons and text need to be useable not just in the windows and desktop, but within the acutal applications you use as well (which in many cases don't allow resizing of fonts, menus, and icons).

Games are pretty flexible and given the ability to customize the resolution used in most cases, the "blurriness" if any is probably not noticeable on most LCDs at other than native resolutions. But again, that depends on the nature of the game.

 

Well, I've just gotten used to a 1400x1050 14.1" 4:3 screen with my Thinkpad here at work, and my 1280x800 on my 14.1" HGL-30. I can deal with smaller icons if it means I can fit more of the data I'm working with on-screen. Not to mention many web pages are much easier to read with more vertical space, images are routinely larger than 800 pixels tall, etc. Hence why I say it's too small for a 15.4" screen, especially since there's a higher-resolution option. You can often increase the DPI and overcome higher resolutions, but you can't add pixels to your LCD.

As an aside, I'm actually thinking about in a year or two seeing if I can upgrade to a 1440x900 LCD in my HGL-30, since they have one that's made by the same company at Screentek Inc.

 

I'll second it. LCDs just don't look right at nonnative resolutions. My HEL80 does seem to look pretty good at 1200x800 in Oblivion for me, though. I've noticed a big disparity between that and running Oblivion at 1680x1050 on my desktop monitor (native 1920x1200) ... maybe it's the size of the pixels.

 

I actually do everything on my HEL80 at native resolution. I don't really see too many things as being too small for comfort. I had a 17" WUXGA glossy screen that I thought was too small at native in a number of situations, and also believe that WXGA is just too low resolution for a 15.4" screen.

Of course it's all personal preference, but you can always play with text sizes and desktop resolution, but you can never add desktop real estate once the choice is made.

I'm now playing with a lower resolution on my desktop and see that it's not quite as sharp as native resolution but not bad. My previous 17" WUXGA was terrible when outside of native resolution so it does depend on the LCD in question.

 

I personally use the "just show the resolution without stretching it" option. I play all things that dont run native (battlefield 2/battlefield 2142) at 1400x1050 beautifully. I have two thin black bands, one on each side of the screen, but its worth it for the beautiful picture these matte's have. (Think letterbox, but on the sides rather then top/bottom.)

 

That's called scaling while preserving aspect ratio, pyro

 

"Fixed aspect ratio scaling"

Desktop properties>settings>advanced>Geforce go 7600>Digital Flat Panel Settings>Fixed aspect ratio scaling

 

Man you people are nitpicky about the terms... actually, the option I enabled was in the bios. (Maybe not everyone has to do this, but the bios will try and force full screen stretching if toggled on)

I never touched the driver other then to set 3d options and to clock it up a bit.

 

That just prevents all scaling then, pyro. The aspect ratio scaling is nice, because it fills your screen without stretching one dimension further than another, so everything looks "right". You'll just get black bars on the sides of the screen, but no space taken off the top and bottom. Worth a look.

 

Didn't mean to come across that way--just wanted to show others where it is and what it's called .

 

I've used that before, but I dont intend on running anything lower then 1400x1050, so what I'm doing works for me atleast

READ: No suprises or options to re-enable if I change drivers

 

After a couple of days of thinking it over and going over all the feedback I've received about the matte screen, I finally overcame my fear of "too high a resolution" and I went ahead and requested that powernotebooks.com (Donald) upgrade my screen to the matte screen. Ironically enough, my notebook order was delayed a couple of days due to the unavailability of the HD I had originally ordered so it seems like everything worked out for the best for me. (Thanks again for taking care of everything Donald!)