1600x900 or 1920x1080 on W860CU?

I always advise against this, but I'll be going with the 1080p in anticipation of the next GPU upgrade.

 

Right, just checking.

 

1600x900 is all you get if that is your native resolution. it's kind of like having a ceiling that is 5 feet tall with a 6 foot tall person...yes you can sit down and never hit your head, but you will never be able to stand up completely. So if you had the 1080p, you have the OPTION of downscaling in games. You do not have the option of scaling up to 1080p with 900p...get it for detail, get it for the option. I haven't read a single post about Antialiasing yet; you will need to throw on at least 2x AA with a 1600x900 to even match the 1080p with no AA at all. Consider that also, and if you can't run a game with a GTX280m on a 1080p screen in the near future, then you need to start playing with game options and settings and turn off the AA. Also with the i7, you won't need a CPU upgrade, so keep the laptop with the 1080p resolution, because as the years go on, resolutions go up. Upgrade the video card in 2-3 years if you're really that worried about it, in 2-3 years 1600x900 will be the old 1366x768...and who wants that now? Well that will be what you'll say about 1600x900. It's all about the options. One last note... it's 60 dollars more for that screen upon purchase... if you decide you want a 1080p later on, well, you'll be paying ALOT more than 60 dollars for a new LCD.

 

You may have the "option" of upscaling games, but games, just like any other application, look TERRIBLE with interpolated upscaled resolutions. That is unavoidable. If your eyes are bad enough that you don't mind the blurry mess of graphics, how can you stand a 1080p 16" for productivity apps?

 

Yes, an even division of the native res would look better. If you could hack the driver or something, you could possibly even run that resolution without any kind of upscaling. Each rendered pixel would just be displayed by 4 display pixels.

 

I've read all the pages but I'm still not decided between the two res screens

With the zoom option in Win7, is the text also zoomed?

 

I'm going 1600x900 myself. I play most games right now at lower than that, so it'll be an upgrade for gaming. For OS use on 15.6", 1920 would be too much for my eyes, and though I've heard downscaling looks OK, I'm not sure if it'll look as nice as native. For something I use everyday I want it to look as good as possible. If I was going 17" 1920 would be an easy call.

 

So the size of icons in a 1920x1200 15.4" NP8660 would be fairly the same as the icon size in a 1920x1080 15.6" NP8690?

 

Yah, you wouldn't really notice the difference.

 

So I finally got my laptop with the 1920x1080 screen and my god it is beautiful. I am so glad that I went with it because everything just look so much cleaner and sharper and yet still comfortable to the eyes. I don't think I can ever go back below 1080p on a 15" now that my eyes is getting acclimated to it. You guys please go for the full hd screen I promise you, you won't regret it one bit. And so far games have hardly taken any major peformance hits (compared to my old 1680x1050) and actually some has played even better like GTA 4 (i7 helps of course). Below is the a shot of my desktop(1080p) so far after running 3dmark06.

 

Current games are unlikely to take any major performance hits and the performance increase in GTA IV you saw would be even higher with the other resolution yet still look really good.

It is the future games that some are concerned with. Of course you won't regret having the higher resolution screen right now and will appreciate the clarity but that's right now.

I would probably only get a resolution like that on a 17'' SLI gaming laptop but that's just me.

 

I'm going 17" and 1600x900.

I've used 1920x1200 @ 17" and it was too small. You can scale the DPI, but not everything translates perfect, especially many web pages.

I'd do 1920x1080 on a 18.4", but for 17" 1680x1050, 1440x900 or 1600x900 all work for me. 15.6"? 1600x900 or more preferably 1440x900.

 

I just read through

ChinNoobonic's Clevo W860CU Review and noticed that amongst their benchmarks they did one comparing the two resolutions. The interesting part of the results are as follows:

Now imagine the impact in a game where the minimum fps you got was a lot lower than 37 fps, say something more like 25-30 fps.

 

If anyone still cares, I should be getting my np8690 in a few days (with the 1600x900 screen), and I plan on making a review of it on YouTube. I find it funny that no one addressed the things that concerned me most, being that of viewing angles and image quality. If anyone cares to talk about those things in the mean time, I (and perhaps others) would appreciate it. Also, I thought I would mention that notebookjournal listed the HD+ screen as having an average maximum brightness of 178 cd/m ² with a contrast of 890:1 (at max brightness), while the FHD screen had an average maximum brightness of 267 cd/m ² with a contrast of 636: 1 (at max brightness). As for viewing angles, they were both listed as being the same. (Vertical at 40°, and horizontal at 60°.)

 

That would be greatly appreciated

 

Hmmm.. for the games I've played recently, I don't find the downscaling (i.e. playing 1600x900 full screen on native 1920x1080 res monitor) really wreck the image quality that much. This is on 22" desktop monitor where the dpi size is larger than that of laptop screen.

The trade off here is bigger workspace/viewing space for browsing/word processing/image editing vs slightly better image quality when gaming.

 

Desktop monitors and TVs almost always scale better than notebook LCDs.

Heck, with my 19" 1080p Vizio, I can take it below 1280x720, without the image distorting to any high degree.

With my notebook, even going from 1680x1050 -> 1440x900 causes visible degradation.

 

Here is a link to the video I posted on youtube. Feel free to ask any questions.

YouTube - Sager np8690 / clevo w860cu 1600x900 screen

 

Thanks a bunch man. I was worried 1600x900 would be too small of a resolution after using my 2048x1152 res desktop. But your video does a great job of showing the desktop size and icon size, which really isn't that much smaller than 1920x1080.

 

I would always choose 1080p panel, because when i play a 1080p movie or blueraydisc, the image is displayed pixel by pixel and no quality is lost.
I had a 1080p desktop LCD, 23", and watching blueray disc was an absolute bliss.

I can't even begin to image how such a movie would look and a 1080p 15" panel.

 

So this is screenshot of a 1920x1080, right?

How do I know I'm seeing things at the size they actually are on the screen in question?

In other words, wouldn't my monitor's pixel size (and everyone else's) determine what it really looks like?