Noob looking for some advice on screens and in general

Hi,

I've been a desktop user my whole life, but I'm looking to work abroad (currently in the UK, will be in Malta) so have decided to get a good laptop instead for the sake of mobility. I work as a digital artist with a lot of 3D applications so a decent CPU was a priority which is what eventually led me to Clevo machines with desktop CPU's in them. (I also wanna play games on it)

Currently I'm looking at the following machines specced with i7 6700K and 1070:

(I'm assuming these are all Clevo?)
XMG U717: http://mysn.co.uk/shop/xmg-u717-gaming-laptop.html#!prettyPhoto
3XS LG17 Carbon: https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/gsync-gaming-laptop-geforce-intel-skylake-17in
pcspecialist Octane III: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/octaneIII-17/#configurator

The main thing I'm currently hung up on is choosing a screen. I think I've ruled out the 4K screens, because that just seems like over kill at that size and too much of a performance hog. But I'm having a hard time choosing between the 1440p 120hz TN (only seems to be offered by XMG) and the standard 1080p 60hz IPS. Can anyone weigh in on this choice? What are the viewing angles and colours accuracy like on the TN? I've been a long time IPS user so I'm a bit hesitant about it.

If anyone has any more general advice/information, maybe some other re-sellers I haven't found, that would be great too. I'm struggling to find relevant information and reviews due to all the re-branding.

I hope it's ok I posted this here rather than the "what notebook should I buy?" area.

 

I think you nailed it regarding 4K being a performance hog. 1440P is such a great screen size for portable content creation. I honestly wish I had one.

The HDI TN panel I saw on a 1060 laptop looked similar to desktop variants. It had a very shallow viewing angle before it washed out. If you're a digital artists I would think going IPS would provide you with the color quality you'd want for your content creation. 60Hz vs 120Hz is a big deal to me because I use my Sager 8153 for gaming. 120Hz would have been a better choice for me to run G-Sync, but it doesn't help anything outside of that.

From what you've described, I would think a 60Hz IPS 1440P panel would serve you well. Hope any of that was helpful.

 

Hey, thanks for taking time to reply. Problem is the only 1440p option I've found is the 120Hz TN on the XMG. I've not found any 1440p IPS in the UK.

 

Hmmm, found this video, I'm assuming that's the panel that XMG are using. Doesn't look too bad at all.

 

I see. I have reached out to Sager once before about 1440P and they said, to my surprise, that 1440P isn't that popular. Such a shame.

 

I would say go for 1080p 75hz ips panel with G-sync. As far as I know, QHD 120hz Tn panel has some problem, and if you are content creator, IPS panel will help you out.

 

@Boozebeard

As the guys above have mentioned, the 120Hz panel is best suited to gamers because of the higher refresh rate. Although the colour space is slightly better on the 120Hz panel than the IPS panel it's only 3% sRGB difference so not enough to really make a difference. The black level is much better on the FHD panel option and the contrast ratio is also higher on the FHD option. I don't have viewing angles to hand for the 120Hz but the FHD IPS is definitely much wider having compared both side by side recently.

If it were my choice I would go for the FHD - the viewing angles, better black level and higher contrast ratio would sway it for me over a difficult to measure gamut difference.

Any other questions just ask!

 

Thanks for all the replies guys. To be honest most of my work isn't really that colour critical and I do game a lot, so that combined with the higher res of the TN is what is making the choice hard. I think I am edging towards the FHD though, 1080 seems pretty adequate at that screen size. Is the FHD 75hz out the box?

 

Yes it is. And you can also overclock to 100hz.

 

Oh, didn't know that, that's pretty cool. Will prob just go with that then.

 

Have the same problem, thinking about a week. And buy with 1440p TN ))
This video from my threaad

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/best-gaming-notebook-with-1080.798351/page-6#post-10401007

 

yeah that's my video

 

Yes that's the same panel that we use ;-)

 

News to me, a lot of people ask us about it.

 

So you are getting the 1440p? Let me know how you like it

 

Hey guys, I'm just wondering how easy or hard it is to get hold of these panels on their own? I will probably go with the 1080p but was wondering if it would be practical to try a different one at a later date and fit it myself?

 

There are some floating around, but they're not easy to find. eBay has a couple of them listed. There may be some resellers that will part with them also.

 

Hi guys,

I so I ended up just going with the FHD panel and ordered from Dream Machines in Poland as they seem to be only EU seller with prema bios' but I have small problem with the screen in that there are vertical stripes, predominantly in the blue colours but also in the orange/yellow tones too. This effect becomes more prominent if I overclock the screen but is still noticeable at the default 75hz, under-clocking it to 60hz seems to more or less resolve the issue. Do I have a dodgy panel?

Here is a picture of it at 100hz:



Edit: tbh even at 60hz I can still see it now I know it's there, it's just very subtle

 

Mmm, there are some artifacts in gradients in general but I just notice the panel is only 6bit, whereas I have been using 8bit panels before, so I guess some of what I am seeing is just that. Guess I assumed IPS panel would be 8bit. Still those streaks in the blue don't seem right, especially as they become less apparent if I underclock the screen?

 

Nobody know if this is normal for these screens? Reading up on accounts of similar problems in some asus laptops it sounds like it can sometimes be a driver thing; I tried the nvidia drivers that clevo provide but it didn't make a difference. If it's normal I guess I can live with it, just want to make sure I didn't get a faulty panel.