SONY VAIO Z 1600x900 vs 1920x1080 (the real thing)

Hello everyone.
I have been following through many of the SONY VAIO Z on this wonderful forum. I’m pretty convinced that many people who are looking into buying this great machine have a bit of a difficulty in deciding which screen they should choose: FHD 1920x1080 or HD 1600x900. Actually I’m in the process of getting a new Z13 VAIO soon and was looking at the FHD model, but I cannot make up my mind about the proper screen size, either. Hence, I decided to start this thread posting pictures of programs running maximized at native resolution of 1600x900 at various dpi settings, accompanied by pictures or videos of the screen.
It would be nice if people with the 1920x1080 model followed along, by posting the same or similar applications running on their machines, as well as pictures videos etc. Please make the respective screen snapshots look as similar as possible to the ones posted below, so that anyone interested can easily compare the two and draw their conclusions. The bottom line is that people have to decide according to what they use their laptops for, but I hope that you’ll find this thread useful.
Please feel free to suggest other relevant staff you would like to see posted here and I’ll do my best to get it online. I will be waiting for your ideas.
So here I start, by posting some desktop snapshots and will amend this by adding some camera screen shots and video in the next couple of days.

Desktop snapshot 1600x900 at 100% dpi:


Desktop snapshot 1600x900 at 115% dpi (taskbar icons get a bit distorted at non-standard dpi settings):


Desktop snapshot 1600x900 at 125% dpi:


Desktop snapshot 1360x768 at 125% dpi:


Firefox maximized at 1600x900 resolution and 100% dpi:


Outlook 2010 maximized at 1600x900 resolution and 100% dpi:


Remote Desktop Connection to a Win 2003 server at 1600x900 res and 100% dpi:


Remote Desktop Connection to a Win 2003 server at 1360x768 res and 100% dpi:


VS2010 in working environment at 1600x900 100% dpi:


VS2010 start page at 1600x900 100% dpi:


MS Word 2010 at 1600x900 100% dpi:


Let me also add pyr0’s opinion on the FHD vs HD debate, which he kindly shared with me through a relevant PM discussion (thanks Pyr0). Here’s a small summary:
“For developing + CAD… you will love the FHD then. I think you will also set it to 125% dpi (at least that would result in approx. the same size that you get with the 100% 1600x900 screen). Newer MS software such as Office 2010 and VS 2010 support DPI scaling. Just make sure you use a web browser plugin because otherwise you will have very small text which strains your eyes. If it happens that you have old software which does not support DPI scaling, you will need to come closer to the screen, which is a bad idea for the long-term usage since it strains your eyes and forces you to sit in a non-ergonomic way.”

EDIT 01 Nov 2010: Today I added a small youtube video demonstrating the 1600x900 screen. It's certainly not a great quality one - sorry - due to my slow internet connection speed where I am at the moment. I hope I'll remedy this soon. Check it out if you want at:
SONY VAIO Z12 1600X900 SCREEN DEMO

 

Software list of popular applications that do NOT support dpi scaling:
(I will update the list promptly as soon as I am aware of more such appls. Please feel free to inform me)

Skype
Remote Desktop Connection (you may adjust the displayed resolution though)

 

For future updates...

 

I think it's a pretty simple answer (granted you have a sony store near by).

The easiest is - go to a sony store and look at one for yourself to see which is better. What other people say are moot points if it doesn't agree with your own experience.

My opinion in the matter:

For me (and I'm used to staring a high density small text), after using one in person for about a week, the pixel density is just too high and the text is just too small for comfortable extended use (at default DPI settings). So for those who desire the full 1080, I say it's highly dependent on your apps ability to scale text to a comfortable viewing size.

I personally prefer the 900 screen.

Also - while I partially understand why you posted the screenshots (to evaluate the scale using various DPI settings) - IMO it's pretty useless without seeing the actual size scaling in person. It's impossible to appreciate the pixel density by looking at a screenshot (or even pictures taken) as it will obviously scale to whatever monitor you're looking at it from.

 

I wouldn't disagree with you, and I do realize how difficult it is to present the actual facts about the screens. However for people who don't have access to SONY Style Shops or want to buy the Z through the internet, it would be useful (IMO). You definitely can check the real estate difference and compare. Anyhow, I hope this could be useful.

 

If one is looking into buying a Z and deciding between the resolutions, at least for the tinyness and screen real estate, it is useful to use a screenshot taken on a Z, resize it with a black frame around it and show it on a bigger screen, so the screenshot actually gives you an impression of how small the different dpi settings will be. (Of course due to the downsampling, the image will get more blurry on a bigger screen which will probably not have an equal or bigger DPI value than a Z has)

 

Why not post pictures of the two screens running at the correct DPI, i.e. 140 DPI for the 1600x900 display, and 168 DPI for the 1920x1080 one?

Some of us prefer to set the DPI correctly, and then adjust the font sizes, border sizes and icon sizes to a comfortable level.
That way, physical measurements (like inches, millimeters, points, cicero, pica) are correct, and a 10 pt font is exactly the same physical size no matter what display you're using, which happens to be exactly the same size it will have when you print it out (if you have a printer with DPI-aware drivers, of course, i.e. anything newer than 10 years or so).

Yes, 140 DPI is absolutely useable -- I've used it for close to two years now. The main difference from my 92 DPI desktop display is that the fonts are more readable, because each character is built from more pixels to get the same size.
Comparing 125% to 100% is, IMO, missing the mark completely.

Yes, there are a few ill-coded apps that can't handle high DPI. But since Microsoft posted their "call to developers" back in ... 2002?, they have become scarcer every year. And almost all of them have better replacements. For the few that are absolutely unusable, there's DPI scaling (combined with moving the window with the cursor keys and home/end instead of the mouse to see all of it if becomes too big for the screen). But almost all apps work well with high DPI these days.

 

full HD at 100% is golden, love it!

 

Why not just post something similar to what I did last year?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...z-screen-resolution-1366x768-vs-1600x900.html

I admit that mine is not the best but I humbly thinks that it better helps others who are about to buy a VAIO Z notebook.

 

couldn't you just reset the native resolution if you're really really unhappy?

 

I can only order the 1920x1080 screen with the canadian CTO

Will it be OK if I increase the DPI ?

 

I just got an F series with a full HD screen .. @ 1920x1080 the icons seem to small. And at 150% apps look weird. After reading this thread I created a customer res of 1600x900 and it looks ok. Not as crappy as the other ones but not as crisp and sharp as 1920x1080. But at least I can see

The one that looks the oddest is itunes. I will do a sync and post screen shots.

 

Hi SPEEDwithJJ, great job there!
However, what I intend to show is the differences between the two native VAIO Z resolutions. I believe that most users do not want to change to a lower than native res, as this blurs things a bit. It's good you refreshed our memory though with your post, thanks.

Sure Benlehot,
Especially with the 1920x1080 screen, I believe you'll have to, the best and most comfortable dpi setting is 125%. As pyr0 said this will make fonts look almost like if you had the 1600x900 screen. Do keep in mind however, that some apps (some older and apple apps mostly) do not respect the dpi scaling protocols. They are not too many, however.

BTW, watch this thread, more interesting staff to be published today!
And guys do not forget to press on the little scale icon under my name to give me some good reputation, if you like my hard work...

 

Here's a free suggestion, make PDFs with examples for each screen so that anyone could print them out and see on paper how the two screens compare. You are welcome, and no need for a rep

 

No, the native resolution of an LCD display is unchangeable. That's why it's known as the native resolution. All other resolutions[*] will always be scaled and blurry.
And what's the point? With DPI scaling, you get the best of both worlds: crisp and correctly sized fonts/widgets with high-DPI-aware applications, and scaling of the apps that aren't high-DPI-aware.
Setting a 1920x1080 display to 1600x900 would be equivalent to setting the DPI to 120%, and removing the high-DPI-aware flags from all apps that support it, making everything equally blurry, including images.
No, bump the DPI, then reduce the Windows default font, border and icon sizes in the advanced settings, and use DPI scaling for apps that don't behave (i.e. mix bitmap and scalable elements, with the bitmap deciding the dimensions -- very bad programming).

[*] Except perfect divides of the native resolution. I.e. 960x540 and 640x360 would look crisp on a 1920x1080 screen.

 

Huh? I'm not sure I get what you're saying. That thread of mine is showing both the screens at their native resolution of 1600x900 & 1366x768 respectively. Both of those screens were set to 100% DPI.

Of course, if you're talking about setting the individual screens to their correct DPI, then that's obviously different to what I did.

 

OK, don't worry SPEEDwithJJ, it's just that I am trying to compare the latest screen models. The 1366x768 resolution is not available on any Z models at the moment. Anyway, as this thread title suggests I am comparing 1600x900 and 1920x1080; anyone interested in buying an older second-hand model can surely check your above link.

 

Am i missing the point, or isn't everyone getting confused (again) about resolution and size.

For pictures, games and video, I don't believe anyone would prefer lower DPI for a full screen presentation (of course, video processing must be able to render equally well), or for any size for that matter. If i use a 2" x 2" box say for example to stream CNBC, i would prefer more pixels, not less.

the same is true for text: i would like more pixels to create my 12 point Times New Roman typeface, rather than less. So..most people are familiar with a 23" desktop monitor at 1920 x 1200 (or1080). 12 point type is the same physical size on that screen as on FHD Vaio Z. But on the desktop, that typeface is rendered with many fewer pixels. The flip side is that you can fit a lot more 12 point type on a 23" screen than a 13".

As a corollary, on equal sized screens, you can display the same amount of 12 point type whether the resolution is 1600 x 900 or 1920 x 1080. This time the the difference is that the higher resolution screen uses more pixels per letter. And for 12 point type, it might not be so visually different.

BUT....on 8 point type, for example, the visual quality of the letter will show more readability with more pixel density. So the beauty of the FHD screen is that you can capture more words as long as your eyesight allows you to see the smaller letters. More words = more of a web page without scrolling; more stock quotes; more IM boxes.....more, more, more.

Or if you eyesight does not allow you to easily capture information at 8 points, then at 10 point or 12 point type, you will still get a smoother representation of curves.

Again..for video, more density is better no matter what your eyesight. Fewer "jaggies" in the curves, etc. That alone is worth $100 imo.

That all being said...on such a small physical sized screen as our Z's, we are comparing outstanding to great. For a real thrill, check out Apple's new 27" cinema display ($999, not bad) with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. You want real estate?

 

nvm

10char

 

I prefer lower DPI on laptop. For real estate, I got my desktop with 30" 2560x1600 display.

 

That sounds overly pedantic. When working on documents, nobody wants to see 12 point text rendered 12 points (1/6") high. On a 13" screen, that would give you an unworkably small window into your document. The scrolling would drive me insane, and it would be a waste of the "real estate" offered by the high resolution display. So realistically, people are going to zoom documents, images, etc. to a comfortable working size regardless of the DPI setting.

Occasionally, I like to see images in Photoshop at the actual print size, but Photoshop has its own screen DPI setting for that.

 

That's why office applications give you a zoom function, and why people zoom to page width while working. You get the best of both worlds.

If working on 12 point is too large, chances are you have chosen a too big font, and it will be equally uncomfortable for people to read it after you've published it. Remember that most books are set in the range of 9 to 10.5 pt, and chances are that if you need to use a bigger font, you have a good reason, and also want to see it in that bigger font, so you know what you get.
And if you're not formatting documents for publishing, then why use a document processor instead of a text editor, where the font size you choose doesn't matter?

The reason why a few office apps default to a huge font is historic -- back in the old days, you had a 80x24 display, and a typical 13" 4:3 monitor would give you that large text. When computers switched from character-based to bitmapped graphics back in the 80s, keeping the large font size meant less changes for users. The apps that came later, after bitmapped graphics was common, usually defaulted to what typewriters produced and dot matrix printers supported out-of-the-box (10 and 12 pt).
Now we've changed form bitmapped to scalable, and can achieve a much better WYSIWYG approximation than before, so holding on to the old defaults is now counter-productive. Luckily, the apps let you change the historic defaults.

Use the font size that suits you the best -- setting the DPI correctly lets you do just that. You then know that if 9 dpi is the right size for you, it will be the same size whether you're on a 1920x1080 13" display or a 1600x1200 21" display. It gives you the freedom not to count pixels, but work with actual physical sizes.

 

I don't know about zooming to page width on today's 16:9 displays. And I'm not at liberty to adjust the font size of documents to whatever looks best on a high DPI screen at 100% zoom, because I have to share them with other people and sometimes print them. Anyway, my point was that since you're going to zoom in the application anyway, the OS level DPI setting is largely irrelevant except for the user interface. And although most of the Windows 7 UI scales well, the system tray and a lot of applications don't. Viewing web content with an unusual DPI setting is even more of a mixed bag. In general, things look OK to me at 125% (120 DPI) but the experience degrades at higher settings.

So while I understand that matching the Windows DPI setting to the display has a certain appeal of theoretical correctness, in practice it doesn't look so good on high DPI displays and defeats the main benefit of higher resolution which is to fit more on screen.

 

Hi guys, I added a small video demo on youtube for anyone interested. Hopefully you might be able to grasp a general idea of how apps look and the general font/screen layouts.
(Not very good quality due to slow internet connection - sorry - will try a better one soon).
SONY VAIO Z12 1600X900 SCREEN DEMO

 

well, I can tell you guys, my Z590 has 1600x900 and anything bigger than that would be an overkill for me, though I do understand some people/professions need as large as possible footprint, but for "regular" daily use, I cannot picture myself using anything above 1600x900 on 13" screen. Even today, most of manufacturers keep 1366x768 as "standard" for 13".

Cheers,
Miki

 

I'm still waiting for an OS that does proper DPI scaling. Learn from iOS 4 and retina display.

That's not really an argument, considering they use 1366x768 on 16" laptops too.

 

I'd prefer a higher res screen... if the full-HD screen had been offered when i CTO'd my Z, i'd get it but, unfortunately it wasnt . In any case, manufacturers keep 1366x768 because the regular consumer knows nothing about screen res and take everything for it's face value (they think larger screen size = larger workspace) and because it's cheaper to put the lower res screens in. I want other manufacturers to get higher res screens in their laptops, if only to fuel competition for the Z successors so that it'll be cheaper when i gotta replace mines

Well shurcooL, that's not exactly fair... you do realize that iOS is meant only to run on the iPhones while Windows is made to run on... well practically anything (especially now with their recently announced support for ARM chips) which means screens with different resolutions, etc. For iOS going from an iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4, Apple merely doubled the pixel count both horizontally and vertically, which means old apps for the 3GS made to run on the 480x320 resolution screen (which is horrid as my N900 has 800x480... same as those AMOLED screens on the Galaxy S phones) can be scaled really easily for the iPhone 4 screen with every cluster of 4 pixels acting as 1.

Long story short, if you control ALL the hardware, then making software is easy because you know ALL the hardware limitations, but for an OS like Windows with a gazillion of manufacturers, home-builds, variations in hardware and the ton of software, it's hard to get things like DPI scaling to work correctly when there really is no standard.

 

I agree.

If it means starting from scratch to have proper DPI scaling, then let it be that than forever be stuck with fixed 96 DPI.

Current 3rd party apps have no hope of being able to support good DPI scaling, but if a new API is made, the new apps can do it.

 

It was an observation, that even 1600x900 is pretty high res for 13"

Cheers,
Miki

 

Agreed.

A few years ago, when VGN-Z were the latest models, there was the choice between 1366x768 and 1600x900, and I was thinking really hard which of the two to pick. That means I was actually considering 1366x768 lol... Because 1600x900 seemed like "too much."

 

Well my two cents from someone that had the same dilemma as u...
No matter what u do, no matter how many videos or screenshots u see.. there's no way to really know unless u see both side by side.
I was 100% convinced that I wanted the FullHD since my vision is really good, no glasses, etc. I'm also a big fan of really dense screens but boy.. let me tell u. When I saw the fullHD at 100% dpi I knew right there there's no way I could sit in front of that tiny screen for more than 10 mins without a headache. I mean to me there's no point in getting the fullhd if u're not gonna work at 100% dpi and the letters were so tiny I had to keep my head like above the keyboard.
The 900p screen at 100% is just right! Even that is kinda smallish at 100% but after a while u get used to it and u never look back.
I'm telling u.. the FullHD is overkill and u're gonna end up having everything scaled to 125% permanently.

 

When I had the Z12 with full HD, I tried using 125% scaled mode in Windows 7. The scaling thing didn't do it's job well enough for other softwares, I had to go to 100%. At 100%, everything was really tiny, but really sharp too. It was especially helpful when using 3 windows at once. (I had a PDF file on the left half, PPT file on the upper right, and Word file lower right.)

I really like high density pixels, just like on my ipod touch 4g. But for Windows, I am kind of hesitant now since the scaling doesn't work too well. I would have a really hard time deciding if the FHD upgrade was like $50. Viewing photos on a small FHD screen was amazing.

 

I have a Z11 with the full HD panel (I didn't spec the system myself). I have good eyesight but 1920x1080 on this screen is just too tiny to use normally. Windows' DPI scaling is still pretty crappy and lots of UI elements are not scaled. Plus a lot of windows elements and dialog boxes etc look funny with DPI scaling.

I end up using my laptop screen at 1600x900. Surprisingly it looks pretty good but obviously not as good as a native 1600x900 screen.

Another issue is that at work I use an external monitor at 1920x1200. If I change the DPI when using the laptop screen, I would need to change it everytime I dock my laptop which would be a big hassle.

 

Thanx for all the last comments, very helpfull
There was a bit of me still wanting a FullHD, but no more since I've read you.

 

I know exactly how you feel . When I got mine, it took me about 3 weeks to get used to it (1600x900). Did try all possible DPI scaling options, but the truth is, everything but native resolution will look blurry, more or less, but still blurry. Not to mention that many apps aren't designed/capable for proper DPI. I even had to install Nosquint extension in Fx for that matter

Now it's ok I guess, but personally I would never go for 1080 res. I use my Z mostly for Office apps, Internet and some light Photoshop.... though I do understand some people in need for even larger footprint, it's just I'm not one of them.

Cheers,
Miki

 

Well, some of us like to work at the correct DPI, in which case a point for full HD is to get better defined text at the same size.
A 10 pt font is exactly the same physical size on my 140 DPI display as on my 96 DPI display -- it's just much clearer and easier to read on the higher resolution display, because each letter consists of more pixels.

Another reason is watching 1080i/1080p video, which will have to be scaled and interpolated on a 1600x900 display, with a small amount of blurriness as a result. Granted, for most consumer quality highly compressed movies this will not be noticeable, but you may see it in some menus or "extended functionality" content on BDs.

And a third reason is using other (smaller) resolutions. The higher resolution screen will show less blur when scaling up too, so if you have a game that only works in 1024x768 or 800x600 (Diablo II anyone?), it will be less blurry on the better display.