Sony Z: 1080P or Not? Comparing Resolution/DPI

Hi, Folks!

Many folks considering the Sony Z have been asking the question of whether or not the "Full-HD" screen offered in some configurations/countries has "too high" a resolution, given the relatively low 13.1" screen size. While I can't answer that question for you, I thought I'd post a little table that can help to understand on a comparison basis where this sits, given current products:



As you can see, this walks through the spectrum from 24" monitors through the Sony Vaio P, which currently offers the highest DPI setting that I'm aware of on any currently shipping portable PC.

A few interesting observations:

• For those who are accustomed to using E-Ink panels, the Z's full-HD screen offers essentially identical DPI.
• If you've ever seen a Sony Vaio P in-person, its admittedly very high DPI is indeed challenging for folks who don't have great short-distance vision.
• Even the low-resolution version of the Sony Z has a DPI that's higher than 18.4" 1080P notebooks.

One source of debate relates to whether or not the Vaio Z's resolution is too high. Critics state that "magazines are 600 DPI+, how could you not read a much lower DPI"? The answer is that we're undergoing a critical transition.

The "problem" is that those who've used computers for years are actually accustomed to seeing pixels. Traditionally, operating systems and user interfaces have "assumed" a pixel density of around 100 DPI. What's changed is that we're beginning to undergo a transition from traditional displays to much higher density displays. Part of this challenge, led by E Ink, is how to effectively replace paper. In that context, viewing individual pixels is actually undesirable, while rendering fonts with authenticity is the top priority - precisely the top concern of most publishers.

Obviously, if you've got good visual acuity, these new high-resolution displays won't be a problem. In any case, you can easily dial up the operating system's DPI setting to give you better scaling of fonts - that is, more pixels will be used to render each character. However, as others have pointed out, some application authors haven't been paying attention to this display transition, and don't render their application properly when the default font scaling is dialed up. Fortunately, this isn't a high percentage of applications, and should continue to decrease as time goes on, and users demand better solutions.

In the short term, I can't guide your individual decision-making, other than to encourage you to check out a display in person, if you're able to. Failing that, it's extremely difficult to simulate how you'll perceive a 1920x1080 display, no matter how much Photoshop you do, unless you happen to have a 15" CRT that's capable of a crisp 1080 display.

It all boils down to personal choice. In my case, I'm familiar with E Ink panels, and am comfortable with that pixel density. As a result, I've selected the true-HD panel for my Vaio Z. What you're comfortable with may well differ.

FYI!
Mark

 

Thanks MJ, for an objective point of view and providing the table.

I'm one of those who wants 1366 resolution on the Z and I AGREE with your post.
It's great to have all the data up there you presented...it allows someone who can understand the dpi to consider how it is going to influence their purchase.

In a world where dpi scaling is more or less mature, my personal advice is to go for the highest dpi possible. Unfortunately as of this moment, dpi scaling breaks *most* of my 3rd party apps. Yes, it's the fault of the application developers because they were lazy and hard coded their dialog boxes to fixed pixels instead of using layouts. But it's out of my control at the moment.

I believe that high dpi is the way to go in the future...perhaps 5 years to 10 years down the road.
I'd probably have a new VAIO by then.

 

By the way, for those who are avoiding the 1080P just because of the dpi, do remember that the FullHD Panel is apparently of a higher grade with better colours and viewing angles. You will have to take that into account before considering ditching FullHD.

 

Hi, whwtan!

Thank you very much! I woke up at 2AM last night and decided to put in a little Excel time, hoping that this might be useful for someone. I own a Vaio P, and so have some experience with very high DPI setups. Given the work that E Ink (and others, like Liquavista and Sipix/AUO) are driving, I'm actually pretty hopeful that we'll see this become a more important issue relatively soon. But then again, I am in a digital publishing startup!

Thanks again!
Mark

 

Is there any user review yet with direct comparison between new 1600 and 1920 screens?

 

Actually, applications not respecting the font scaling is a relatively minor problem. The much bigger problem with high DPI displays is applications that simply can't work well with font scaling.

Why is it that some applications can't work well with font scaling at all? The reason is simple. As you said, user interfaces are built with the assumption of a DPI range that's lower than these high DPI displays. As you also stated, this assumption isn't much of a problem for many parts of the UI, such as fonts, which can simply be scaled to larger sizes on a high DPI display. But there are things that don't scale well in the UI as well. I'm talking of course about bitmapped images. Whenever you are dealing with a graphic or video etc. in a UI or document or website, chances are it's bitmapped. And for these bitmapped elements on the screen you are faced with two unsavory choices with a high DPI display. The first choice is to scale them like everything else. The downside of this choice is that, since these images are bitmapped, scaling them produces lower quality and less sharp images compared to the original. The result is the same as if you used a lower resolution than the native resolution for your display, except instead of the entire screen looking crappy, only these bitmapped images on the screen look crappy. Alternatively, you can leave anything bitmapped unscaled. There are two problems with this: first, if there's any text in these images, the size won't change so you are faced with the same small font problem within these images (this is a real problem for websites because a lot of them use images that contain text). Second, user interface layouts may depend on these images and text etc. lining up a certain way. Scaling some things while not scaling others could easily break the layout. Many websites suffer from this problem when using DPI scaling, although well-designed websites should be able to cope.

You can see why high DPI on e-ink readers is not a problem. Since most of what they display is text that can be rendered at any size, DPI isn't an issue. There may be the occasional bitmapped graphic that an e-ink reader has to display but they usually look pretty crappy anyway, people could hardly notice if it was scaled to be even crappier. But with a computer, where you will be dealing with a lot of applications, websites, and other documents that may contain bitmapped images, it is much more of an issue.

 

Hi, Chirality!

Spot on, sir/maam! It's wild that you've identified this. It would have been a little involved to emphasize this point in my initial post, but it's interesting to observe that one of the greater challenges we face in our own business is convincing advertisers to properly target their ads to this new medium. As I'm sure you're aware, we're not yet at the point where PNGs are transparent across print and digital publishing. Even with our Javascript rendering engine being openly available, these folks are still accustomed to delivering lots of bitmaps for printing.

Hopefully, these issues will begin to be ameliorated as companies increasingly make the transition to digital publishing. Thanks for the thoughtful post!

Cheers!
Mark

 

Those of you with the 1080p screen, how are daily tasks on it? I haven't seen a 13inch with 1080p ever and still have trouble imagining how tough it would be to read letters.

Obviously when it comes to games or movies, the 1080p will look stunning but when it comes down to tasks like excel, powerpoint, word, browsing, chatting etc. how good is the 1080p compared tot he 1600?

 

My Viliv S5 has a DPi of 247 at 4.8" and 1024x600. But I have no problems at all with the DPi settings under Windows 7 adjusted right.

 

Two of my biggest concerns about the high res display

1) How do owners find it, do they find it manageable?
2) What impact at all does the high res display have on battery life. My second concern though needs another post.

The cost of upgrading is not that high in the EU. Of course swapping your display is very costy so you don't want to get the lower res and start regretting it down the line.

 

Vaio W has very close DPI (155) to FullHD Z's screen (168).

 

I would modify the above to 5 months to 10 months down the road.

I think unless you are looking at old/legacy stuff, many of the current applications and almost all of the upcoming ones would be dpi-scaling-aware. Why go with last decade's resolution ?