Don’t Settle For A Laptop That Doesn’t Have At Least Full HD Resolution

Don’t Settle For A Laptop That Doesn’t Have At Least Full HD Resolution

Many PC vendors market their laptops with 1366 by 768 screens as “high definition”, but these are not the laptops you deserve. Laptop Magazine argues that you should never settling for anything less than 1080p for your next laptop.

You’ll need full HD to multitask with two apps side-by-side, and you’ll see more of your documents or web pages on a high-res screen. The larger the laptop screen, the worse visuals will be:

According to Raymond Soneira, the president of screen-testing company DisplayMate, you need a panel with at least 172 pixels per inch (PPI) to ensure that you can’t make out the dots from 51cm away, a typical laptop viewing distance. A 41cm laptop with a 1366 x 768 display has a PPI of just 100, which means that photographs will look like pointillist paintings and text may remind you of the characters on a dot-matrix printout. Laptops with 36cm, 33cm and 30cm screens are only a little sharper at this resolution, with PPIs of 111, 118 and 135, respectively.

The need for a sharp, high-res display is likely common knowledge to many Lifehacker readers, but what surprised me most was Laptop’s finding that a whopping 78 per cent of laptops sold in 2015 have low-res displays (1366 by 768 pixels or below). PC makers keep making laptops with these displays to save money, but we’re also supporting this by buying them.

Avram Piltch argues that the full HD screen should be at the top of your list when you’re thinking about buying a new laptop:

Just as we expect our laptops to have modern Wi-Fi, we should demand that they have high-resolution screens. Next time you’re shopping for a laptop, getting one with 1920 x 1080 pixels or higher should be at or near the top of your list of priorities. If you have to pay a little extra or skimp on other components to get 1080p, you have to do it. Your laptop’s screen is its most important feature.

Your phone shouldn’t have a higher resolution display than your smartphone.

Why 78 Per cent of Laptop Screens Suck [Laptop]


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