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.
Comments
11 responses to “Don’t Settle For A Laptop That Doesn’t Have At Least Full HD Resolution”
I am also in awe of all the complaining laptop manufacturing companies that Laptop sales have been dropping for years, yet they have done NOTHING to listen to what the end users want, I have held off recommending anyone upgrade their laptop and instead opt for buying a SSD for an existing one if it is dual core or above and they don’t use it for high end game play. ?x768 was the technology that had in 1994 with SVGA laptops, there is no need to still offer them on anything less than a netbook a true laptop does need FullHD and until they offer a good screen I hope they continue to have a hard time selling laptops, the other thing they do is offer FullHD but only with the increased specs, like I7, 8GB+ ram or 256GB+ only SSD size, why not offer the base model with fullHD so you can make a start and upgrade later (not relevant to Ultrabooks – which are also a stupid idea to try to squeeze the consumers, I only buy things that can be upgraded/repaired and this is still another problem with the current markets). Imagine only getting 2 years out of a device because the battery can not be replaced and less that 60 minutes usage time makes it useless to take out for the day.
Wait you mean I can’t have multiple windows open unless I have 1080p? This article give no valid reason why an HD screen is needed. If anything, I’d say don’t bother with 1080p because surely the next res is around the corner.
Then again, that’s probably the point of this article: sell 1080p before we can’t anymore.
The next res around the corner arrived in 2012 with the Retina Macbook. Dell also offer Ultra HD with their XPS line too
I think this needs fixing.
I have a 17″ 1600×900 screen. Suits me fine.
Sorry Laptop screens should have screen resolutions of 1920×1200, not 1080. They are a computer not a TV!
Have you stopped to think they make low res screens so the battery lasts longer? I mean come on, not everyone needs a FHD screen. Laptops, being portable need to last a few hours per charge. All those extra pixels aren’t going to be worth much of if you can’t turn on the device.
Just the other week I was researching laptops on behalf of my brother-in-law, and it was intensely frustrating how many sites would list 1366×768 displays as “HD”. It was just a massive waste of time that made me not want to buy from those sites.
1366×768 is fine on my 11″ MacBook Air, but it’s patently ridiculous in a 15″ panel, which, sadly, seems to be every laptop less than $1299 in Australia. I don’t really see what the point is in having a 15″ screen when you can barely actually fit anything on it.
. And this
I don’t get this. Your eyes struggle to see the difference as resolution gets higher and higher. As others have pointed out, it also takes more processing power and battery usage to operate a higher resolution screen, as well as making the unit cost more in general. If the resolution is too high, you also need to keep things zoomed in just to make things readable.
Do you *have* to buy a higher resolution screen? Absolutely not. Please don’t be a screen snob, and consider more than just the raw numbers that are listed in tech specs.
When travelling, the primary job of my laptop is to backup photos from my camera SD card. Itried doing this with an Android setup, got bogged down with extra cables and external hard drives.
Now I’m using one of those god-awful laptops with a 768 resolution screen. While it truly is mediocre, IT DOES THE JOB and was a great bargain.
Those who are offended by my use of a low resolution screen are welcome to offer me money. With enough money, I can get unnecessary features like a higher resolution screen, a thinner keyboard that is harder to type on, and a new custom interface that requires a handful of adapters to do the original task (backing up SD cards to hard drive).