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> Display: 15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish I really wish system76 would start giving options for 4k displays. I have a FHD display from them, only a few mont

> Display: 15.6″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish I really wish system76 would start giving options for 4k displays. I have a FHD display from them, only a few months old, and it's noticeably worse than my old macbook pro display.

skavi 6y ago
The MacBook Pro display is better in many more ways than just resolution. It's also has a wide gamut, excellent factory calibration, good contrast, and an effective antireflective coating on its glossy panel. I'd prioritize each of these over increasing the resolution from 1080p.
- deleted 6y ago
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- Uehreka 6y ago
  It’s also actually higher res too! My Late 2013 13” Macbook Pro has a resolution of 2560x1600. I wish more manufacturers would remember that there are specs between 1080p and 4K.
  - godshatter 6y ago
    This is true for dektop monitors as well. I had to scout around for a 2560x1440 display for my desktop Ubuntu box. You would think they would be relatively common, but as you say everything was 1080p or 4k, at least when I was shopping in-person pre-covid. I ended up with an AOC gaming monitor that I really like that I bought online.
- wraptile 6y ago
  Couldn't disagree more (writing from MacBook display). I'd take mate FHD pver Macbooks smudgy, glossy retina any time of the _day or year_. Glossy displays in laptops should never have been a thing to begin with and I'm not sure how apple managed to convinced world that this should continue.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    I used to think this way too, up until this summer when I spent a lot of time at my parent's house working from the garden. My personal pc is a 2013 MBP, so glossy screen. My work pc is a hp probook 430 g5 (~2 years old) with a matte screen. The one that I would take out in the garden when it was sunny was the mac. Sure, I could see myself in it, I had to set the backlight to 100%, but it was possible to focus my eyes such that the text on screen was actually readable. Of course, this implies black text on white background and to sit in such a way as not to have too contrasty a background. The matte screen of the HP was completely useless. It was just a big blotch of white, it was next to impossible to see the text. I even took out an actual external monitor once to try it out, a Dell P2415Q with a backlight that's blinding inside. Same problem. Now sure, when there's not a high level of ambient light, the matte screen is more easy to use as there are no reflections. But as soon as there's a source of light that shines on it (and there are cases when you can't control it) it's game over. Protip: clean the macbook screen from time to time. Even if it doesn't look dirty. I wear glasses, so I use the cleaning spray on the screen. It always amazes me how much better it is afterwards.
    - scns 6y ago
      In general, and for working outside especially, i recommend the Solarized colorscheme. It is optimized for good readability and contrast, while being easy on the eyes. https://github.com/altercation/solarized https://github.com/altercation/solarized
      - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
        Solarized is diarrhea Christmas lights. Pardon the choice of words, but it is the only effective way I could convey my opinion re solarized and most color schemes. Most color schemes try too hard to differentiate everything, lack good contrast and do not aid in understanding the code. Many of them and as a good example solarized, lack good contrast. I had so many issues trying to find a good scheme, that I resorted to creating my own for Jetbrain software, and make due with some of the rainglow schemes on VSCode. The themes are mostly black text on white background and the highlights are not obtrusive so as to draw more attention that the core. In the end, I spend more effort trying to mute the loudness of the colours than reading the content.
- cHaOs667 6y ago
  This heavily depends on the model. My 2017 MBP has a worse (less bright and worse antireflective coating) display than my 2015 MBP.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  Yes, but except for the (and here I mean resolution, not gloss), apple laptops are a mediocre choice in general. I mean, that OS experience, man. It's like people are living in an abusive relationship that hasn't improved since 1998.
  - gatewaynode 6y ago
    Agreed. The displays, speakers, touch pads on Apple products are amazingly good. But the pro laptops have been in steady decline as Apple gears them to the average user more and more over the years, instead of the power user like they were originally built for. I think System76 has the right direction for power users, shiny screens and crisp sound doesn't help me hunt through gigabytes of data and millions of lines of code.
jeanaimarre 6y ago
For a 14" display, I think that a 2k display is a better option.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  That's only 1k in double-pixel remdering. Much less smooth.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Why would you get a 2k screen and then render a 1k image on it?
elcritch 6y ago
> 1920×1080 FHD Not even a 4:3 display! 1080 vertical is almost useless for coding. Seems much of their target market of Linux enthusiasts would have a lot of coders wanting better than that.
- nikki93 6y ago
  Works pretty fine / well with a tiling window manager.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Sure it can work, but it’s certainly not for me since I believe it’s a poor choice of default screen size for anything but primarily watching movies, as the aspect ratio limits the vertical viewing area significantly. I like the way one blogger describes a 1440p vs a 1080p: “A 1440p monitor will give you 3x code windows side by side and 76 lines of code. This is a pretty big deal. You might not realize it until you’ve tried it for a while but being able to comfortably have 3 editor files open and being able to view about 50% more vertical lines of code at a glance is huge.” ( https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software-development https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo... ) Though someone else mentioned they have 4K version, not just a 1080 version! That can work better with the right scaling. The rest of the laptop looks nice.
    - nikki93 6y ago
      I also use a mac pretty regularly and a 1440p desktop. I was getting at the aspect ratio issue, which it seems like you were talking about first, before now talking about resolution (?). Yes, a higher resolution can fit more pixels. The absolute actual size in inches also matters though for how big the text ends up appearing.
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  The cow has long, long left the pen on that one. I haven't seen a 4:3 laptop in years.
freetime2 6y ago
It would be nice to have the option. But given that Linux still doesn't have perfect support for display scaling (compared to macOS, for example) and the fact that it's a 15" screen, I would still probably opt for the 1080p if given the option.
- turblety 6y ago
  Pop!_OS (their own Linux distro) has DPI scaling built in. I can actually turn on x2 scaling, and while it's huge on the poor 1080 display, it works perfectly. Also a lot of the big linux distro's now have support for this. I know Manjaro and Ubuntu can do it with minimal effort.
- echlebek 6y ago
  I use Fedora on a 4K 15" display with an Intel GPU, and the scaling works fine. However, the Intel GPU is a tad underpowered for the task.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    I use a Skylake on a 4K laptop with a 4K external monitor above it. It is plenty fast, with no tearing. Under Qubes, where app VMs don't get to use the GPU, mpv plays full-screen 1080p video using 3 cores. (Oddly, the external monitor will do 4K only at 30 Hz. I don't know if that is a limitation of the laptop or of the monitor.)
    - ericdevries 6y ago
      The 30hz thing might be because of an older hdmi version, like 1.4. I have had the same issues and it was a hardware limitation
- jedbrown 6y ago
  I have a 13" HP Spectre from mid-2017 with a 4k display. It's noticeably sharper (and brighter) than the 1080p alternatives. Prior to that, I had a QHD laptop from circa 2013. No font size issues on Linux that affected my work.
yaomtc 6y ago
The Adder has a 4K display, and the Bonobo has the option.
- toyg 6y ago
  But both are Intel/nVidia.
3np 6y ago
I could take or leave 4k, but at least 2k (~2560x1440)? Having their 2020 high-end 15.6" maxing out at 1080p is just ridiculous and I'd probably have bought at least one of their laptops if they had a sub-2kg model with just one step up in resolution.
- wly_cdgr 6y ago
  Anything above 1080p doesn't give you any more usable screen space at that physical size. It's very debatable whether just having richer blacks is worth the battery life hit.
  - 3np 6y ago
    Speaking from experience and having played around with fonts, scaling and DPI, I still feel a bit hampered switching back to my Thinkpad t470s (14" 1080p) from a long time on my t490s (14" 1440p). I do use pretty small terminal fonts.
  - crispyporkbites 6y ago
    yes it does. the market clearly wants higher res screens, that's why "Retina Display" has been a major marketing point for Apple for years, and you literally haven't been able to buy a Macbook with a 1080p screen for years. This is not even for tech enthusiasts or professional uses, it's basic tablestakes in the market now.
    - npongratz 6y ago
      > you literally haven't been able to buy a Macbook with a 1080p screen for years. You are technically right, but to be fair, it has been barely more than one year. Apple sold their 2017 model of the 13" MacBook Air, 1440x900, in July 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190708170222/https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://web.archive.org/web/20190708170222/https://www.apple...
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      No it doesn't. There are mostly PC laptops with 1080p precisely because of people like me who only want 1080p because more pixels are pretty useless. Have you actually shopped for one recently? Top hits on Amazon are all FHD. > "Retina Display" has been a major marketing point for Apple for years... Exactly. And that's all it is - marketing, particularly for egoists who want to feel like they're better however they can. The vast majority of the market, mostly those who don't use Macs, don't give a shit.
sbierwagen 6y ago
Apple has never sold a laptop with a 4K panel. Highest resolution of any Macbook was the 2019 Macbook Pro 16" with 3072x1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Models
- Uehreka 6y ago
  I really do wonder where exactly 4K would begin if more and weirder resolutions were commercially available. Like, the fact that 3840x2160 is considered the canonical 4K resolution means you don’t actually need 4000 pixels, just a number that’s close to 4000. I wonder what would happen if someone dropped a 3800x2000 display just to mess with people.
  - bjoli 6y ago
    That is just double 1980x1080, and if you shuffle it a little you get a 4000x2000 pixels, but that would mean your aspect ratio is different than what people are used to.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Yep, kind of a deal breaker for me, which is a bummer because this almost looks perfect for me. It seems this is a weakness across their product range. AMD integrated graphics needs a bit of explaining to me is this the performance monster variety or Intel graphics is actually faster type of deal. How many external screens can I drive with this setup? My main use case for this would be using Darktable. For the same reason I want a good HDPI screen. Otherwise, this would be a development machine (docker, misc jetbrains stuff, homebrew, some data engineering, and all the usual stuff). So looking for ram and CPU that is faster than what I have today (2018 15" MBP). My mac book pro is literally falling apart (keyboard) at this point and I'm not eager to jump on the ARM bandwagon yet as it will mess up my tool workflow short term (Java, docker, intellij, homebrew) and cause me compatibility headaches I just don't need in my life right now. I am liking the performance though. All the software that I use runs fine on Linux. So, not a hypothetical option for me. I'd be up and running in a few hours with little to no loss of functionality. I don't care about legacy ports; USB-C dongles are cheap and effective and I have a few in my bag. Likewise with hdmi to usb-c. What I do care about is being able to connect my Thunderbolt USB-C phone, fuji camera, hard drives, external screen, etc. I'm thinking of adding a headphone to that mix. 2 USB-3.2 ports seems like it's limited.
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  I just picked up a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. The only thing I can fault it on is the screen, the brightness is a bit anemic and there is some bleed. However, the performance is fantastic. I've been using it for image processing, and the 8C16T gets through my problems at the same speed as my desktop Ryzen 2700X. Similarly the onboard GPU is sufficient for playing Witcher 3, at just a slightly lower performance than my RX580. It has 2 legacy USB-A ports, MicroSD, HDMI and a USB-C-3.2 which I've used to run a 4K screen at 60Hz. Price was very reasonable. I'm happy, this has stepped up my laptop CPU performance by a factor of 4, the GPU can now do all the stuff I want from a laptop, and it's compact and has good standby life.
fsflover 6y ago
If you need a 4k matte display, consider Purism Librem 15. https://puri.sm/products/librem-15 https://puri.sm/products/librem-15
- turblety 6y ago
  I have one, and it's an amazing laptop. However, as Purism are focused on privacy and free (as in freedom) software, they won't put in a gpu. System76, for me, seems to have a balance between coreboot and as much free software as possible. But also the addition of a proprietary blob full gpu. Also the system76 cpu specs are slightly higher.
sgtnasty 6y ago
This is MY experience. I have run 4k on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme with Linux. Its not been a good experience for me. I am getting old and having vision issues, so I decided to get the 4k screen because my old MacBookPro 2015 had the high res and worked well with my eyes, it just didn't have the 15" screen. Display Managers: When Linux boots in a 4k screen, the GRUB menu is impossible to read, so I have it memorized. I have tried many Display Managers, some recognize 4k and adapt with no issue, many do not. GDM and SDDM work well, XDM not so much, fonts are all over the place. X11 (it has an NVIDIA card) There are some apps which refuse to adapt to 4k if you are running GNOME (and yes I use the QT_SCALE_FACTOR). Then there are apps written in WXWIDGETS. Steam menus and items are unreadable to me. Some Window Managers barely support HiDPI displays (XFCE I am looking at you). It goes on and on, by the end of the day its a very frustrating experience. GNOME (and it's derivatives) do it the best so far, KDE has issues with icon sizes and the panel. XFCE has multiple issues, so much that I gave up on it quickly and can't remember them all (and it looked awful). i3 was a little tricky at first but it can be configured to work well, but you need to adapt all the apps and bars too. Other OSes: Even MS Windows has frequent problems with the screen magnification. macOS just gets it right, and I never had ANY of these issues, except small fonts in the firmware screen. For my next laptop I will go back to 1920x1080 and avoid all these problems and start using AMD GPU's so I dont have to turn off secure boot and stop using X11.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > Display Managers: When Linux boots in a 4k screen, the GRUB menu is impossible to read, so I have it memorized. weird, I have a 4k screen but the bios, grub, etc are just scaled across the screen. A bit blurry of course but definitely readable.
- jordanab 6y ago
  Tip: install Pop!_OS - Nvidia edition. I also have a (1st gen) Thinkpad X1 Extreme with a 4K screen. In addition to that, I have 3 external 4K screens connected to it (so 4x 4K screens in total), and it runs smoothly without having needed any additonal config/customization.
  - 6y ago
reissbaker 6y ago
I agree with some other posters here that I don't need it to be 4k, but 1080p is bad enough to be a deal killer for me. The only reason I don't buy System76 laptops is their terrible displays — I love PopOS (so much that I donate monthly to it) and would buy their hardware in a heartbeat otherwise.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
  > The only reason I don't buy System76 laptops is their terrible displays You've never used a laptop with a decent touchpad? Or one without a loud fan? Or one with a good battery capacity? The displays are not the only lackluster thing about System76 hardware.
tubularhells 6y ago
4k is overkill at this size. 1440p is better for battery size and you would scale 4k up to 1440p effective anyway.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I agree I would be happy with 2k as well. But this doesn't appear to be offered in laptops for some reason.
  - ricketycricket 6y ago
    1080p == 2K
    - pg4 6y ago
      1080p is 1920x1080 and 2k is 2560x1440
      - Filligree 6y ago
        I don't doubt it's used that way, but that makes absolutely zero sense. For that matter, it's 1080p that's half the (linear) resolution of 4k.
      - RamRodification 6y ago
        What? Who defines 1440p as 2k? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution
      - squeals_colder 6y ago
        2K is a generic term for resolutions that have a horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. In terms of cinema the DCI standard for 2K is 2048x1080. There is also the flat cropped resolution of 1998x1080 and the cinemascope cropped resolution of 2048x858. 1080p has the same vertical resolution as DCI 2K and it's horizontal resolution is also approximately 2,000. 2560x1440 is 560 pixels more than 2,000 compared to 1920x1080 which is only 80 pixels away. That is 7x further away from exactly 2,000. Calling 2560x1440 2K is too big of a stretch. If you wanted to give it a name based upon its approximate horizontal resolution then you should call it 2.5K.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I bought a Oryx Pro about 2 1/2 years ago to get a laptop with an NVidia GPU. I bought the high resolution version, but sometimes run it at the lower 1920x1080 resolution. I just looked and they don’t seem to offer the higher resolution right now on that model. Anyway, it is a fine laptop.
pg4 6y ago
I would prefer 2K res on a laptop. On a 15 inch screen, 4K is overkill - I have to increase desktop scaling to read text, so there's no increase in screen real estate. Higher res drains the battery faster as well.
copperx 6y ago
It's crazy that many laptops are 1080p in 2020. Such low resolution is unacceptable to the majority of users.
- Rompect 6y ago
  And here am I with the 1680x1050 monitor... I agree though
IE6 6y ago
AFAIK they just resell commodity generic laptops under their brand and they do some System76 specific things to them such as open source bios firmwares. I may be wrong but when I looked into them years back thats what I uncovered. I think if they want to differentiate themselves as a high end ubuntu/developer machine they're going to need the things people want (or don't know they want). My personal needs are high res, bright, color accurate, crisp displays (currently loving my Samsung Galaxy Chromebook) and high quality keyboards. I don't really know of a device that has both.
voortuckian 6y ago
my galp2 has the 4k display. I'm not sure why they changed. It's been great. .. well, except for tiny grub text.
nickik 6y ago
This is by far the biggest reason I don't buy these.

skavi 6y ago

The MacBook Pro display is better in many more ways than just resolution. It's also has a wide gamut, excellent factory calibration, good contrast, and an effective antireflective coating on its glossy panel. I'd prioritize each of these over increasing the resolution from 1080p.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Uehreka 6y ago
It’s also actually higher res too! My Late 2013 13” Macbook Pro has a resolution of 2560x1600. I wish more manufacturers would remember that there are specs between 1080p and 4K.
- godshatter 6y ago
  This is true for dektop monitors as well. I had to scout around for a 2560x1440 display for my desktop Ubuntu box. You would think they would be relatively common, but as you say everything was 1080p or 4k, at least when I was shopping in-person pre-covid. I ended up with an AOC gaming monitor that I really like that I bought online.
wraptile 6y ago
Couldn't disagree more (writing from MacBook display). I'd take mate FHD pver Macbooks smudgy, glossy retina any time of the _day or year_. Glossy displays in laptops should never have been a thing to begin with and I'm not sure how apple managed to convinced world that this should continue.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  I used to think this way too, up until this summer when I spent a lot of time at my parent's house working from the garden. My personal pc is a 2013 MBP, so glossy screen. My work pc is a hp probook 430 g5 (~2 years old) with a matte screen. The one that I would take out in the garden when it was sunny was the mac. Sure, I could see myself in it, I had to set the backlight to 100%, but it was possible to focus my eyes such that the text on screen was actually readable. Of course, this implies black text on white background and to sit in such a way as not to have too contrasty a background. The matte screen of the HP was completely useless. It was just a big blotch of white, it was next to impossible to see the text. I even took out an actual external monitor once to try it out, a Dell P2415Q with a backlight that's blinding inside. Same problem. Now sure, when there's not a high level of ambient light, the matte screen is more easy to use as there are no reflections. But as soon as there's a source of light that shines on it (and there are cases when you can't control it) it's game over. Protip: clean the macbook screen from time to time. Even if it doesn't look dirty. I wear glasses, so I use the cleaning spray on the screen. It always amazes me how much better it is afterwards.
  - scns 6y ago
    In general, and for working outside especially, i recommend the Solarized colorscheme. It is optimized for good readability and contrast, while being easy on the eyes. https://github.com/altercation/solarized https://github.com/altercation/solarized
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Solarized is diarrhea Christmas lights. Pardon the choice of words, but it is the only effective way I could convey my opinion re solarized and most color schemes. Most color schemes try too hard to differentiate everything, lack good contrast and do not aid in understanding the code. Many of them and as a good example solarized, lack good contrast. I had so many issues trying to find a good scheme, that I resorted to creating my own for Jetbrain software, and make due with some of the rainglow schemes on VSCode. The themes are mostly black text on white background and the highlights are not obtrusive so as to draw more attention that the core. In the end, I spend more effort trying to mute the loudness of the colours than reading the content.
cHaOs667 6y ago
This heavily depends on the model. My 2017 MBP has a worse (less bright and worse antireflective coating) display than my 2015 MBP.
tubularhells 6y ago
Yes, but except for the (and here I mean resolution, not gloss), apple laptops are a mediocre choice in general. I mean, that OS experience, man. It's like people are living in an abusive relationship that hasn't improved since 1998.
- gatewaynode 6y ago
  Agreed. The displays, speakers, touch pads on Apple products are amazingly good. But the pro laptops have been in steady decline as Apple gears them to the average user more and more over the years, instead of the power user like they were originally built for. I think System76 has the right direction for power users, shiny screens and crisp sound doesn't help me hunt through gigabytes of data and millions of lines of code.

jeanaimarre 6y ago

For a 14" display, I think that a 2k display is a better option.

alisonkisk 6y ago
That's only 1k in double-pixel remdering. Much less smooth.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Why would you get a 2k screen and then render a 1k image on it?

elcritch 6y ago

> 1920×1080 FHD Not even a 4:3 display! 1080 vertical is almost useless for coding. Seems much of their target market of Linux enthusiasts would have a lot of coders wanting better than that.

nikki93 6y ago
Works pretty fine / well with a tiling window manager.
- elcritch 6y ago
  Sure it can work, but it’s certainly not for me since I believe it’s a poor choice of default screen size for anything but primarily watching movies, as the aspect ratio limits the vertical viewing area significantly. I like the way one blogger describes a 1440p vs a 1080p: “A 1440p monitor will give you 3x code windows side by side and 76 lines of code. This is a pretty big deal. You might not realize it until you’ve tried it for a while but being able to comfortably have 3 editor files open and being able to view about 50% more vertical lines of code at a glance is huge.” ( https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software-development https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo... ) Though someone else mentioned they have 4K version, not just a 1080 version! That can work better with the right scaling. The rest of the laptop looks nice.
  - nikki93 6y ago
    I also use a mac pretty regularly and a 1440p desktop. I was getting at the aspect ratio issue, which it seems like you were talking about first, before now talking about resolution (?). Yes, a higher resolution can fit more pixels. The absolute actual size in inches also matters though for how big the text ends up appearing.
sbierwagen 6y ago
The cow has long, long left the pen on that one. I haven't seen a 4:3 laptop in years.

freetime2 6y ago

It would be nice to have the option. But given that Linux still doesn't have perfect support for display scaling (compared to macOS, for example) and the fact that it's a 15" screen, I would still probably opt for the 1080p if given the option.

turblety 6y ago
Pop!_OS (their own Linux distro) has DPI scaling built in. I can actually turn on x2 scaling, and while it's huge on the poor 1080 display, it works perfectly. Also a lot of the big linux distro's now have support for this. I know Manjaro and Ubuntu can do it with minimal effort.
echlebek 6y ago
I use Fedora on a 4K 15" display with an Intel GPU, and the scaling works fine. However, the Intel GPU is a tad underpowered for the task.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  I use a Skylake on a 4K laptop with a 4K external monitor above it. It is plenty fast, with no tearing. Under Qubes, where app VMs don't get to use the GPU, mpv plays full-screen 1080p video using 3 cores. (Oddly, the external monitor will do 4K only at 30 Hz. I don't know if that is a limitation of the laptop or of the monitor.)
  - ericdevries 6y ago
    The 30hz thing might be because of an older hdmi version, like 1.4. I have had the same issues and it was a hardware limitation
jedbrown 6y ago
I have a 13" HP Spectre from mid-2017 with a 4k display. It's noticeably sharper (and brighter) than the 1080p alternatives. Prior to that, I had a QHD laptop from circa 2013. No font size issues on Linux that affected my work.

yaomtc 6y ago

The Adder has a 4K display, and the Bonobo has the option.

toyg 6y ago
But both are Intel/nVidia.

3np 6y ago

I could take or leave 4k, but at least 2k (~2560x1440)? Having their 2020 high-end 15.6" maxing out at 1080p is just ridiculous and I'd probably have bought at least one of their laptops if they had a sub-2kg model with just one step up in resolution.

wly_cdgr 6y ago
Anything above 1080p doesn't give you any more usable screen space at that physical size. It's very debatable whether just having richer blacks is worth the battery life hit.
- 3np 6y ago
  Speaking from experience and having played around with fonts, scaling and DPI, I still feel a bit hampered switching back to my Thinkpad t470s (14" 1080p) from a long time on my t490s (14" 1440p). I do use pretty small terminal fonts.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  yes it does. the market clearly wants higher res screens, that's why "Retina Display" has been a major marketing point for Apple for years, and you literally haven't been able to buy a Macbook with a 1080p screen for years. This is not even for tech enthusiasts or professional uses, it's basic tablestakes in the market now.
  - npongratz 6y ago
    > you literally haven't been able to buy a Macbook with a 1080p screen for years. You are technically right, but to be fair, it has been barely more than one year. Apple sold their 2017 model of the 13" MacBook Air, 1440x900, in July 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190708170222/https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://web.archive.org/web/20190708170222/https://www.apple...
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    No it doesn't. There are mostly PC laptops with 1080p precisely because of people like me who only want 1080p because more pixels are pretty useless. Have you actually shopped for one recently? Top hits on Amazon are all FHD. > "Retina Display" has been a major marketing point for Apple for years... Exactly. And that's all it is - marketing, particularly for egoists who want to feel like they're better however they can. The vast majority of the market, mostly those who don't use Macs, don't give a shit.

sbierwagen 6y ago

Apple has never sold a laptop with a 4K panel. Highest resolution of any Macbook was the 2019 Macbook Pro 16" with 3072x1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Models

Uehreka 6y ago
I really do wonder where exactly 4K would begin if more and weirder resolutions were commercially available. Like, the fact that 3840x2160 is considered the canonical 4K resolution means you don’t actually need 4000 pixels, just a number that’s close to 4000. I wonder what would happen if someone dropped a 3800x2000 display just to mess with people.
- bjoli 6y ago
  That is just double 1980x1080, and if you shuffle it a little you get a 4000x2000 pixels, but that would mean your aspect ratio is different than what people are used to.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Yep, kind of a deal breaker for me, which is a bummer because this almost looks perfect for me. It seems this is a weakness across their product range. AMD integrated graphics needs a bit of explaining to me is this the performance monster variety or Intel graphics is actually faster type of deal. How many external screens can I drive with this setup? My main use case for this would be using Darktable. For the same reason I want a good HDPI screen. Otherwise, this would be a development machine (docker, misc jetbrains stuff, homebrew, some data engineering, and all the usual stuff). So looking for ram and CPU that is faster than what I have today (2018 15" MBP). My mac book pro is literally falling apart (keyboard) at this point and I'm not eager to jump on the ARM bandwagon yet as it will mess up my tool workflow short term (Java, docker, intellij, homebrew) and cause me compatibility headaches I just don't need in my life right now. I am liking the performance though. All the software that I use runs fine on Linux. So, not a hypothetical option for me. I'd be up and running in a few hours with little to no loss of functionality. I don't care about legacy ports; USB-C dongles are cheap and effective and I have a few in my bag. Likewise with hdmi to usb-c. What I do care about is being able to connect my Thunderbolt USB-C phone, fuji camera, hard drives, external screen, etc. I'm thinking of adding a headphone to that mix. 2 USB-3.2 ports seems like it's limited.

snovv_crash 6y ago
I just picked up a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. The only thing I can fault it on is the screen, the brightness is a bit anemic and there is some bleed. However, the performance is fantastic. I've been using it for image processing, and the 8C16T gets through my problems at the same speed as my desktop Ryzen 2700X. Similarly the onboard GPU is sufficient for playing Witcher 3, at just a slightly lower performance than my RX580. It has 2 legacy USB-A ports, MicroSD, HDMI and a USB-C-3.2 which I've used to run a 4K screen at 60Hz. Price was very reasonable. I'm happy, this has stepped up my laptop CPU performance by a factor of 4, the GPU can now do all the stuff I want from a laptop, and it's compact and has good standby life.

fsflover 6y ago

If you need a 4k matte display, consider Purism Librem 15. https://puri.sm/products/librem-15 https://puri.sm/products/librem-15

turblety 6y ago
I have one, and it's an amazing laptop. However, as Purism are focused on privacy and free (as in freedom) software, they won't put in a gpu. System76, for me, seems to have a balance between coreboot and as much free software as possible. But also the addition of a proprietary blob full gpu. Also the system76 cpu specs are slightly higher.

sgtnasty 6y ago

This is MY experience. I have run 4k on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme with Linux. Its not been a good experience for me. I am getting old and having vision issues, so I decided to get the 4k screen because my old MacBookPro 2015 had the high res and worked well with my eyes, it just didn't have the 15" screen. Display Managers: When Linux boots in a 4k screen, the GRUB menu is impossible to read, so I have it memorized. I have tried many Display Managers, some recognize 4k and adapt with no issue, many do not. GDM and SDDM work well, XDM not so much, fonts are all over the place. X11 (it has an NVIDIA card) There are some apps which refuse to adapt to 4k if you are running GNOME (and yes I use the QT_SCALE_FACTOR). Then there are apps written in WXWIDGETS. Steam menus and items are unreadable to me. Some Window Managers barely support HiDPI displays (XFCE I am looking at you). It goes on and on, by the end of the day its a very frustrating experience. GNOME (and it's derivatives) do it the best so far, KDE has issues with icon sizes and the panel. XFCE has multiple issues, so much that I gave up on it quickly and can't remember them all (and it looked awful). i3 was a little tricky at first but it can be configured to work well, but you need to adapt all the apps and bars too. Other OSes: Even MS Windows has frequent problems with the screen magnification. macOS just gets it right, and I never had ANY of these issues, except small fonts in the firmware screen. For my next laptop I will go back to 1920x1080 and avoid all these problems and start using AMD GPU's so I dont have to turn off secure boot and stop using X11.

jcelerier 6y ago
> Display Managers: When Linux boots in a 4k screen, the GRUB menu is impossible to read, so I have it memorized. weird, I have a 4k screen but the bios, grub, etc are just scaled across the screen. A bit blurry of course but definitely readable.
jordanab 6y ago
Tip: install Pop!_OS - Nvidia edition. I also have a (1st gen) Thinkpad X1 Extreme with a 4K screen. In addition to that, I have 3 external 4K screens connected to it (so 4x 4K screens in total), and it runs smoothly without having needed any additonal config/customization.
- 6y ago

reissbaker 6y ago

I agree with some other posters here that I don't need it to be 4k, but 1080p is bad enough to be a deal killer for me. The only reason I don't buy System76 laptops is their terrible displays — I love PopOS (so much that I donate monthly to it) and would buy their hardware in a heartbeat otherwise.

pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
> The only reason I don't buy System76 laptops is their terrible displays You've never used a laptop with a decent touchpad? Or one without a loud fan? Or one with a good battery capacity? The displays are not the only lackluster thing about System76 hardware.

tubularhells 6y ago

4k is overkill at this size. 1440p is better for battery size and you would scale 4k up to 1440p effective anyway.

kevincox 6y ago
I agree I would be happy with 2k as well. But this doesn't appear to be offered in laptops for some reason.
- ricketycricket 6y ago
  1080p == 2K
  - pg4 6y ago
    1080p is 1920x1080 and 2k is 2560x1440
    - Filligree 6y ago
      I don't doubt it's used that way, but that makes absolutely zero sense. For that matter, it's 1080p that's half the (linear) resolution of 4k.
    - RamRodification 6y ago
      What? Who defines 1440p as 2k? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution
    - squeals_colder 6y ago
      2K is a generic term for resolutions that have a horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels. In terms of cinema the DCI standard for 2K is 2048x1080. There is also the flat cropped resolution of 1998x1080 and the cinemascope cropped resolution of 2048x858. 1080p has the same vertical resolution as DCI 2K and it's horizontal resolution is also approximately 2,000. 2560x1440 is 560 pixels more than 2,000 compared to 1920x1080 which is only 80 pixels away. That is 7x further away from exactly 2,000. Calling 2560x1440 2K is too big of a stretch. If you wanted to give it a name based upon its approximate horizontal resolution then you should call it 2.5K.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I bought a Oryx Pro about 2 1/2 years ago to get a laptop with an NVidia GPU. I bought the high resolution version, but sometimes run it at the lower 1920x1080 resolution. I just looked and they don’t seem to offer the higher resolution right now on that model. Anyway, it is a fine laptop.

pg4 6y ago

I would prefer 2K res on a laptop. On a 15 inch screen, 4K is overkill - I have to increase desktop scaling to read text, so there's no increase in screen real estate. Higher res drains the battery faster as well.

copperx 6y ago

It's crazy that many laptops are 1080p in 2020. Such low resolution is unacceptable to the majority of users.

Rompect 6y ago
And here am I with the 1680x1050 monitor... I agree though

IE6 6y ago

AFAIK they just resell commodity generic laptops under their brand and they do some System76 specific things to them such as open source bios firmwares. I may be wrong but when I looked into them years back thats what I uncovered. I think if they want to differentiate themselves as a high end ubuntu/developer machine they're going to need the things people want (or don't know they want). My personal needs are high res, bright, color accurate, crisp displays (currently loving my Samsung Galaxy Chromebook) and high quality keyboards. I don't really know of a device that has both.

voortuckian 6y ago

my galp2 has the 4k display. I'm not sure why they changed. It's been great. .. well, except for tiny grub text.

nickik 6y ago

This is by far the biggest reason I don't buy these.