5 ms·

Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. The upsides of not wasting battery and just performance of not having to push more pixels makes it worth i

Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. The upsides of not wasting battery and just performance of not having to push more pixels makes it worth it. Even gaming channels like LTT talk about this a bit. That being said - if you're coming from the macbooks retina it's definitely a downgrade. My guess however is that this device won't have a screen that is that good either way though.

ciupicri 5y ago
Gamers are known of playing at lower resolutions so they would get more FPS.
bscphil 5y ago
At 15.6 inches I think it depends pretty heavily on how good your operating system's font rendering is. If you're stuck on Windows I can't imagine using anything lower than 4k at that size. On the other hand, I'm using a 17.x inch laptop currently, only about a foot and a half from my face, at only 1080p, and it's fine. (Before you blame my vision - I'm actually nearsighted. My vision is near-perfect at this distance.) I certainly wouldn't accept this DPI from a current laptop, of course; the font rendering certainly could be a lot better and more density would be nice for easier photo editing and so on, but I think a lot of people have forgotten just how good 1080p can be if it's handled well in software. A whole generation spent most of their time on crappy CRTs. Compared to that almost any HD screen is an enormous improvement.
aidenn0 5y ago
Sweet spot @15" for me is 1200p if I can get it 1440p otherwise. I haven't used a computer with less than 1200 vertical lines since 2004 and I don't plan on changing it.
ayushnix 5y ago
> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling. I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.
- viraptor 5y ago
  What do you mean by "need fractional scaling"? This really depends on what you prefer, but I'm on 15" with 100% scale and enjoy it.
  - ayushnix 5y ago
    Yes, I didn't take 15 inch laptops into account because I have a 14 inch laptop. See my reply here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  15.6″ 1366×768: 100ppi. It could be improved by 90% scaling, but that doesn’t tend to work quite so well. Basically everyone uses it at 1×. 15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×. 15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 1440p. 15.6″ 3840×2160 (4K): 282ppi. Generally comfortable at 2–2.5×, most will use at 2×. These figures I’m suggesting are aiming for about 110–140dpi. I have a 15.6″ 2560×1440 screen, and 1.5× scaling mostly works very well, basically perfectly under Windows which I never use and with only minor issues under Linux/Sway with high-DPI XWayland patches once I’ve manually intervened to fix a few variously broken things.
  - ayushnix 5y ago
    Hmm, I guess I didn't think about the 15.6 inch size in laptops. I have a 14 inch laptop so I was thinking in terms of that size. 1080p on my laptop needs 1.2 — 1.3 scaling to look "normal". I know people dismiss this as personal taste but 1) IINM, Windows defaults to 125% automatically on such a display and 2) I have a hard time reading text without scaling my 14 inch 1080p display. Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small. Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me. But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.
orangecat 5y ago
Even gaming channels like LTT talk about this a bit. The major benefit of high-DPI displays isn't for gaming or graphics, it's for text. Once you're used to decent resolution and scaling, reading on anything else looks like a blurry mess.
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  I think this is the key. I've never used very good or very high-res screens for a sustained period of time, so I haven't gotten used to it. Personally I'm not too keen on jumping on them. My 1366x768 15.6" screen renders text just fine for me.

ciupicri 5y ago

Gamers are known of playing at lower resolutions so they would get more FPS.

bscphil 5y ago

At 15.6 inches I think it depends pretty heavily on how good your operating system's font rendering is. If you're stuck on Windows I can't imagine using anything lower than 4k at that size. On the other hand, I'm using a 17.x inch laptop currently, only about a foot and a half from my face, at only 1080p, and it's fine. (Before you blame my vision - I'm actually nearsighted. My vision is near-perfect at this distance.) I certainly wouldn't accept this DPI from a current laptop, of course; the font rendering certainly could be a lot better and more density would be nice for easier photo editing and so on, but I think a lot of people have forgotten just how good 1080p can be if it's handled well in software. A whole generation spent most of their time on crappy CRTs. Compared to that almost any HD screen is an enormous improvement.

aidenn0 5y ago

Sweet spot @15" for me is 1200p if I can get it 1440p otherwise. I haven't used a computer with less than 1200 vertical lines since 2004 and I don't plan on changing it.

ayushnix 5y ago

> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling. I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.

viraptor 5y ago
What do you mean by "need fractional scaling"? This really depends on what you prefer, but I'm on 15" with 100% scale and enjoy it.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  Yes, I didn't take 15 inch laptops into account because I have a 14 inch laptop. See my reply here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008
chrismorgan 5y ago
15.6″ 1366×768: 100ppi. It could be improved by 90% scaling, but that doesn’t tend to work quite so well. Basically everyone uses it at 1×. 15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×. 15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 1440p. 15.6″ 3840×2160 (4K): 282ppi. Generally comfortable at 2–2.5×, most will use at 2×. These figures I’m suggesting are aiming for about 110–140dpi. I have a 15.6″ 2560×1440 screen, and 1.5× scaling mostly works very well, basically perfectly under Windows which I never use and with only minor issues under Linux/Sway with high-DPI XWayland patches once I’ve manually intervened to fix a few variously broken things.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  Hmm, I guess I didn't think about the 15.6 inch size in laptops. I have a 14 inch laptop so I was thinking in terms of that size. 1080p on my laptop needs 1.2 — 1.3 scaling to look "normal". I know people dismiss this as personal taste but 1) IINM, Windows defaults to 125% automatically on such a display and 2) I have a hard time reading text without scaling my 14 inch 1080p display. Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small. Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me. But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.

orangecat 5y ago

Even gaming channels like LTT talk about this a bit. The major benefit of high-DPI displays isn't for gaming or graphics, it's for text. Once you're used to decent resolution and scaling, reading on anything else looks like a blurry mess.

approxim8ion 5y ago
I think this is the key. I've never used very good or very high-res screens for a sustained period of time, so I haven't gotten used to it. Personally I'm not too keen on jumping on them. My 1366x768 15.6" screen renders text just fine for me.