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4k on laptops is sort of an anti-feature for me, personally. It doesn't really improve my experience much, and often costs a lot of battery life.
by tomtheelder 5y ago
4k on laptops is sort of an anti-feature for me, personally. It doesn't really improve my experience much, and often costs a lot of battery life.
- basilgohar 5y agoYou're not wrong. I would have preferred having the option of 2.5k instead of going all the way to 4k, but 4k is something I would choose to make use of with scaling for a clearer, crisper view of text when coding. I like working up close with my screen and, so far, thankfully, I have excellent near vision, so the appeal is there for me.
- sho_hn 5y agoThere's a Yoga 7 Pro (iirc) with Ryzen and 2.5K OLED. I recently bought one for my mother-in-law, and after setting it up I can say it's a nice machine. Not a ThinkPad keyboard, but not awful by any means and quite decent build quality overall. Didn't load it with compute, though.
- basilgohar 5y agoIf this is available in the US, then I have not been able to find it. I've seen it listed on other countries' respective Lenovo pages or stores outside of the US.
- sho_hn 5y agoThis was indeed in South Korea.
- petepete 5y agoI bought a 4k ThinkPad X1 Carbon in 2019 and I love it, but in retrospect I totally should've bought the 1440p model. On a 14" screen you just don't appreciate the resolution.
- pkulak 5y agoAnd now they don't even make a 1440p model. What the hell? You have to choose between 1080p and 4k, one which is too low, and one too high.
- anyfoo 5y agoYou must never use PDFs then. On a MacBook, it's amazing to see what a difference HiDPI makes.
- pkulak 5y agoIt's about have the _right_ resolution. On a 13-inch screen, that's about 1440p. On 15, it's 1800p. Both are HiDPI, but neither are 4k, which I do agree, is a waste and actually causes scaling issues.
- short12 5y agoI am the exact opposite. If a laptop isnt 4k it isn't even a contender. 4k really makes a huge difference to me because the image quality is that much better. Battery life is generally shit on all laptops whether it has 4k or not. So this is good news from amd because I like them much more than Intel
- wing-_-nuts 5y agoI'd encourage you to plug in the screen size and resolution into a calculator like https://stari.co/tv-monitor-viewing-distance-calculator https://stari.co/tv-monitor-viewing-distance-calculator before making a decision that it's required. A 4k display is 'retina' at distances much closer than people sit, even at 27". On a laptop size screen, it's even worse. I have a xps 13 and I specifically chose the 1080p version. Even at that res I still have to zoom / scale.
- short12 5y agoI have an xps 13 and specifically chose the 4k. I love it and there is no going back to 1080p for me. When I am using the dock it is connected to a pair of 4k 27" dells and it's glorious all around
- The_Colonel 5y agoWhat you might be seeing is actually the difference between matte and glossy display. I was like you, seeing how supreme 4K panel was ... until I saw glossy 1080p which was much sharper than 1080p matte (which desharpen the image) and not much different from 4K (to my eyes). (all comparisons took place on XPS 13s)
- basilgohar 5y agoDifferent people see things differently. Pixels may not be individually resolvable, but that is far from the only feature that impacts viewing quality. Anti-aliased fonts will look clearer and smoother at smaller sizes on a higher resolution screen. Lines will be sharper. Those with better near vision can pack more details into the page.
- undersuit 5y agoAgreed; I have a Google Pixelbook Go with a 1080p 13.3" screen. The native resolution of my screen is 80% scaling, while I run at "100%" scaling or "Looks like 1536 x 864". Native resolution turns it into a chesttop instead of a laptop. Maybe if I bought a 17" laptop I could consider 4k.
- 3np 5y agoI wish we'd have more 2k laptops; for me that's the sweet spot. 1080p decidedly too little, 4k overkill. But then I'm one of those people who run with really small fonts, apparently.
- leephillips 5y agoThat’s one of several reasons I still like my 2013 Google Chromebook Pixel (runs normal Linux pretty well).
- Darmody 5y agoYou have now some with 3k resolution, 16:10 ratio. I hope we get to see more of those.
- toast0 5y agoFWIW, 4k is X x 2160 (where X is usually somewhere between 4096 (4k) and 3840), so 1080p which is usually 1920 x 1080 is effectively 2k. It looks like there are some 1440p and 1800p standardish resolutions that probably make sense as a middle ground.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 3np 5y agoHuh, seems I'm confused with the terminology. Min 1440p is what I'm referring to, in either case.
- toast0 5y agoThat's because the terminology is dumb! Or at least, very misleading, since it's anchored on a different part of the spec than the previous dominant terminology
- fomine3 5y agoI strongly against to call 2560px 2K. It should be wrong and confusing. 4K is came from 3840 or 4096px. 4K/2=2K, so 2K should refer near 1920 to 2048px, so naturally the standard FHD 1920. 2560px must not be called as 2K. It's even near 3K if rounded. Sadly some smartphone manufacturers call 2560px 2K.
- dbg31415 5y agoAfter a decade plus on a MacBook Pro, it always blows me away looking at non-retina displays. At this point, anything less than 4k might as well be a monochrome monitor limited to 80 characters per line. It just looks so dated and hideous. And when someone sends me screenshots that aren't from a 4k monitor... oof. Like, "Guys can you go re-do that deck on a computer that doesn't take quarters to operate?" Ha.
- secondcoming 5y agoI have a 4k, 17" laptop and I've concluded that it's largely pointless. Everything needs to be scaled up anyway to make it usable.
- matsemann 5y agoThat scaling isn't like a zoom, though. It makes letters crisper, borders pixel perfect etc.
- short12 5y agoThis is an important distinction that some get fooled by. It's the same physical size when scales but is substantially more crisp
- StillBored 5y agoParticularly if you disable subpixel anti-aliasing because the color fringing is distracting. I'm not so sure about 2k/3k screens @ 14" though. 1080p is about right for 1:1 scaling, but isn't sharp with smaller fonts. If one is going to scale the screen 2k definitely isn't enough to get that "smooth" look. I tend to run fedora/kde these days though, and the scaling there is pretty bulletproof @ 4k/14". Once in a while something will fail to scale properly, but its rare.
- secondcoming 5y agoIt's not worth the price premium, IMO. Maybe on a mac it's good. But Linux's font rendering is a shitshow when the same font can look totally different in different apps. Windows isn't too bad, but there are even parts of that that struggle with fnt rendering.
- matsemann 5y agoIt can be a bit overkill, and I run with 250% scale. Having something matching 200% scale would have lead to less artifacts. (or 300%, I guess) However, when used to it, it's hard to go back.
- therealunreal 5y agoUnderstood, but after using the Surface Book at 3000x2000@13.5" (267 PPI), I'm spoiled. The text is a lot better.
- Aardwolf 5y agoIt is an advantage if you want to connect it to a large monitor and mirror the displays to have the same desktop on both screens
- babypuncher 5y agoThe real irony is their popularity on "gaming" laptops, where the 4k display results in noticeably worse game performance while not looking any better to the naked eye than a 1440p screen probably would.