UXGA vs. SXGA on 15 inch TFT screen

[axelhi]

Does anyone know the visual difference of font size or picture size if one uses SXGA (1400x1050) compared to UXGA (1600x1200) on a 15 inch TFT LCD screen?

Are fonts and pictures with 1600x1200 too small in regular programs/UI?

Any advice is appreciated,
axelhi

[kingofhearts]

axelhi,
UXGA as you said, 1400 x 1050 isn't the regular aspect ratio that most resolutions (800x600, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, etc...) follow. They are all 4:3 aspect ratio. UXGA isn't a 4:3 aspect ratio, so your text, pictures, everything will appear slightly shrunk vertically.

I don't really know if there are any 15 inch lcds that support resolutions that high. i've never even seen any that go up to 1280x1024. Not like you'd want that anyway. I use a 17 inch crt, and keep it at 1280x1024. 1600x1200 is very small, and at 15 inch, you'd have to really squint to see anything. it's definitely not worth it in my opinion...

Hope this helps.

King Of Hearts

[axelhi]

Hi King of Hearts,

Thanks for your reply. I'm thinking about buying a Dell Inspiron 8200 which has a nvidia geforce4go with 32 or 64mb video card. The offered screen resolutions are 1400x1050 or 1600x1200 the latter with an enhanced screen, meaning brighter, higher viewing angle, etc.

Therefore I'm tempted to get the 1600x1200 because of the brighter screen and the better viewing angle especially because I like watching DVDs on it. But then I'm afraid that browsing on the Internet won't be really fun anymore.

Any other opinions about that?

Thanks,
axelhi

[kingofhearts]

axelhi,

Alright, i see what you're talking about now. yeah, if you've got the money, go for the 1600x1200. you won't be hurting yourself. That's pretty surprising they bumped the laptop resolutions that high. desktop lcd's don't go that high...

About DVD's, you won't notice much better quality from the resolution increase, because a dvd's native resolution is much lower than 1600x1200, but you will see an improvement if the screen does truly have increased brightness and contrast...

The programs and fonts will be pretty small, but you can probably just change the font size in display properties to help that. Try the large fonts. You could also temporarily change the resolution to 800x600 if you really wanted to. I don't know for a fact, but i'd be willing to bet you wouldn't have much loss of quality that you normally get when using lcd's at something other than their native resolution because the dimensions are exactly half. you'd be using four pixels on the screen for every one.

One quick thing to check up on though. i'd be willing to bed a 1600x1200 display draws a decent amount of power. make sure the battery can last for long enough.

Hope this helps.

King of Hearts

[axelhi]

King of Hearts,

Thanks so much for the clarification. I'm afraid my explanation wasn't really clear before

Dell is claiming that one battery (66Whr) is going to last between 2 and 3 hours. But I guess you're right it probably won't last as long if the screen is really brighter.

I'm thinking about changing the screen resolution but I'm not sure if this would work well. Right now I have a laptop with 1024x768. If I change the resolution to 800x600 it looks pretty fuzzy.

Thanks again, it's always good to get a second opinion!

axelhi

[felixml]

Standard resolution for a 15 inch Laptop is 1024 by 768.
15 inch LCD screen defaults to the same resolution, it cannot be set to anything higher.
17 and 18 inch (and now 19 inch) LCDs will accept and SHOULD be set to 1280 by 1024.
Only 21 and 23 inch LCDs will be working at their native res. of 1600 by 1200.

Please read the documentation.
AND DO NOT FORGET - no LCD looks as good as CRT at the same res. due to much lower (60 Hz) refresh rate and angles of vision.