Moving on to the display of your laptop,
there’s a lot to consider.
There are four main panel types TN, OLED,
mini LED, and IPS.
TN is the technology of yesterday and should be avoided,
while OLED and mini LED are the best if you can afford them.
OLED excels in dark rooms
with its perfect blacks and unmatched contrast,
but it might not get quite bright enough for well lit rooms
or outdoors. Mini LED is the opposite,
with exceptional brightness,
making it punchy even in bright rooms
while sacrificing contrast in dark rooms.
Meaning your typical use case will determine which is best.
IPS is your all rounder, offering generally good viewing angles,
color, and brightness,
and with the extra benefit of being sometimes
significantly more efficient.
For instance, the IPS version of the Dell XPS 13+
got almost five hours more battery life than the PO LED version.
Nice! Probably most importantly though,
IPS is gonna be the most affordable,
making it the right choice for most people.
It doesn’t suck. Now,
we mentioned brighter panels being better for outdoors,
but how do you tell what’s bright enough?
200 to 300 nits will be fine for most indoor use,
with 400 to 500 nits being required for outdoors,
or 600+ for a satisfying HDR experience.
Be careful with some laptops that might be claiming huge numbers
like 15 nits, because sometimes that number will only apply for a tiny
bright spot on the display
with a much Lower brightness when the entire screen is bright.
An often overlooked aspect of a display is the aspect ratio.
For TVs, the standard is 16 by 9,
but for laptops, the slightly taller 16 by 10 or even if you’re crazy,
3 by 2 have become popular in recent years.
And for good reason. This little bit of extra
vertical real estate can be a big productivity boost
for office or creative work alike.
And it also tends to be a better fit in a laptop chassis,
giving designers more room for cooling and large,
comfortable trackpads. As for what resolution you need,
we can use simple math to find
the distance at which a panel becomes a retina display,
which is Apple’s marketing term for the pixel density
being high enough that you can’t see the individual pixels.
Here’s the full breakdown per resolution,
but the gist is that full HD is good enough.
Quad HD will be noticeably sharper if you have good eyes,
and 4K isn’t really worthwhile.
Especially considering those extra pixels
can negatively impact battery life.
And I care about battery life.
No matter the resolution. Increasing the refresh rate above 60 hertz
will be a worthwhile improvement.
High refresh rate displays will have the biggest impact.
If you plan on gaming, though,
there are diminishing returns above 144 hertz
and even non gamers will benefit.
Everything you do will feel smoother,
be that photo editing, CAD,
or even just making a new folder.
I Do that all the time, but like so many other nice things,
it can negatively impact your battery life.
One thing that may or may not matter to you is a touchscreen.
I’m personally a fan of them.
Maybe you aren’t, but the choice is up to you.
Unless you’re getting apple only.
The final factor to watch out for in your display is color.
A wider color space,
or gamut means the panel can physically produce more colors,
while a smaller color space can leave content looking dull
and unsaturated. Color spaces can get a bit confusing
since there are a bunch of different standards,
but unless you know you need something else,
aim for near 100% coverage of S RGB.
That’s the standard the web uses.
For those of you who do need more graphic designers,
colorists, and like you know who you are,
you’ll need to be concerned not only with gamut,
but also the accuracy of your display.
A poorly calibrated display might show everything
with a slight magenta or a blue hue,
and this is usually caused by slight variations from panel to panel
during manufacturing. So if you plan on doing color critical work,
look into getting a laptop with a factory calibrated display.
Something like an average Delta E2000 of
2 or below is generally considered to be accurate enough,
as that’s what the human eye can typically discern.
Some laptops with excellent displays are the Dell XPS 13+,
MacBook Pro, Samsung Galaxy Book HP Spectre and Asus G14 and G16.
I guess that would be G’s 14 and 16. Whatever.