Laptop Makers Bet on Better Display Tech To Rekindle Sales (bloomberg.com) 75
PC makers from Lenovo to Samsung are pinning their hopes for reviving laptop sales on upgraded displays. From a report: At the Computex show in Taiwan this week, every major local electronics brand showed off new laptop models with OLED displays, the same technology used in smartphones. Asustek Computer, Acer, Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International all expanded their portfolios, hoping to drive an upgrade cycle and revive flagging sales. OLED produces more vibrant colors, greater uniformity and superior contrast compared to conventional LCD technology, but it uses more energy and comes at a higher cost. It's become the universal standard on smartphones, after debuting on the highest-end devices, and Samsung's display subsidiary has been advocating its proliferation to larger form factors. "At Asus, we believe that OLED panels are truly the future of laptop displays," Asus co-chief executive officer Samson Hu told Bloomberg.
The Taipei-based company, led by Hu and fellow engineer S.Y. Hsu, has a 55% share of the OLED notebook market today, having introduced its first such models two years ago. But it's a small market: OLED represents about 3% of notebook shipments, according to Asus' data. Cost is a key issue: a 15.6-inch OLED panel commands a price 2.5 to 3 times higher than a comparable LCD screen, according to IDC analyst Annabelle Hsu. Companies pass at least some of that expense to consumers: an Asus Vivobook 15 with OLED and some other upgrades costs $699 versus $549 for the LCD model. Part of the problem is that there's a practical monopoly over the category: Samsung Display has more than 99% of the laptop OLED market. Asus' co-CEOs said they hope suppliers like BOE or LG Display enter the fray to drive down prices.
The Taipei-based company, led by Hu and fellow engineer S.Y. Hsu, has a 55% share of the OLED notebook market today, having introduced its first such models two years ago. But it's a small market: OLED represents about 3% of notebook shipments, according to Asus' data. Cost is a key issue: a 15.6-inch OLED panel commands a price 2.5 to 3 times higher than a comparable LCD screen, according to IDC analyst Annabelle Hsu. Companies pass at least some of that expense to consumers: an Asus Vivobook 15 with OLED and some other upgrades costs $699 versus $549 for the LCD model. Part of the problem is that there's a practical monopoly over the category: Samsung Display has more than 99% of the laptop OLED market. Asus' co-CEOs said they hope suppliers like BOE or LG Display enter the fray to drive down prices.
I would rather get upgraded keyboards (Score:4, Insightful)
...or rather, bring me back the good old 7-row Lenovo keyboards. I'm still using my T25 (the 25th anniversary edition) with it's "retro" keyboard because there just isn't a better option available. (See https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com] for pictures). The dedicated cluster for pgup/dn/home/end instead of arranging them in a row somewhere - or doing away with the inverted T of the cursor keys like some laptops do...
I'm a bit appalled that even https://frame.work/ [frame.work] with it's commitment to replaceable parts does not offer this even as an option.
Give me a 7-row keyboard, and I'll buy that laptop right away, even if it's a bit underpowered otherwise.
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Put yourself in the position of the vendor. Would you rather be selling something people need, or something people want?
As an engineer, my ego wants my work to be important, genuininely signficant. I want it to solve problems for people, make their lives better in some respect. As a businessman I don't care about any of that shit. Plenty business people would happily sell crack if that were legal.
Pragmatists with a keen understanding of what they really need are lousy customers. You want somebody who l
Re: I would rather get upgraded keyboards (Score:2)
And then in two months the screen is a burnt in shadows everywhere mess. Bonus if something real embarrasing gets burnt into the sceen that will make the wife really mad.
Yeah this problem can be "solved" with rather half assed solulutions like pixel shifting, contrast wanking, and other stuff that only slightly extends the borrowed time that OLED panels run on.
I'd rather have a very slightly less impressive LCD that does not suffer from this issue and consumes less battery too.
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As far as displays go, they are moving in the wrong direction to me. I absolutely hate 4K laptop screens. I ha
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I find a 4K screen is vastly easier on my eyes as long as everything scales based on the DPI settings correctly. I run Linux, so there are some programs that are designed for 96 DPI and don't adjust, particularly anything written using TK (as in TCL/TK). It's also a pain to configure, you have to set the DPI correctly in two or three places before everything picks it up, but then most things work pretty well, and a few things require their own special settings. I also found new programs in a few cases, l
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Re: I would rather get upgraded keyboards (Score:1)
Exactly! Low-res gray anti-aliasing on small fonts is basically like a diopter of "digital astigmatism". When fonts are properly rendered at native 4k resolution (vs rendered at 2k & resampled), 4k vs 2k is like dot matrix vs laser printing in terms of legibility.
I can read text at 4k without glasses that's just a blur at 2k at the same actual size unless I'm wearing glasses, because at 2k, the enclosed areas of letters turn into low-contrast gray ooze... but are crisp and clear at 4k.
Ditto, for Android
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However, I also find that when using my old thinkpads or NEC MultiSync 19" VGA monitors (19" at 1280x1024) I experience an interesting readability quirk. That is that many bitmapped, non-scalable old school terminal fonts are de
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Give me a decent workstation with a Ryzen CPU. 2x USB4, 2x RAM sockets, and 2x NVMe. The screen and keyboard I'm not so concerned about, most of the time it will be docked with the lid closed.
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This is honestly my main issue with FrameWork, along with the missing trackpoint of course. Hell, if they at least had dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys it wouldn't be so bad, but you can only hit those with a modifier key! :O
The FrameWork 16 comes with modular input devices, so it's only a question of time until someone releases design files or ready to purchas modules in a decent layout... but that's 16" and huge. I already have/need a big laptop for work - for mobile use I'd much prefer something 12-13".
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Thinkpad keyboards have been getting worse. HP and Dell keyboards have been getting better. None are as good as the old Thinkpads, but I think some of those are serviceable. If the keyboard is the only thing you care about, and you're willing to put up with a giant ugly gaming laptop, then some of those have been including mechanical keyboards as a gimmick. You can look at the MSI Titan if you want.
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Nope, plenty of keyboards around, why would I lug one separately? And yeah, there are some "developer laptops" or the like with huge keyboards, but I'm looking not interested in those "Desktop replacement" laptops. For a laptop, I want them to be around 13-14" in size.
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One of the reasons why apple was such a runaway success is because for all his faults Jobs had Vision.
Imitating Apple is the main reason the majority of today's laptops are such a suck-fest. Lenovo is practically the only manufacturer remaining still producing machines with decent keyboards, an alternative pointing device to awful touchpads, and some actual heft to the build.
Non-glossy screen (Score:3)
A super-high resolution screen for when I have to use my laptop without a screen plugged in would be great. But my shopping requirement has always been non-glossy.
My phone is often unreadable because of reflections - but it's a form factor that moves all the time so it's easy to avoid those reflections. A laptop sits on a desk or a train table and specular reflections are a huge impediment to productivity.
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That mostly depends on where you plan on using it. Somewhere with bright overhead lights or with our planet's obnoxious daystar shining on it, yeah, glossy is gonna suck.
At home in your man cave, though, glossy is glorious.
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At home in your man cave, though, glossy is glorious.
If you got no windows. Most of the rooms do have, and your eyes are suffering, you are searching for ergonomic vertical angle of the screen again and again, as the sun moves across them. Then, if not the sun, aren't you ever having lights on - they do the same, they reflect away content behind the display surface.
Upon that, flashy concentrated screens of today are poison to your eyes. I know why I'm not gonna pick Apple product of recent - barely can stand examining them in the showroom. Give us calm views,
Re: Non-glossy screen (Score:2)
"Upon that, flashy concentrated screens of today are poison to your eyes"
Also
- Notifications that zip and zoom
- Moving zip zooming anything that's not a video
- overly bright/garish colors
- shit that continually blinks and bloops.
It seems trivial but it's not, and it adds into to the overall stress budget that all people are under.
A real work screen (outside of monitoring real time activity) is one that for the most part appears static and unchanging with minimal activity.
Re:Non-glossy screen (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not really clear to me that most peoples eyes can actually see much more than 1080p at 15.6". I know I have to zoom up 125% to make it useful on a 15.6 (which is why I buy 17.3" so I don't have to zoom it up and can use it). 4k might look pretty (smoother edges) but overall may not actually be more effective at anything except lighten ones wallet.
I have also heard it claimed that glossy is better at allowing higher resolutions to be seen, so glossy may be a necessary evil to get high resolution displays to actual be viewable.
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It is not really clear to me that most peoples eyes can actually see much more than 1080p at 15.6".
You might want to get your eyes checked. I absolutely can see the difference between 1080p and 4k on a 15" screen.
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Indeed. Glossy is a hard will-not-buy for me. Resolution is pretty irrelevant though. FullHD is quite enough for everything I do. At least as far as I am concerned, resolution has peaked and above fullHD diminishing returns set in very strongly.
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Glossy is better in sunlight, and these days people expect to be able to see their laptops outside. Frosted displays are washed out by sunlight over a huge range of angles, while glossy ones only can't be seen at a small range of angles.
Re:IF you can't afford electricity.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Use your time and resource to try to better yourself through education (formal or self) and get a better paying job.
They're not talking about a difference you'd notice on your power bill. Consumer electronics in general are a very minor portion of household energy consumption unless you're doing something like running a crypto mining farm. What they're referring to is that an OLED screen with the brightness cranked to 11, displaying the typical white background content that's ubiquitous in Windows, will chew through the battery faster than an LCD panel.
Of course, the ultimate irony relating to portability with today's x86 ultra-thin laptops is that most of them only have decent battery life when the CPU is limping along in power saving mode. Run some code that actually requires the CPU to run full throttle and that'll also send you reaching for your charger in short order, too.
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The most important part is more power == less useful battery life as they really cannot and are not going to put in enough bigger batteries to cover the additional power usage.
Re: IF you can't afford electricity.... (Score:2)
You sound like the kindergarten school girl Sally who points fingers and bosses around her school chums and acts like she's better than them.
I really hope you were just being sarcastic and funny and your post does not reflect your real personality. :-\
I doubt it will matter (Score:2)
I imagine the real "problem" is that lots of people used to use laptops for things they now do on their phones.
I'm also not convinced that current laptop owners will change their buying habits just because a new model with a better screen gets introduced. I don't know when the last time was I even heard anyone complaining about their laptop screen.
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I don't know when the last time was I even heard anyone complaining about their laptop screen.
You probably just don't know anyone who bought low-end laptops. Most of the sub-$500 stuff is surprisingly terrible, and Best Buy has an entire aisle of budget laptops with nasty screens. I think most of MSI's entry-level gaming laptops are also still only 45% NTSC, which is just sad.
Re: I doubt it will matter (Score:2)
"Most of the sub-$500 stuff is surprisingly terrible"
I really hope this is not the case going close to that $500 figure. I use a 200 laptop as my daily driver and while the specs are nowhere near the high range, and it's a few years old now, it performs surprisingly well and does everything that I need.
There are some *really* bad ones out there, bad enough that they barely run the OS they ship with and forget 3rd party applications that are beyond the level of Windows Notepad. Buyer beware.
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Re: I doubt it will matter (Score:2)
"Yes. Normies prefer the sugary fisher price interface of phones and tablets and don't care about stuff like running IDE's and graphic design."
Or being microcharged or micromanaged, or being watched, profiled, and abused.
I can see why gatekeeping is often ferocious. Because companies take a product and dumb it down and ultimately restrict it when selling it to the masses. And people who want the non-toy version can't find it anymore or they are priced out of it and maybe forced to use a woef
OLED aint it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. I suspect it's not so much a matter of people becoming happy with their laptop screens, as giving up on anyone listening to them.
Though I will say that I don't recall many people ever complaining about the vibrancy or contrast. The primary complaints have always been low resolution (slowly beginning to improve, at least at the premium end of the market) and glossy screens (matte have been almost impossible to find since shortly after laptops went widescreen).
Well, and the wide screens themselves - the lack of height is especially painful on a tiny laptop screen. And, especially for larger screens, how much power they consume.
All of which is to say I think there's LOTs of room for manufacturers to drive sales with dramatically improved screens... but I don't see a move to OLED actually addressing any of the shortcomings people actually care about.
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I was recently assigned an HP Elitebook for work and it's the narrowest viewing angle I've seen on a laptop in 20 years, it's horrendous, and no 4k option. I had a retina macbook pro must have been a decade ago and the screen was so, so much better than 95% of laptops today. I guess people just
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Oh, absolutely. I just don't know very many people that use laptop screens for entertainment purposes - especially not these days when you can pick up a 40+" 4K second monitor pretty much anywhere for like $200 that blows the socks off of 90% of laptop screens ever made, and the TVs only get better from there.
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For entertainment, like watching shows, the color and wide viewing angle of OLED are really better.
The black level for OLED is also dramatically better, especially in a bright room (where the LCD is lit up with ambient light in additional to backlight bleed.)
I was recently assigned an HP Elitebook for work and it's the narrowest viewing angle I've seen on a laptop in 20 years, it's horrendous, and no 4k option.
Weird, back when I had them (two in series) the panels were pretty good.
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The problem with OLED is their reliability and price point. My problem with Windows laptops is how bad the sleep function is sometimes, where my laptop burns up in my backpack and kills its battery.
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It is a feature I would consider if I were buying a new laptop.. but not a reason to buy a new laptop.
Better screens on cheap models would've been nice (Score:3)
When I saw this story I immediately assumed the manufacturers were talking about getting rid of the garbage panels typically installed on sub-$500 machines (45% NTSC, yuck). That's the segment of the market where you'd really stand to get a noticeable benefit from better panels. But nope, they're talking about replacing what are already typically rather decent LCD panels with OLED. TBH, unless you're using your device in a completely dark room, it's really difficult to tell the difference between a good quality IPS display and OLED.
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You're correct. At best LED (let alone ye olde CFL) backlighting levels are controlled in sections or strips, while OLED is lit per-pixel. Any time you have a single fully bright pixel anywhere in a backlight zone, that zone has to be at full [currently configured] brightness. And many displays only dim the whole backlight at once. Moving to OLED can offer a significant savings if your screen is mostly dark, most of the time.
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it's really difficult to tell the difference between a good quality IPS display and OLED.
Not really. There will be a sticker right on the front that will say "OLED". Without that, the eyes of those who have to have the latest and greatest will tear up, blurring the image. They can't even use it at the local coffee shop. Where some other hipsters might notice the absence of the requisite badge. What was a perfectly good laptop last month will now become unusable.
But yeah. For the normal people, they''ll probably not notice or care about the difference.
Crappy 1080p screens (Score:2)
The last time I went shopping for a PC laptop, the world was awash with crappy 1080p screens.
If you wanted a better screen, you needed a bigger laptop, on which they almost uniformly messed up the keyboard by squeezing a numpad on the right and shifting all the normal keys to the left so the keyboard wasn't centered on the screen.
Apple was an exception, but I already had that and I was looking for a windows laptop for my wife.
MSI was the only one I could find with a better screen and a centered keyboard. So
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Some manufacturers are finally making better ratio displays like 3:2. https://www.tomshardware.com/n... [tomshardware.com]
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In my case, the price wasn't a factor. I do have a $4K macbook pro. My wife needed windows for some windows specific software used in her business. The lack of options at any price was the issue.
The actual reason for change (Score:2)
People no longer upgrade their high end laptops every 2-3 years. Enter OLED screens and their inherent problem of burn in. Especially when they display things like static UI. Hello permanently burned in windows taskbar.
Unless they're offering a cheap and easy way to replace the display panel, this is planned obsolescence.
Too many people have "good enough" tech now (Score:3)
My laptop is from 2013, it is 11 years old. Other than the battery having to be replaced, it still works perfect and does everything I need it to do. Unless you're a gamer or software developer, there is little need to upgrade your hardware every 4 or 5 years anymore. We have reached the stage where PCS and Tablets are like televisions and appliances, generally people only replace them once they go kaput.
Re: Too many people have "good enough" tech now (Score:2)
Almost the same situation here. Dell Precision m4800 from late 2013, with i7 and Kepler k2100m video card. Currently 32gb, with 2tb x 3... mSATA, 2.5" SATA, and a 2.5" SSD in a bracket in the optical bay. I replaced the battery ~2 years ago. It weighs a ton, but has a better keyboard with sculpted keys than almost anything you can buy today.
I almost bought a MSI Titan, but the $5,400 price tag and shitty PWM backlight got me to keep looking. I currently have a pre-order for an eBlaztr case (https://eblaztr
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I disagree. For modern websites and video conferencing software such as Teams or Zoom, I feel like a ULV quad core with 16 gigs of RAM is pretty much the minimum for a Windows machine these days.
You may fare slightly better on Mac or Linux, but a dual core machine with 8 gigs of RAM from 2013 isn't gonna be a lot of fun on the modern web. I use an X220 with 8 gigs of RAM running Ubuntu every morning while I drink my coffee, and the difference compared to even my X390 with an 8th gen quad core and 16 gigs of
Bring back physical trackpad buttons. (Score:1)
I don't know why all the laptop makers had to copy shitty Apple trackpads. Having no physical trackpad buttons on laptops pretty much forces me to continue using my old laptop instead of upgrading to gain better efficiency.
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Thinkpads still have those glorious physical mouse buttons. Granted, they're in the wrong location, but you get used to it.
Very Little Effect (Score:2)
displays are fine (Score:2)
Displays are OK, how about:
1. Remove ME or allow us to fully disable ME and whatever other spyware is in the hardware.
2. make hardware upgradable
3. Bring back the ability to disable Secure Boot and UEFI.
4. Use fully open hardware so I can install any OS I want
5. while I am at it, eliminate the Microsoft Tax
No, on any of these, then I will continue using old laptops, screw buying new until I am 100% sure all hardware is usable with whatever OS I want to use.
Obsolescence by design (Score:3)
No matter how much they try to not talk about it or say "everything is fine", burn-in is still a problem. I prefer the forever lifetime and high refresh rate of IPS.
define "better" (Score:2)
Better display? Call me when the laptop comes out of the factory with a color calibrated display,
What I'd buy (Score:2)
Bring back the 1920x1200 laptop displays and I'll buy. 1920x1080 sucks, too wide and not tall enough.
Bring back chassis and keyboard quality. (Score:2)
T61 etc Thinkpads had great metal chassis and high quality keyboards. Decent keyboards much be horrifically expensive given the refusal to offer them on most notebooks even as an option.
Screen savers to save screens once again. (Score:3)
OLED is prone to burn in and I've seen demo smartphones at stores suffering some gnarly burn in.
My OLED smartwatch that I had for a few years now is showing burn in despite the display being off most of the time.
I've had a lot of arguments over laptop screens (Score:2)
I recall several debates on what made one laptop so much more expensive than another, usually as a PC vs. Mac debate. I'd have someone show a laptop from some major manufacturer and compare that to what I thought was the better laptop, then point out how his choice was better than mine because of more RAM, faster processor, etc. I'd point to the screen specifications to demonstrate the inferiority of the product. The display is the primary output interface on the device, and with much lower resolution th
3 hinged panels (Score:2)
You know what would make a totally kick-ass display for a portable computer? A 3840x2160 center panel, flanked by a pair of ~1800 to 1920 x 2160 side panels attached to both sides with the kind of hinges used by laptops, and the side panels folding over the center one like window shutters for travel (and to protect each other)
Obviously, g-sync and freesync. 120hz or better, preferably 144hz, ideally 240hz. Or at least, 120hz for 3840x2160, and 240hz or better for 1920x1080 (scaled 2x2 at the panel end if in
Still waiting for high quality reflective displays (Score:2)
I'm still dreaming of a reflective display that looks as good as a magazine page in full sunlight. I spend the majority of my time outside for work and I constantly have to deal with crappy screens that I can hardly see in the sunlight with my sunglasses on. It's true that screens are now much more readable than they were a few years ago (my car display is not too bad), but for straight-up readability nothing beats the old reflective monochrome LCD readouts of yesteryear, at least for instrumentation. My
Not OLED but 1440p standard pls! (Score:1)