I know there is lot of gripe about the display not being 4k, but I personally love 2560x1600 on 16inch monitors.
In Linux I can run this without any fractional scaling at 100% resolution. To account for small text, I can change font size by 1.1 or something similar via gnome-tweaks and similar font size adjustment for apps that don't honor gnome-tweaks setting.
I know this is not ideal if you are coming from Mac, but this IMO leads to much more smoother experience and no blurry text anywhere. The same setting works if I am plugging into 32inch 4k display.
And while more can be nicer, anything above 150 PPI is IMO fine enough.
For a real big improvement one would need 3840x2400 (WQUXGA) here, that'd give one 283.02 PPI and thus a nice 2x scaling could be used, resulting in crisper text/lines.
But IMO that would be overkill and quite likely not be able to provide 165 HZ, or the GPU couldn't actually drive it at full HZ.
> But IMO that would be overkill and quite likely not be able to provide 165 HZ, or the GPU couldn't actually drive it at full HZ.
While it might be overkill, I think GPUs would have a fine time with it. Low end laptops have been driving 4k@60hz for many years now! Powering desktop interfaces is much easier than gaming. Finding a 283ppi panel that also does 165hz might be hard though.
Yes, sure and for office work 165 HZ would be overkill anyway, 60 Hz works already OK enough and much more than 90 Hz would be a waste.
But, the post describes that they choose 165 HZ with gaming in mind, and IIRC the 16" Framework will have a slot for a switchable GPUs, and so I think it will be used for gaming too.
I prefer 4k normally, but on Linux I prefer this. It ends up like a slightly less crisp 4k with 1.5x scaling, and everything works nicely even if your fractional scaling isn’t behaving
> It really isn't, coming from a 13" laptop with 1080p...
For you maybe, but I know people that are happy with that and some even find 1080p on 13" too crammed, just different taste and applications... I actually had to help out on a 1366x768 15" laptop recently, that was borderline brutal even for me, I completely forgot how one could notice every pixel as such distinct unit back then.
So, if you're not one of them you simply don't scale 2x and get more screen estate, or naturally check if there's another model that provides 5k+.
> And how it is relevant to compare to a 32" screen I don't know, because you hardly use that display on your lap.
Yeah, I almost never use a laptop on my lap, literally that is, and I really didn't think we're constraint to discuss around that axiom ^^ But I think you're mostly looking after (virtual) pixels to be used, while I might favor a higher PPI even though scaling it would give me lower pixel amount to work with.
Point was that there is a massive difference between 13" and 16".
You don't have to have it in your lap. But most people, in most cases, where the laptop screen is actually used for anything. Is much closer than you'd have a 32" screen. Especially if you are going to use the laptop keyboard.
Comparing preferred PPI between different types of devices is always pointless, because you don't use them in the same way or from the same distance.
I'm 71 and still actively programming. One thing I did years ago was to get a pair of single vision glasses set up for my eyes' distance from the laptop screen (about 20"). These changed my life.
I use progressives for everyday activity, but at the computer I switch to the single vision. I have a triple-monitor setup: the 15" 4K display on my ThinkPad P1, and two 24" 4K monitors (currently LG, but I've used similar Dell and ViewSonic monitors in the past).
The external monitors are mounted on Amazon Basics arms made by Ergotron. I prefer the Amazon Basics because they have a matte black finish instead of the silver finish of the Ergotron-branded arms. They are identical otherwise.
One 24" monitor sits directly above the laptop display, with their left edges aligned. The other sits to the left of these in portrait mode. This is ideal for reading documentation, especially PDF files.
I run the ThinkPad at 300% scaling and the larger monitors at 200%. All three are adjusted to be at about the same 20" distance from my eyes. The ThinkPad display is in the usual tipped-back laptop position. The horizontal monitor above it is closer to a straight up-and-down angle (but not quite). The portrait monitor is also tilted back a bit. The idea here is to have the "normal" for the center of each monitor point to my eyes.
It's also important to keep the prescriptions updated for both the progressive and single vision lenses, especially if you are in your 40s when your vision changes more rapidly.
I am using single-prescription lenses, and I update them every 1-2 years (via Koch Eye Associates). I order lenses at the specific focal distance of my monitors.
For some reason, in recent years my eyes never feel comfortable with the updated lenses. Not sure if my eyes are getting less forgiving w.r.t. focal distance, or if something is goofy about the lenses that Koch is selling me.
I think my next step is to try another optometrist / glasses-vendor.
Another possibility is that I'm using a big monitor, so the distance from my eyes to the screen-center is pretty different from the distance to the screen-edge. I may just need to try smaller screens or (yuck) curved screens.
One possibility to look into is convergence issues. The solution to presbyopia is to prescribe positive lenses. However, positive lenses force your eyes to converge more. So if you have convergence issues, these can make things worse.
This appears to be the issue I have. I’ve been to a few optometrists and they really don’t want to hear about it. To be fair, regular optometrists probably don’t have the margins to deal with problems like this. It really requires a specialist such as an orthoptist.
For now, I just manage best I can. I can only use my reading/computer glasses for a very short period of time before my eyes hurt like crazy. Then I revert to my distance glasses where I can barely read the text, but at least my eyes don’t hurt.
> Another possibility is that I'm using a big monitor, so the distance from my eyes to the screen-center is pretty different from the distance to the screen-edge.
You may be on to something there! About 10 years ago I visited the Google office in Washington, DC to finish up my work on the 2012 general election map. They had a 32" monitor for me to use, and when I put it at the same 20" distance as my laptop screen I had exactly the same problem. The difference in distance from center to edge was too much for me to keep it all in focus.
Note that with a high enough resolution to enable 2x (or even 4x) scaling, text becomes much crisper as anti-aliasing isn't messing with the actual color that much anymore.
So, a HiDPI display _might_ make things easier to read/view even for people with a worse vision like you.
I guess any conclusions I draw need to consider more than just the screen's native resolution. The software-based systems for rending fonts, and graphics in general, would also matter.
As would the screen treatment (matte vs. glossy), since AFAIK all matte finishes add a little bit of blur.
Anti-aliasing should not be messing with the color at all. It shouldn't even be messing with brightness and contrast all that much; most common artifacts are due to performing anti-aliasing w/ an incorrect gamma for the display. Gamma-correct and pixel-perfect content makes even a low resolution 768p screen quite usable. And a 1080p screen is crisp enough already that individual pixels are not visible when looking at the whole screen. Anything higher than that is pure overkill.
Font anti aliasing, or more specifically subpixel rendering absolutely changes color. It of course does so in a way that is ideally not perceptible, but it is there.
Here's an example of an e rendered with subpixel rendering close up:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Subpixel...
How do you get this gamma-correct antialiasing in practice?
I see this often on business 24" FHD displays. It's especially atrocious with light text on dark backgrounds. Bonus points for the current fashion of super-skinny fonts, which seem to have different colors for every vertical line.
You measure your minimum resolving angle as a function of distance, then calculate what dpi that corresponds to. Except, since it’s an angle, distance matters here. So you add in what distance you’ll be from the display.
But I forget what numbers to plug in. We learned that in graphics courses back in uni, and how 4K big screen displays are probably only beneficial as though you are getting super sampling antialiasing
Edit: a quick google search returned:
> The human eye has an angular resolution of about 1 arcminute (0.02 degrees or 0.0003 radians) which enables us to distinguish things that are 30 centimetres apart at a distance of 1 kilometre
You just need some basic trig to do your calculation now, and to modify your resolving number based on some experiments based on your particular eyes
It's more complicated than that. Angular resolution is where you can distinguish between one or two separate objects. You need an entire rod/cone/camera pixel in between to pick out the middle. But when it comes to viewing edges and lines, it's like using grayscale instead of black and white. Differences of position ten times as small can be distinguished.
2560x1600 is what Apple used to do on a 13.3 MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, at roughly about 226PPI. That is what used to be the standard for Retina on Mac.
At roughly 180PPI. Unless you view it from 19" distance it doesn't quite fit the definition of Retina from Apple. But may be it is the sort of Good enough scenario for many.
Interestingly even ~220PPI should leave plenty of room for Mac usage. But Apple decided to pump it up to ~260 for reason I still haven't quite figure out, nor have I seen anyone on the internet gave any plausible explantation. ( Most likely because no one gives a damn about technical details any more. ). I much rather they drive the 120Hz refresh rate rather than pixel count.
I guess that's the good think about getting older (I'm 46) - I need larger text than I did 20 years ago, so that issue isn't one I deal with. Still, at standard OS sizes I can't detect pixelation, even when I compare my 32 inch display next to the laptops I have (16" MBP, 13" MBA)
This Samsung [1] is only 14" and yet has 2880x1800 display. That's 200% resolution. Anything less than 200% is not interesting to me. iPhone with Retina display debuted in 2010. Isn't 13 years enough time for PC laptops to catch up?
This 16 inch laptop has 2560x1600 resolution. If you set it to 200% then that's the equivalent of 800 pixels which is what you expect in a 13 inch laptop. For a 16 inch laptop there's not enough pixels.
Why set it to 200%? Because as Steve Jobs has explained, the only resolution that looks good after 100% is 200%. Then 400%. If you set it any in-between scale (such as 150% or 300%) then you will have display artifacts, such as horizontal lines appearing to have different widths when they are all in fact set to 1px.
> If you set it any in-between scale (such as 150% or 300%) then you will have display artifacts, such as horizontal lines appearing to have different widths when they are all in fact set to 1px.
This is only true with the approach macOS takes. When set to 150% on macOS the app renders at 200% and the compositor downscales. On Windows however there is no downscaling: the app renders directly at 150% thus avoiding any artifacts.
That is only true for apps where everything is vectors and it knows about scaling, since apps draw to the pixel buffer themselves. Many contain rasterized resources with fixed resolutions.
Fortunately on Windows and Linux you don't have to scale the same way as Apple does pixel doubling everything. And even Apple has shipped laptops where the default display resolution is not a integer scale of the panel resolution (e.g 12" MacBook).
200% means double the resolution of the "previous era" (1990s and 2000s), which was around 96 dpi. Modern applications will not see any scaling artifacts.
Applications from the "previous era" that are not HighDPI-aware will get scaling... each application pixel will occupy 4 physical pixels.
yeah this Asus laptop (https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-home/vivobook/vivobook-pro-...) has the same resolution display for the same dimensions too. Maybe this is the only high dpi panel mass produced enough and 16'' doesn't have an economical version due to lower economies of scale? just a guess I am not very sure.
I consider this above average, but not unusually high. For the past couple years the MacBook pro can do a peak of 1000nits HDR (unlockable to do it with apps like lunar for outdoor computing). There has also been the MSI creator 17 that supports 1000 nits brightness, and some HP laptop models that do high brightness though more for their 'sureview' screen security feature
Are there third party modular suppliers? Could I say, replace the keyboard like I can on a desktop?
If not, are they open to that? If I wanted to say, make something more "thinkpad" like for people to swap things out, would they openly support me selling this?
> The keyboard was the deciding factor in my last laptop purchase
I'm looking for a laptop, and keyboard quality is also one of my top priorities. One of my criteria is FULL-SIZE ARROW KEYS. I don't know how people use their computers nowadays, but arrow keys are something I use a lot, and I cannot understand why laptop makers decided to make the up and down arrows the smallest keys on the keyboard. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Sadly, the only laptops with full size arrow keys I found are gaming laptops (disqualified because they're heavy, expensive and have bad battery life), some large laptops with a number pad (which I dislike because it makes for an off-center keybaord) and some Thinkpads -- which have something like 3/4-size arrow keys, better than most but not what I would prefer.
If this laptop comes with an optional keyboard with full-size arrow keys, I will probably buy one.
(I also had similar problems when I wanted to buy a regular mouse with three buttons (index, middle, ring finger) plus a wheel. Went through several gaming and ergonomic monstrosities before finding my holy grail -- 3DConnexion CADMouse Wireless. Not affiliated, just a satisfied customer).
If someone reading this knows of a modern ultrabook-format laptop with decent battery life, at least 1920x1200 screen, good Linux compatibility and a keyboard with full size arrow keys, I will be eternally grateful.
Yeah, even with all the improvements, Nvidia hybrid is still a nightmare in linux.
Just recently my vscode extensions were all inexplicably failing, and I traced it back to electron messing up, which I discovered only happens when the Nvidia driver is loaded even though I am not even using it for rendering... And this took forever to trace.
My laptop works pretty well these days except for the Nvidia hardware, but it's not just laptops either.
I can choose Wayland XOR external displays. I can update any kernel or driver and reboot days later, unless Nvidia's software gets involved.
The Intel GPU also has some issues (random flickering on fullscreen applications for some obscure reason I just can't figure out) but they're much less "how can you possibly have missed this" and more "this seems like an unfortunate edge case".
curious what does linux offer that you can't get through WSL2 on windows and have the best of both worlds (gaming on windows + development through WSL2), I have had no issues with accessing cuda through wsl2.
I'm not sure I understand whether this is criticism or praise; isn't it a good thing for a company that has announced an upcoming product line to communicate transparently and frequently about progress and timelines for things like preorders?
Electronics is a high-investment but low-margin product. You either need to have a ton of cash upfront to pay for components and wait weeks to months until products are built and especially shipped to customers, or you need extremely generous payment terms with vendors. The latter you can only get by continuous high-volume orders... which Framework is too small for.
I have been following Framework from a distance, but latest video of Linus (LTT) interacting with framework ceo really pushed me towards buying framework as my next laptop. Great to see a caring ceo and company
I’ve noticed that no other devices can beat the quality of Apple device monitors, no matter how high-definition they are. The display on Apple devices are just smoothing, natural, easy on my heavily myopic eyes. Any expert on display panel? I am just wondering why Apple’s display quality is always better than even the display manufacturers’ own devices (Samsung, LG).
Probably several reasons both hardware and software.
1. LCD panel grade - panels are graded when they’re manufactured and Apple buys the ‘A’ quality panels while others including manufacturers tend to use a mix of different graded panels or buy the cheaper ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade panels which have uniformity issues and other perceptible defects. Back in the day Dell ultrasharps were famous for the ‘panel lottery’ where you weren’t sure what quality you’d get.
2. Other aspects of panels - There’s a lot of little things that go into making them that can affect quality including polarizers, backlight guides, anti glare, how they’re bonded, etc. Apple does a lot of investment in display tech (they did the first bonded lcds afaik which meant the pixels seemed like they were on top of the glass vs behind) and they doesn't skimp on quality parts.
3. Text rendering - At the software layer I believe Apple renders text a bit differently than Windows, and as of a few years ago killed text antialiasing, tho I’m not up to date on whether that results in qualitative difference vs Windows.
4. Target PPI - All Apple devices are made at target ppis - Mac around 227, iPad 264, iPhone 326 (lcd) - 480 (oled) - all of which correspond to a near equivalent size to our eyes when factoring in target distance from eyes for different form factors (e.g. phones closer, tablet middle, computer farther). Windows & Android devices are all over the place on this, offering tons of different scale factors that may affect.
5. Color correction - supporting ~100% P3 gamut colors on all modern displays along with the software to support it
6. Whole stack software optimization - when you control hw & sw, you can eke out a bit more qualitative improvement. For instance, knowing the panels are of a certain PPI and quality of color repro means you can pick UI colors (various greys etc) with much higher confidence, can create your own custom fonts that look great on them, etc, versus a sort of 'web safe colors' lowest common denominator equivalent you're stuck with on platforms like Win/Android with a lot of variance in device quality.
Basically: you get the best visuals when you control the whole stack and invest in premium everything.
i would love to understand that as well. I am mainly a pc user (both desktop and laptop), but at any given generation macbooks have just better display "experience".Even when compared to the other top of the line devices (MSFT surfaces or dell XPS 13).
My guess is simply that other PC companies just don't care much about the display quality beyond head grabbing specs. That and i suspect MACOS is just better at text rendering and color repreduction on the desktop
Your brain telling your eyes that the extra money should be worth it? I wrote this in a joking manner, but I do wonder if a double blind study has been conducted.
Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal. That could explain a lot of it. Not to mention the factors you reference, aka antialiasing, smoothing, font rendering, and probably lots more.
That's a fair point, it might be only a placebo effect. However, the machines i am comparing it with are mainly the dell xps 13 and MSFT surface which are generally in the same price range. Plus i have yet to have bough a macbook for myself, usually those are company issued devices.
> Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal.
That's correct. But here i am not comparing the quality ofthe UI element. I am don't particularly like MACOS design language and prefer windows 11 and ubuntu gnome visual esthetics.
While macOS might get the visual combination better than competitors, I’d be somewhat surprised if it has any secret sauce left. Oh, yeah, custom silicon… :)
Why did you have to run an Apple advertisement in a topic dedicated to a laptop that very much isn't for Apple audience?
There's plenty of laptops with better and different screens, including several OLED ones that run at smoother refresh and produce much more vibrant and less eye painful colors. The fact that you haven't seen them isn't a testament of Apple skill, it's just a reflection of you not walking into anything that's not an Apple store.
I doubt that's it. That may help with "whow, shiny colors!" impressions, but I think that pcs just source lower quality panels.
I have a 2012 unibody MBP with a matte screen (the last model before the retina line). That thing looks so much better than my 2021 HP EliteBook it's not even funny. Sure, the HP has higher resolution (1920x1080 vs 1680x1050), but the viewing angles are poor (it's a 14" panel, but there is no single position from which you can see it completely OK, the colors always change when you move the slightest). The blacks are a darkish grey. The reds are actually orange. This wasn't a cheap pc, either. It also has the 8 bit panel. Some SKUs only have dim, 6 bit ones. It cost almost as much as a 14" M1 when my company bought it (it's a work laptop, I would never have bought this crap with my own cash). The only other metric except from resolution by which it beats that 11 yo macbook is that it's very bright, to the point of being actually usable outside if the sun doesn't shine directly on it.
There are many PCs with glossy coating. We also have a different model of elitebooks at work that have those (x360 line). That's an atrocious shitshow. Except for a completely dark room, you'll always see some random reflection instead of the actual screen content. My 2013 retina MBP does better outside than these poor excuses for a panel do inside.
There are PCs that somehow do manage to look decent. A friend's Dell XPS comes to mind, though it doesn't look as good as an MBP. But these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Yeah pcs definitely do ship with worse panels, you have to look for laptops with good displays. But matte definitely dulls out the colors compared to a glossy display.
Honest question: why would a happy Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 on Debian user switch to the Framework laptop? What are its selling points that make it attractive to such a target group?
Upgradeable wifi would be the main draw. The rest is mostly a wash. Thinkpads have better linux support generally. Thinkpads have firmware updates on fwupd and no catastrophic issues on the igpu models.
Unfortunately, that depends on the generation and vendor of the CPU. I found AMD devices have much more bugs regarding sleep and GPU drivers than Intel. Within the AMD generations, the 4000-Series was really bad even on Linux certified thinkpads.
Yes, AMD is definitely worse than Intel, but that's true everywhere. It's more about AMD than Lenovo. I have a rembrandt hp elitebook, and even that has issues.
Customizable ports (although I'd want 5-6 slots for ports, 4 is a little too few for me, I want USB-C for charging on both sides, 2 usb-3, HDMI and DisplayPort at the same time).
It really shouldn't matter as long as the frequency is high enough (>2000Hz). On their 1st gen laptop it seems seamless to the point where I can't tell (if it's DC or not).
Thanks for sharing. The high frequency doesn't seem to matter (example newer Macbooks). Unsure additional parameters like temporal dithering play a role.
I think 2560p is a sweet spot, as 4K is just too hard to drive, and (to my eyes) its usable with minimal scaling.
My biggest concern with the framework 16 is cooling. The modular GPU inevitably excludes the huge, integrated heatsink designs something like a G15 would use.
Personally I disagree about the resolution being a sweet spot, in my opinion it's almost the worst resolution imaginable for this size. The pixels are just slightly too small to the point where it becomes annoying and uncomfortable (for most people) to use it at 100% scaling, 200% scaling is out of the question as everything would be massive and you'd only get some 720p equivalent worth of real estate, and fractional scaling is generally subpar and not worth using in many cases. I think both 4k and 1080p are better options for a 15-16" screen.
In Linux I can run this without any fractional scaling at 100% resolution. To account for small text, I can change font size by 1.1 or something similar via gnome-tweaks and similar font size adjustment for apps that don't honor gnome-tweaks setting.
I know this is not ideal if you are coming from Mac, but this IMO leads to much more smoother experience and no blurry text anywhere. The same setting works if I am plugging into 32inch 4k display.