Measured diagonally from corner to corner, laptop screens range from very small to quite large. "It's the screen size that drives a lot of users' buying decisions" when shopping for devices such as laptops and smartphones, according to a July 2010 PCMag.com interview with John Jacobs, director of notebook marketing research for Display Search. It's not as simple as "bigger is better," however, because a larger laptop not only costs more, but also affects your computing experience.
-
Portability
- With screen sizes, even an inch or two can make a big different in terms of portability. For example, Dell's XPS 15 and Inspiron 17R have similar technical specs, but the former has a 15.6-inch screen and weighs 6.14 pounds, while the latter offers a 17.3-inch screen and weighs a pound more. One pound may not sound significant, but a laptop along with its power cable, peripherals and whatever else you might carry in your bag can easily exceed 10 pounds -- a weight at which Stanford University suggests using a rolling carrying case to avoid shoulder injury.
Resolution
- Screen resolution is measured in pixels, length by height. Higher-resolution screens provide sharper image quality, which matters if you watch movies, play detailed games or edit photos frequently. Larger screens typically have higher resolutions and accommodate longer viewing distances than smaller ones at the same resolution. What does this mean for you? Although you must keep a small-screen laptop on your lap or nearby to watch a movie, you don't need to sit close to a larger screen with the same resolution.
-
Aspect Ratio
- Most of today's laptops geared toward casual use or multimedia viewing come with a wide-screen aspect ratio of 16-to-9, like a television set, which increases screen size by about 25 percent lengthwise, affecting portability and weight. If you will frequently play games on your laptop, a 16-9 screen delivers the greatest field of view, which proves especially important in first-person shooters.
Standard 4-to-3 aspect ratio screens are common on business-oriented laptops, and still appear on a few models marketed for home users. The 4-3 aspect ratio offers the most compact, lightweight option for creating documents and presentations for viewing on projection screens.
Power Consumption
- A bigger screen uses more power, which affects battery life and energy consumption. The Aspire AS7750G-6857, with a 17.3-inch screen, promises three hours of maximum battery life and uses a 90-watt power supply, while its smaller cousin, the Aspire AS5755-6647, with a 15.6-inch screen, provides 4.5 hours of battery time and uses a 65-watt power supply. A good rule of thumb: If your laptop must stay unplugged for much of the day, choose one with a smaller screen.
-
