Acer announced two Aspire S7 ultra books to launch soon after Windows 8 is available. The smaller one has a 11.6in display, the larger one 13.3in just like the MacBook Air does, but both of them are Full HD resolution, i.e. 1980px × 1080px (16:9), whereas the larger MBA currently has 1440px × 900px (16:10, WXGA+) and the display of the smaller MBA is just 1366px × 768px (16:9, WXGA).
That means the small S7 reaches Retina quality, i.e. 1 arcmin/px, at about 46cm viewing distance, whereas the MBA of the same size needs to be 65cm away. Laptops of that size are usually 50cm to 60cm from the eyes, which is less than desktop monitors, but more than tablets.
The larger S7 becomes Retina at 53cm, the larger MBA at 68cm. So it would be preferable to use a finer resolution, if you wanted to call it Retina. Staying with an 16:10 aspect ratio, 1920px × 1200px (WUXGA) would lower the bar to 51cm, but to be save you would probably go beyond 2kpx horizontally.
I wonder whether Apple will update its MBA sooner than Acer releases their new subnotebooks. And what resolution will the 13.3in model employ?
PS: Nobody seriously believes Apple will just double the pixel density of its Mac screens.
PPS: I have created a Google Docs spreadsheet which compares several known and possible resolutions.
That means the small S7 reaches Retina quality, i.e. 1 arcmin/px, at about 46cm viewing distance, whereas the MBA of the same size needs to be 65cm away. Laptops of that size are usually 50cm to 60cm from the eyes, which is less than desktop monitors, but more than tablets.
The larger S7 becomes Retina at 53cm, the larger MBA at 68cm. So it would be preferable to use a finer resolution, if you wanted to call it Retina. Staying with an 16:10 aspect ratio, 1920px × 1200px (WUXGA) would lower the bar to 51cm, but to be save you would probably go beyond 2kpx horizontally.
I wonder whether Apple will update its MBA sooner than Acer releases their new subnotebooks. And what resolution will the 13.3in model employ?
PS: Nobody seriously believes Apple will just double the pixel density of its Mac screens.
PPS: I have created a Google Docs spreadsheet which compares several known and possible resolutions.