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Mac Book Pro: maximum resolution

kavi

kavi

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 17, 2007
53
0
I was wondering what maximum screen resolution the mac book pro was capable of.

For the 15-inch one apple.com says:

Supported resolutions: 1440 by 900 (native), 1280 by 800, 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 at 16:10 aspect ratio
Click to expand...

and for the 17-inch:

Supported resolutions: 1680 by 1050 (native), 1280 by 800, 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 at 16:10 aspect ratio
Click to expand...

After reading that I assumed 1440 by 900 was the max for the 15-inch and 1680 by 1050 was the max for the 17-inch. Today I was at London Drugs and they had, what I assume was the 17-inch Mac Book Pro and the screen was set to a 1920 by 1200 resolution.

So how did they go past this native resolution of 1680 by 1050 and if it's possible to increase the resolution, high high can you get the resolution of the 15-inch Mac Book Pro?
 
For LCDs you can't exceed the native resolution. To exceed the native resolution on an LCD - as far as I understand - would be impossible. You can't add more pixels that aren't on the screen.

I have seen 15" Laptops (not Apple) that had 1920 x 1200 resolution. And this was 3 years ago. I own a Smell laptop with a 15" screen @ 1680 x 1050.

I think Apple offers multiple resolutions in the 17" flavor - that could be why you saw 1920 x 1200.
 
Yeah - multiple 17" monitors available.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html

I trimmed the fat:

17-inch MacBook Pro

17-inch (diagonal) TFT display with support for millions of colors; optional glossy widescreen display
Supported resolutions: 1680 by 1050 (native)

Optional 17-inch (diagonal) TFT widescreen display with support for millions of colors; optional glossy widescreen display. Supported resolutions: 1920 by 1200 (native)
 
so I guess there's no way to push the 15-inch screen past 1440 by 900 then eh?
 
kavi said:
so I guess there's no way to push the 15-inch screen past 1440 by 900 then eh?
Click to expand...

Does not look like the option exists *yet*.

That said - using an external display with a higher resolution should work just fine. (if you wanted that)

I've seen people swap higher resolution LCDs into their laptops with no issues. But these were PCs, not Apple.
 
About that, how good/bad does a 17'' that has the 1920x1200 native resolution look when you use 1680x1050 on it?

Real estate is awesome, but when you are e.g. editing text you might want to switch to a lower resolution. Does it make the display look bad?
 
There is a very long thread here that discusses what is involved in physically replacing your current laptop screen with a higher resolution one. People have been successful in doing this, but it is VERY non-trivial. Without going to such great lengths you are limited to the native resolution in the "internal" screen, but can display at much higher resolutions on external displays.
 
When running at non-native resolution LCDs never look as sharp. There are certain resolutions below native that will look sharper than others, though. I believe lower resolutions that maintain the same ratio as the native, tend to look better.

It isn't that bad - everything is larger, just not as well defined. So it is a tradeoff.

I suppose it's also different when looking at a smaller display. 1920 x 1200 on a 24" LCD is obviously going to be a lot larger than 1920 x 1200 on a 17".

I have to admit, on my Smell laptop, 1680 x 1050 (native) on a 15" screen did produce some very small text and icons - but it was still very much bearable, and I rarely left native resolution for anything that didn't require it.
 
so we've established that it is impossible to make an LCD go beyond it's native resolution but is it possible to make things on the screen appear smaller to fit more?

kind of like in safari how you can pinch on the mouse pad and the text and images get smaller. can we apply that to everything?

because I was looking at a 17" MacBook Pro and I liked how everthing looked on the screen because of the higher resolution and I would like to get the same effect on my 15" MacBook Pro without having to replace the LCD with a higher resolution one :)
 
driftnut56 said:
so we've established that it is impossible to make an LCD go beyond it's native resolution but is it possible to make things on the screen appear smaller to fit more?

kind of like in safari how you can pinch on the mouse pad and the text and images get smaller. can we apply that to everything?

because I was looking at a 17" MacBook Pro and I liked how everthing looked on the screen because of the higher resolution and I would like to get the same effect on my 15" MacBook Pro without having to replace the LCD with a higher resolution one :)
Click to expand...

No. Half of this thread is uneducated.

We have established that you cannot make a screen go beyond it's native resolution. Eg. A 1440x900 pixel screen cannot display at 1920x1200 pixels. They just aren't there. But you can upgrade to a screen to a native resolution of 1920x1200. But the pixels will be closer together for whatever size screen you are doing this on. (doesn't matter) thus making everything smaller.

For exampl,. Say you have a 1440x900 screen on your 15.4" macbook pro. You want more pixels, eg more virtual real estate, and want to with to a 1920x1200 15 inch screen. You would look for a lp154wu1 or wu2 or even a samsung ltn154u1 or u2. These are wuxga screens that would fit and give you the higher resolution. The only problem is your text will be extrememly tiny.

See the 17" screen is about 13.5% bigger than the 15". That means that the text on your 15" at 1920x1200 will be 13.5% (of 17") smaller. If you wanted text on your 15" to be about the same as the 17", then you want a resultion that's about 13.5% bigger than your 1440x900. That comes out to around 1634x1021 with the closest matching screen being a WXGA+ @ 1680x1050, which would be similar in text size on your 15" to a 17" WUXGA.

How do I know your macbook will support the resolution? Because I've used a 15" g4 to test a 17" 1920x1200 WUGXA macbook pro HD screen with no problem. The internal video card can handle at LEAST that high of a resolution. It's all about the card's max supported rez.

As for screen compabibility. Laptops are more simple than people make them. There's a 30pin or 20pin on the screen end that comes in different sizes and a 20pin/30pin combination on the mobo end that's standard. Get the right cable, use the inverter from the board, and match em up.

Here's a link to check out screen resolutions:
http://www.lcds4less.com/search-lcds.shtml?lcds_search=lp154wu&Submit.x=0&Submit.y=0

And an example search of finding yourself a higher resolution screen on ebay:
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=lp...&_trksid=m270&_odkw=lp154wu*+screen&_osacat=0
 
Also LCD look fine with a smaller-than-native resolution when it doesn't scale (stretch) out the image.

I have scaling turned off on my desktop and if there is something smaller than 1680x1050 then it just displays it with a black border around it and doesn't stretch it.
 
Please note:

All discussions of modifying your 15" MBP to accept hires LCD usually refer to the older non-LED (CCFL) backlit equipped MBPs. The last model was a C2D 2.33.

AFAIK, no one has successfully modded a SR or higher MBP 15" because the LED 1920*1200 displays are very expensive and the connectors do not match what Apple is using. Also, there are no inverters on LED backlit MBPs.

Cheers,
 
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