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Timeline of Retina Displays

It's been one month since the last update to the list. Now, an Italian website (http://notebookitalia.it/asus-zenbook-ux51vz-display-2880-1620-retina-17345) found a 15" Zenbook with a resolution of 2880x1620 for sale in Germany at Amazon.de (http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00CHM7FES/ref=noref/279-9834353-9157868?ie=UTF8&psc=1&s=computers). The news are being spread over the Internet.

Although the model is currently out of stock, it is being listed as being first available in April 19. So, it's been available for almost a month, and nobody noticed that. How?
 
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skaertus said:
It's been one month since the last update to the list. Now, an Italian website (http://notebookitalia.it/asus-zenbook-ux51vz-display-2880-1620-retina-17345) found a 15" Zenbook with a resolution of 2880x1620 for sale in Germany at Amazon.de (http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00CHM7FES/ref=noref/279-9834353-9157868?ie=UTF8&psc=1&s=computers). The news are being spread over the Internet.

Although the model is currently out of stock, it is being listed as being first available in April 19. So, it's been available for almost a month, and nobody noticed that. How?
Click to expand...

Interesting, although Retina is still the winner. 2880x1800 vs. 2880x1620. I assume it has all the faults of other Zenbooks, including a bad trackpad, shallow keys and no touchscreen (Windows 8 needs a touchscreen).
 
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B... said:
Interesting, although Retina is still the winner. 2880x1800 vs. 2880x1620. I assume it has all the faults of other Zenbooks, including a bad trackpad, shallow keys and no touchscreen (Windows 8 needs a touchscreen).
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Well, the rMBP still has the higher resolution. But both laptops probably use the same panels, with the difference that the rMBP display has a 16:10 ratio and the Zenbook, a 16:9 one.

I don't know about the other characteristics of this Zenbook model, faults or not. No reviews yet, and the model seems to be out of stock. The thing that surprises me is that this 2880x1620 laptop has apparently been available in Germany for almost a month and nobody, not even the press, took notice of it.
 
I had one of those high resolution Thinkpads back in the day. The screens were nice but had some draw backs. You had a lot of space, but the text was very small and you had to play with the windows setting to get a reasonable text size. There was not a very good system wide usage of the high resolution screen. In other words most window programs did not look very good. Excel was nice and Word was great to look at facing pages. However, Internet Explorer was not really good at all.

Apple has done a great job with the Retina display on the MacBook Pro. OS X is beautiful. The non-retina apps still look really good to me. I can adjust the view easily, with less difficulty finding a comfortable resolution.

I think that why Lenovo dropped them. They were nice but for limited usage. My wife hated my Thinkpad because she could never find a comfortable adjustment for Internet Explorer or Outlook.
 
case2001 said:
I had one of those high resolution Thinkpads back in the day. The screens were nice but had some draw backs. You had a lot of space, but the text was very small and you had to play with the windows setting to get a reasonable text size. There was not a very good system wide usage of the high resolution screen. In other words most window programs did not look very good. Excel was nice and Word was great to look at facing pages. However, Internet Explorer was not really good at all.
Click to expand...

That's great feedback. I've never seen one of these ThinkPads. They should have been great back in 2002, especially for office work. But there should also be serious scaling issues that prevented them from becoming a hit.

To think that it took 10 years to have this sort of screen resolution in laptops again is just mind-blowing. IBM rocked when it was on the personal computing business, it's a pity it sold the division to Lenovo.

Apple has done a great job with the Retina display on the MacBook Pro. OS X is beautiful. The non-retina apps still look really good to me. I can adjust the view easily, with less difficulty finding a comfortable resolution.

I think that why Lenovo dropped them. They were nice but for limited usage. My wife hated my Thinkpad because she could never find a comfortable adjustment for Internet Explorer or Outlook.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's probably the reason. The retina display in the new Macs is just amazing. Now I want to see what Microsoft will make to solve the scaling issues that Windows machines are presenting with these high resolution screens (and now we have two retina-like Windows laptops in the market, apart from the Macs that also run Windows).
 
Updated with the latest news from Samsung. MacRumors reported today that Sharp will also produce high-resolution displays, but these news are a few days old, and the announcement had already been included in the list.
 
Lots of news lately. It seems like the release of Haswell will trigger several laptops with very high resolution screens.
 
case2001 said:
Could be. But does success of apple Retina display factor in?
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Perhaps, but not sure about that. Screens were getting better overall. Quad full HD TVs are being developed for a long time, and they are not here to mimic the retina display of the iPhone.

Of course Apple took advantage of the technology and released several gadgets with a very high resolution. Perhaps Apple took the lead on laptops because it has a very integrated supply chain, lots of economic power, and because OS X has a better memory management system than Windows. But the screens were coming anyway, I guess...
 
B... said:
Yes; $100 less for a 1.7 GHz ULV processor and Windows 8. Pass.
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Dunno, it is a 3lb 13" laptop, pretty much same form factor as a MacBook Air... I bet the low powered CPU makes a reasonable difference for battery life to compensate for the increased drain from the screen... And with SSD it is gonna be plenty snappy for most things people do with 13" laptops (which aren't meant to be desktop replacements IMO) Probably what needs to happen to see retina in an air form factor...
 
B... said:
Yes; $100 less for a 1.7 GHz ULV processor and Windows 8. Pass.
Click to expand...

Windows 8 is in fact a great operating system. The Metro interface may screw it up, but if you install Start8 you may not even notice that it exists. I can live without OS X, but I can't live without Windows. And most people around the world actually live without OS X, but rely on Windows to do everything.

The ULV processor is not really an issue, as it allows the laptop to be thinner and lighter, at the cost of less power.

The real problems I see in Kirabooks are the build quality, which is said to be not great for a laptop at this price range, and the screen which doesn't have great viewing angles (doesn't seem to be IPS), despite having a very high resolution.
 
skaertus said:
Windows 8 is in fact a great operating system. The Metro interface may screw it up, but if you install Start8 you may not even notice that it exists. I can live without OS X, but I can't live without Windows. And most people around the world actually live without OS X, but rely on Windows to do everything.

The ULV processor is not really an issue, as it allows the laptop to be thinner and lighter, at the cost of less power.

The real problems I see in Kirabooks are the build quality, which is said to be not great for a laptop at this price range, and the screen which doesn't have great viewing angles (doesn't seem to be IPS), despite having a very high resolution.
Click to expand...

I have used Windows 8 since I wrote that post, and I do agree that it is a good operating system WITH a touchscreen. Without, it just doesn't work as well as it could. And the base Kirabook ($1599 for 256 GB) does not have a touchscren.

About the ULV proessor, if I'm buying something for the price of a rMBP, I expect similar specs (Windows laptops are cheaper than Macs? Really?). It's trying to be a MBA competitor and a rMBP competitior at the same time. But at the price of a rMBP, less power than the MBA doesn't cut it.

Also, a review from the Verge desribed the Kirabook as pushing the boudaries of its power while switching from Metro to Desktop and watching a movie. I guess you can thank its ULV processor.
 
I've updated the list to feature the latest news from Computex Taipei. So far, Acer, Asus and Dell announced machines with 2560x1440 resolutions. Perhaps there is more on the way. And I'm waiting for Apple to reveal its secrets during WWDC next week...
 
I've updated the list several times the last few days. Several ultrabooks with high-resolution displays were showcased at Computex. Well, but I guess nobody is looking at this thread anymore...
 
nontroppo said:
Keep it updated, this thread and OP are fascinating!!!
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Thank you a lot! It's hard to keep the thread updated, as there are many news on devices with ultra-high resolutions now. And I suspect many more will come. Let me know if you notice the absence of something here.
 
This is an interesting thread, thank you OP :)

Are you listing only resolutions higher than 1920x1200?

If not, then the two first Thinkpad T-series laptops manufactured by Lenovo had 15" configurations with high-res IPS displays. The T60 (2006) had a 4/3 ratio 1600x1200 screen, and the following T61p (2007) had a 16/10 ratio 1920x1200 screen. There still is the W5** serie available, which features the 1920x1200 screen, but still not a higher resolution one.

I know that HP, Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens had 1920x1200 screens available in their workstation laptops too, like HP 8**0w-series, Dell Precision series and Fu-Si Celsius series. But I don't think any of them were available with a higher than 1920x1200 panel, except for the 2003 Thinkpad you already mentioned.


It's interesting to see where this development leads, as it's sort of been coming for years, but it seems to really have taken Apple to push it to mainstream. Windows has been ready for higher resolutions since Vista, and in 7 and 8 the scaling works quite well for the operating system. The problem is, that most software vendors (and sometimes even Microsoft itself) pretty much ignore scaling settings. So you get proper scaling in newer Office versions, but if you launch Firefox or Opera they will outright ignore the scaling, or somehow mess up the scaling, making websites a horrible mess.

Hopefully this development will put some pressure to the whole industry to make higher resolutions finally work.
 
laurihoefs said:
This is an interesting thread, thank you OP :)

Are you listing only resolutions higher than 1920x1200?

If not, then the two first Thinkpad T-series laptops manufactured by Lenovo had 15" configurations with high-res IPS displays. The T60 (2006) had a 4/3 ratio 1600x1200 screen, and the following T61p (2007) had a 16/10 ratio 1920x1200 screen. There still is the W5** serie available, which features the 1920x1200 screen, but still not a higher resolution one.

I know that HP, Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens had 1920x1200 screens available in their workstation laptops too, like HP 8**0w-series, Dell Precision series and Fu-Si Celsius series. But I don't think any of them were available with a higher than 1920x1200 panel, except for the 2003 Thinkpad you already mentioned.


It's interesting to see where this development leads, as it's sort of been coming for years, but it seems to really have taken Apple to push it to mainstream. Windows has been ready for higher resolutions since Vista, and in 7 and 8 the scaling works quite well for the operating system. The problem is, that most software vendors (and sometimes even Microsoft itself) pretty much ignore scaling settings. So you get proper scaling in newer Office versions, but if you launch Firefox or Opera they will outright ignore the scaling, or somehow mess up the scaling, making websites a horrible mess.

Hopefully this development will put some pressure to the whole industry to make higher resolutions finally work.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm listing only laptops/tablets/smartphones and other mobile devices with resolutions higher than 1920x1200. I know there are plenty of laptops which were released in the past with 1920x1200 resolutions, when 16:10 aspect ratio was the norm.
 
skaertus said:
Updated again! Hard to keep track of all these new laptops being released!
Click to expand...

oh you sure are going to have trouble, there is the xps line which we are expecting to have igzo, and the envy spectre (seriously the brand manager should not only be fired but executed) models will probably feature something as well.
 
Mr MM said:
oh you sure are going to have trouble, there is the xps line which we are expecting to have igzo, and the envy spectre (seriously the brand manager should not only be fired but executed) models will probably feature something as well.
Click to expand...

I'm sure I will...
 
skaertus said:
Yes, I'm listing only laptops/tablets/smartphones and other mobile devices with resolutions higher than 1920x1200. I know there are plenty of laptops which were released in the past with 1920x1200 resolutions, when 16:10 aspect ratio was the norm.
Click to expand...

OK, just tought it might make sense to list devices that reveal a bit of the path that has lead to the current situation, as you could then see the gradual increase in pixel density (or actually the increase in yields of high density panels) and decrease in price during th last ten or so years. Seven years ago a 15" 1920 panel was just as awesome as a 15" 2880 panel today, and it's pixel density was considered amazing.
 
laurihoefs said:
OK, just tought it might make sense to list devices that reveal a bit of the path that has lead to the current situation, as you could then see the gradual increase in pixel density (or actually the increase in yields of high density panels) and decrease in price during th last ten or so years. Seven years ago a 15" 1920 panel was just as awesome as a 15" 2880 panel today, and it's pixel density was considered amazing.
Click to expand...

I think a 2880x1620 panel is still more impressive today than a 1920x1200 was some seven years ago. At least the hype now is much higher.
 
skaertus said:
I think a 2880x1620 panel is still more impressive today than a 1920x1200 was some seven years ago. At least the hype now is much higher.
Click to expand...

What is considered impressive is really relative. You could as well say, that the rMBP screen is not really impressive, as there are mobile displays with much higher pixel densities, and larger 4K displays available. But for it's size and price it is really impressive, just as the 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 mobile workstations were in back when they were introduced. (Ok, the 16:10 ones were not as impressive as the 4:3 ones had been a couple of years earlier, because the densities weren't much higher.)

A lot has gradually changed with display technology in these years, and now we are starting to see it in consumer products across the board.

But I agree that it keeps the list more readable, if only displays over those resolutions are listed. Looking forward to your future updates :)
 
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