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Comment by SahAssar | Hacker News Reader

Do they still only have lackluster displays? Thinkpads maxed out at 1080p long after other premium laptops offered 4k.

1080p is not "lackluster" compared to a 4k. It's "lower resolution".

4k consumes (more or less significantly) more, which comes at a price - see the widely documented XPS 13.

If one prefers super-high resolution, it's totally fine, but it's not correct to depict 1080p as poor for a work machine.

MacBook Pros of recent years have "2K" (2880 x 1800) displays, that renders at 1050p with extra pixels used for "sub"pixel aliasing. Plain 1080p on a laptop is pixelated for text viewing.

This. I tried using a Dell XPS and a Thinkpad as replacement to Macbook. But had to return both because I just can't get used to any other display after using Retina display, specially because the laptop is my TV as well.

XPS:es have superb 4k displays too, but you might have got the version with a 1080p. Retina is after all just a marketing term for "High DPI", with no real standard for what "High" is.

The XPS and Thinkpads have both offered 4k for a few gens now. The real question is when Apple will offer matte screens. I can't stand the glare on the Macbook screens.

I don't think the current XPS:es have a matte screen option, last I checked the only ones with matte and known brand names and professional specs where thinkpads with low-res screens.

The X, P, and T series Thinkpads have 2k and 4k options depending on the model. The 4k options in particular are extremely nice with excellent color gamut.

I have a X series with nVidia graphics. Quite nice machine! But gid, does the graphic card eat battery life! It is charging extremely fast, so. Didn't opt for the 4k display due to battery life, but the option is there.

Careful, the 4K X1 Extreme has half the battery life of the 1080p model.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Extreme-Gen...

The reason I took the standard display, the graphic card is power hungry enough. Thankfully the machine charges really quick! And what do I have a second screen on my desk for anyway? But I'm either playing games or working, so I have no idea how graphic design would be affected by the display.

They're not all gorgeous - 1080p displays with pretty poor color gamut are the default, and they still offer comically bad 1366x768 options for a base model. But some models do have 2560x1440 IPS glossy, 3480x2160 IPS anti-glare, or 3840x2160 OLED displays with 400/500 nit brightness and decent color gamut coverage (100% Adobe or 100% DCI, depending on the model).

Check http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/i_pdf/ThinkPad.pdf for the specs of currently-public models. Most of the models after October 2019 in the linked document are not yet public.

If current trends hold, the not-yet-released T14/T15/P15 will all have an optional screen available that's pretty good. Some of the lower-price L14/E14/AMD options will only have options for crappy screens. And, the point that's most important for Thinkpad enthusiasts, the majority of the business-lease sales that end up on eBay for $400 in 2023 will have the crappy screens and/or L and E series devices.

Still, I'm curious what the "ThinkPad Thor-TP" might be.

> they still offer comically bad 1366x768 options for a base model.

Believe it or not, there are still corporate legacy apps that run on DOS and looks great on 1366x768 and look like crap in 4k. In fact, Linux still look like crap in 4K today.

I use a 4k 13" (an XPS 13) laptop for 8 hours everyday under linux, and as long as I use wayland with firefox and VScode (my two main apps) they look pretty good, even comparing to my macbook using colleagues.

Not sure if it is because of the apps or wayland or the laptop, but it works for me.

I can believe that there are corporate legacy apps might look bad on 4k - you might not even be able to do a naive 1:4 upscale if it's forced to be full-screen. But I wouldn't optimize my display experience for that.

However, I'm going to have to disagree strongly with your latter statement: Linux looks great in 4K. I'm running Ubuntu 19.10 to an external 4k monitor from a T430 right now (native display is a 1600x900 TN unit, which kind of sucks) and it looks great. I've had no significant aliasing or other problems.

Even Windows guests with Virtualbox scaling look good. You could easily use that to run corporate legacy apps, and probably should, knowing the stability and installation difficulties associated with legacy apps.. a .vmdk is probably much easier to version and distribute!

My 3 year old X1 Yoga is 2560x1440 and I think it had a 4k option but I chose battery life.

They do, and for creative work this is still their Achilles heel.

They improved that. The X1C Extreme can be had with a great OLED panel for instance.

400 nits matte displays in other models are also excellent.

They don't, they just charge you out of the nose for everything, "enterprise pricing".

So does Apple, perhaps even more so.

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