Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive: Display
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In Linux I can run this without any fractional scaling at 100% resolution. To account for small text, I can change font size by 1.1 or something similar via gnome-tweaks and similar font size adjustment for apps that don't honor gnome-tweaks setting.
I know this is not ideal if you are coming from Mac, but this IMO leads to much more smoother experience and no blurry text anywhere. The same setting works if I am plugging into 32inch 4k display.
I should probably invest a little time in determining what maximum screen resolution actually matters to me at various distances.
So, a HiDPI display _might_ make things easier to read/view even for people with a worse vision like you.
I guess any conclusions I draw need to consider more than just the screen's native resolution. The software-based systems for rending fonts, and graphics in general, would also matter.
As would the screen treatment (matte vs. glossy), since AFAIK all matte finishes add a little bit of blur.
I see this often on business 24" FHD displays. It's especially atrocious with light text on dark backgrounds. Bonus points for the current fashion of super-skinny fonts, which seem to have different colors for every vertical line.
But I forget what numbers to plug in. We learned that in graphics courses back in uni, and how 4K big screen displays are probably only beneficial as though you are getting super sampling antialiasing
Edit: a quick google search returned:
> The human eye has an angular resolution of about 1 arcminute (0.02 degrees or 0.0003 radians) which enables us to distinguish things that are 30 centimetres apart at a distance of 1 kilometre
You just need some basic trig to do your calculation now, and to modify your resolving number based on some experiments based on your particular eyes
I use progressives for everyday activity, but at the computer I switch to the single vision. I have a triple-monitor setup: the 15" 4K display on my ThinkPad P1, and two 24" 4K monitors (currently LG, but I've used similar Dell and ViewSonic monitors in the past).
The external monitors are mounted on Amazon Basics arms made by Ergotron. I prefer the Amazon Basics because they have a matte black finish instead of the silver finish of the Ergotron-branded arms. They are identical otherwise.
One 24" monitor sits directly above the laptop display, with their left edges aligned. The other sits to the left of these in portrait mode. This is ideal for reading documentation, especially PDF files.
I run the ThinkPad at 300% scaling and the larger monitors at 200%. All three are adjusted to be at about the same 20" distance from my eyes. The ThinkPad display is in the usual tipped-back laptop position. The horizontal monitor above it is closer to a straight up-and-down angle (but not quite). The portrait monitor is also tilted back a bit. The idea here is to have the "normal" for the center of each monitor point to my eyes.
It's also important to keep the prescriptions updated for both the progressive and single vision lenses, especially if you are in your 40s when your vision changes more rapidly.
I am using single-prescription lenses, and I update them every 1-2 years (via Koch Eye Associates). I order lenses at the specific focal distance of my monitors.
For some reason, in recent years my eyes never feel comfortable with the updated lenses. Not sure if my eyes are getting less forgiving w.r.t. focal distance, or if something is goofy about the lenses that Koch is selling me.
I think my next step is to try another optometrist / glasses-vendor.
Another possibility is that I'm using a big monitor, so the distance from my eyes to the screen-center is pretty different from the distance to the screen-edge. I may just need to try smaller screens or (yuck) curved screens.
You may be on to something there! About 10 years ago I visited the Google office in Washington, DC to finish up my work on the 2012 general election map. They had a 32" monitor for me to use, and when I put it at the same 20" distance as my laptop screen I had exactly the same problem. The difference in distance from center to edge was too much for me to keep it all in focus.
This appears to be the issue I have. I’ve been to a few optometrists and they really don’t want to hear about it. To be fair, regular optometrists probably don’t have the margins to deal with problems like this. It really requires a specialist such as an orthoptist.
For now, I just manage best I can. I can only use my reading/computer glasses for a very short period of time before my eyes hurt like crazy. Then I revert to my distance glasses where I can barely read the text, but at least my eyes don’t hurt.
Yeah, that's 188.68 PPI.
And while more can be nicer, anything above 150 PPI is IMO fine enough.
For a real big improvement one would need 3840x2400 (WQUXGA) here, that'd give one 283.02 PPI and thus a nice 2x scaling could be used, resulting in crisper text/lines. But IMO that would be overkill and quite likely not be able to provide 165 HZ, or the GPU couldn't actually drive it at full HZ.
ps. check out https://www.sven.de/dpi/ for a simple but nice DPI calculation app.
And how it is relevant to compare to a 32" screen I don't know, because you hardly use that display on your lap.
For you maybe, but I know people that are happy with that and some even find 1080p on 13" too crammed, just different taste and applications... I actually had to help out on a 1366x768 15" laptop recently, that was borderline brutal even for me, I completely forgot how one could notice every pixel as such distinct unit back then.
So, if you're not one of them you simply don't scale 2x and get more screen estate, or naturally check if there's another model that provides 5k+.
> And how it is relevant to compare to a 32" screen I don't know, because you hardly use that display on your lap.
Yeah, I almost never use a laptop on my lap, literally that is, and I really didn't think we're constraint to discuss around that axiom ^^ But I think you're mostly looking after (virtual) pixels to be used, while I might favor a higher PPI even though scaling it would give me lower pixel amount to work with.
You don't have to have it in your lap. But most people, in most cases, where the laptop screen is actually used for anything. Is much closer than you'd have a 32" screen. Especially if you are going to use the laptop keyboard.
Comparing preferred PPI between different types of devices is always pointless, because you don't use them in the same way or from the same distance.
While it might be overkill, I think GPUs would have a fine time with it. Low end laptops have been driving 4k@60hz for many years now! Powering desktop interfaces is much easier than gaming. Finding a 283ppi panel that also does 165hz might be hard though.
Yes, sure and for office work 165 HZ would be overkill anyway, 60 Hz works already OK enough and much more than 90 Hz would be a waste.
But, the post describes that they choose 165 HZ with gaming in mind, and IIRC the 16" Framework will have a slot for a switchable GPUs, and so I think it will be used for gaming too.
2560x1600 is what Apple used to do on a 13.3 MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, at roughly about 226PPI. That is what used to be the standard for Retina on Mac.
At roughly 180PPI. Unless you view it from 19" distance it doesn't quite fit the definition of Retina from Apple. But may be it is the sort of Good enough scenario for many.
Interestingly even ~220PPI should leave plenty of room for Mac usage. But Apple decided to pump it up to ~260 for reason I still haven't quite figure out, nor have I seen anyone on the internet gave any plausible explantation. ( Most likely because no one gives a damn about technical details any more. ). I much rather they drive the 120Hz refresh rate rather than pixel count.
I prefer displays with a resolution where I don't have to do any scaling honestly.
Applications from the "previous era" that are not HighDPI-aware will get scaling... each application pixel will occupy 4 physical pixels.
Why set it to 200%? Because as Steve Jobs has explained, the only resolution that looks good after 100% is 200%. Then 400%. If you set it any in-between scale (such as 150% or 300%) then you will have display artifacts, such as horizontal lines appearing to have different widths when they are all in fact set to 1px.
This is only true with the approach macOS takes. When set to 150% on macOS the app renders at 200% and the compositor downscales. On Windows however there is no downscaling: the app renders directly at 150% thus avoiding any artifacts.
I consider this above average, but not unusually high. For the past couple years the MacBook pro can do a peak of 1000nits HDR (unlockable to do it with apps like lunar for outdoor computing). There has also been the MSI creator 17 that supports 1000 nits brightness, and some HP laptop models that do high brightness though more for their 'sureview' screen security feature
If not, are they open to that? If I wanted to say, make something more "thinkpad" like for people to swap things out, would they openly support me selling this?
TL;DR:
I really wanted an all-AMD laptop (with dGPU) for development and gaming on Linux [0].
So my first purchase was (IIRC) an ASUS ROG Strix G15 [1]. But I really hated the feel of the key caps and their action, so I sold it.
I ended up settling on a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16ACH6H). I'm still bummed about the non-AMD dGPU, but I'm confident I made the right trade-off.
[0] I didn't need an nVidia GPU because I wasn't doing CUDA development. And I've had better luck with AMD's Linux drivers than with nVidia's.
[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-strix-g15-advantage-ed...
Just recently my vscode extensions were all inexplicably failing, and I traced it back to electron messing up, which I discovered only happens when the Nvidia driver is loaded even though I am not even using it for rendering... And this took forever to trace.
I can choose Wayland XOR external displays. I can update any kernel or driver and reboot days later, unless Nvidia's software gets involved.
The Intel GPU also has some issues (random flickering on fullscreen applications for some obscure reason I just can't figure out) but they're much less "how can you possibly have missed this" and more "this seems like an unfortunate edge case".
Wayland compatibility is one of the potential reasons I'd like my next Linux laptop to have an AMD dGPU.
From what I've seen on the Steam Deck, everything just seems to work out of the box.
It basically comes down to the typical reasons people use Linux rather than Windows.
For the sake of world peace, I'm going to leave that debate for another forum :)
If framework announced this laptop before I bought mine, I would probably have waited and stuck with my old junk until it became available.
I'm looking for a laptop, and keyboard quality is also one of my top priorities. One of my criteria is FULL-SIZE ARROW KEYS. I don't know how people use their computers nowadays, but arrow keys are something I use a lot, and I cannot understand why laptop makers decided to make the up and down arrows the smallest keys on the keyboard. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Sadly, the only laptops with full size arrow keys I found are gaming laptops (disqualified because they're heavy, expensive and have bad battery life), some large laptops with a number pad (which I dislike because it makes for an off-center keybaord) and some Thinkpads -- which have something like 3/4-size arrow keys, better than most but not what I would prefer.
If this laptop comes with an optional keyboard with full-size arrow keys, I will probably buy one.
(I also had similar problems when I wanted to buy a regular mouse with three buttons (index, middle, ring finger) plus a wheel. Went through several gaming and ergonomic monstrosities before finding my holy grail -- 3DConnexion CADMouse Wireless. Not affiliated, just a satisfied customer).
If someone reading this knows of a modern ultrabook-format laptop with decent battery life, at least 1920x1200 screen, good Linux compatibility and a keyboard with full size arrow keys, I will be eternally grateful.
"Batch 3 (of older model) Ships July..."
They've been at this for a while, and they're still acting like a Kickstarter.
Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal. That could explain a lot of it. Not to mention the factors you reference, aka antialiasing, smoothing, font rendering, and probably lots more.
> Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual appeal.
That's correct. But here i am not comparing the quality ofthe UI element. I am don't particularly like MACOS design language and prefer windows 11 and ubuntu gnome visual esthetics.
I have a 2012 unibody MBP with a matte screen (the last model before the retina line). That thing looks so much better than my 2021 HP EliteBook it's not even funny. Sure, the HP has higher resolution (1920x1080 vs 1680x1050), but the viewing angles are poor (it's a 14" panel, but there is no single position from which you can see it completely OK, the colors always change when you move the slightest). The blacks are a darkish grey. The reds are actually orange. This wasn't a cheap pc, either. It also has the 8 bit panel. Some SKUs only have dim, 6 bit ones. It cost almost as much as a 14" M1 when my company bought it (it's a work laptop, I would never have bought this crap with my own cash). The only other metric except from resolution by which it beats that 11 yo macbook is that it's very bright, to the point of being actually usable outside if the sun doesn't shine directly on it.
There are many PCs with glossy coating. We also have a different model of elitebooks at work that have those (x360 line). That's an atrocious shitshow. Except for a completely dark room, you'll always see some random reflection instead of the actual screen content. My 2013 retina MBP does better outside than these poor excuses for a panel do inside.
There are PCs that somehow do manage to look decent. A friend's Dell XPS comes to mind, though it doesn't look as good as an MBP. But these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
In my experience Apple stuff looks great and fails spectacularly.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-16-m1-scree...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/please-help-scratched-s...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-m1-13-inch-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/comments/s4i03g/macbook_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/sns4j4/i_scratc...
There's plenty of laptops with better and different screens, including several OLED ones that run at smoother refresh and produce much more vibrant and less eye painful colors. The fact that you haven't seen them isn't a testament of Apple skill, it's just a reflection of you not walking into anything that's not an Apple store.
1. LCD panel grade - panels are graded when they’re manufactured and Apple buys the ‘A’ quality panels while others including manufacturers tend to use a mix of different graded panels or buy the cheaper ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade panels which have uniformity issues and other perceptible defects. Back in the day Dell ultrasharps were famous for the ‘panel lottery’ where you weren’t sure what quality you’d get.
2. Other aspects of panels - There’s a lot of little things that go into making them that can affect quality including polarizers, backlight guides, anti glare, how they’re bonded, etc. Apple does a lot of investment in display tech (they did the first bonded lcds afaik which meant the pixels seemed like they were on top of the glass vs behind) and they doesn't skimp on quality parts.
3. Text rendering - At the software layer I believe Apple renders text a bit differently than Windows, and as of a few years ago killed text antialiasing, tho I’m not up to date on whether that results in qualitative difference vs Windows.
4. Target PPI - All Apple devices are made at target ppis - Mac around 227, iPad 264, iPhone 326 (lcd) - 480 (oled) - all of which correspond to a near equivalent size to our eyes when factoring in target distance from eyes for different form factors (e.g. phones closer, tablet middle, computer farther). Windows & Android devices are all over the place on this, offering tons of different scale factors that may affect.
5. Color correction - supporting ~100% P3 gamut colors on all modern displays along with the software to support it
6. Whole stack software optimization - when you control hw & sw, you can eke out a bit more qualitative improvement. For instance, knowing the panels are of a certain PPI and quality of color repro means you can pick UI colors (various greys etc) with much higher confidence, can create your own custom fonts that look great on them, etc, versus a sort of 'web safe colors' lowest common denominator equivalent you're stuck with on platforms like Win/Android with a lot of variance in device quality.
Basically: you get the best visuals when you control the whole stack and invest in premium everything.
https://community.frame.work/t/converting-framework-13-to-a-...
Judging from the discussion, this project is in the very, very early stages.
https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NYC_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_... https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NY3_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_... https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NY3_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_...
In fact it seems that most every single one of these newer high refresh rate 1440p/1600p laptop panels does, I couldn't find a single pwm one.
I think 2560p is a sweet spot, as 4K is just too hard to drive, and (to my eyes) its usable with minimal scaling.
My biggest concern with the framework 16 is cooling. The modular GPU inevitably excludes the huge, integrated heatsink designs something like a G15 would use.