Dell is putting 1440p battery draining 11.6 inch screens on a convertable laptop and we can't get decently priced 1440p screens? I welcome 1080 as a necessity but 1440p seems totally pointless and maybe even aggravating to most users. The obsession with resolution reveals the lack of vision these people have. It's numbers for their marketing departments. Why do you think Apple went retina in the first place but they don't obsess over ever increasing resolution? It's because their engineers are respected within their organization. Dell is run by their marketing department, clearly.
It's IGZO, so it uses as little as 37% as much power as traditional displays. It probably uses less than what a 720p IPS would use.
Windows 8.1 improves the display scaling in Windows. This is why Dell is waiting until 8.1 to release these, even though we've known about them for months.
I love how you think you know more about how to ship a product than Dell does. You should email Michael Dell and his hardware enablement teams and tell them what you think.
From what I can gather IGZO is just an alternative to silicon for making the transistors in an LCD. That appears to be unrelated to how the liquid crystals themselves are oriented (eg TN, VA, IPS); but in all the mentions in reviews/etc put IGZO as an equivalent type designator to IPS, etc.
My questions are: do IGZO displays need a distinct liquid crystal configuration that makes that usage valid? If yes, what is different about it vs the types used with conventional silicon transistors. If no, which existing type do the currently available displays use and are there any technical reasons why we won't eventually see IGZO replacing Si in all three types in the future?
AFAIK there's nothing stopping IGZO from totally replacing SI in all forms of LCDs, but since the manufacture of IGZO is patented and only licensed to a couple of companies, it makes sense to use it only in the high-end displays with bigger margins -- hence, IPS.
Thanks. That's a reasonable approach now; in a few years when race to the bottom panel lines start making IGZO-TN panels while only mentioning the IGZO part to inflate margins on what's otherwise a 6bit dithering 200:1 contrast ratio failscreen things will be interesting.
Windows 8.1 only improves multi monitor scaling when the screens have differing pixel densities. It doesn't change anything for single screen configurations.
I agree, any resolution beyond 1080 is stupid. One day, when can achieve a resolution boos that actually matters, like 100800, then I'll care. But until then it just feels like I'm being nickel and dimed. Most content doesn't even support 1080p yet and that's been out for almost 20 years. For fuck's sake companies still think they can get away with charging more for "hd" content.
You can't keep everyone happy it seems, always something to complain. I have various displays in use, anywhere from 768p, 900p & 1080p @ 11.6", 1080p @ 17,21, 24" all the way to a 1600p @ 30" that I been gaming on for the past 5 years. I am always a sucker for high resolution screen, and will never complain if the technology is increasing display resolution. if the price/power consumption/weight are too much for you, just buy something else or wait it out for 1 or 2 generations.
Although I agree that 1440p @ 11.6" is overkill for now(and I have better than 20/20 vision), If you really want to save some GPU power, 720p is still square pixel re-scaling. While re-scaled 1080p should look OK too. With the option of 1440p when looking at pictures, 4k content, etc. Backlighting load should be resolution independent for the most part.
Just vote with your money, and count your blessings that technology finally done with 768p.
Why? It's not like you'd be able to play any modern games at decent settings with that resolution. In my opinion, 1920x1200 ought to be the highest resolution offered in laptops with <17" screens to keep performance good while offering more than enough resolution.
+1 Completely agree! I am so tired of seeing super hi-res and 4k 13" laptops, an no 17" laptop with anywhere near the same resolution! I am a developer and need a bigger screen. 2560x1600 would be just fine. Although I wouldn't turn down a 4k 17" laptop either. drool!
I currently use 1920x1200 and despise 1920x1080. Just not enough vertical screen real estate.
I do more than game. CG graphics, for instance. The path-trace engine I use benefits greatly from CUDA, having that, and a great display to view my work would be nothing short of spectacular.
Some game developers have been wise enough to implement subsampling options in their engines, e.g. Guild Wars 2: Meaning, the 3D scene could just be calculated on 1600x900, while the 2D GUI on top of it is rendered on the full 3200x1800 resolution. I figure once more screens like that get around, this kind of dual-resolution engine will become more common for strategy and MMO games.
Jarrod, applications that do not advertise themselves as DPI scaling aware are rendered to an off-screen surface and scaled up on screen by windows 8.1 (and vista and 7 and 8) exactly like OS X
Does this have any negative affect on the battery life if you let Window 8.1 deal with it in this off-screen rendering method as opposed to updating your program to advertise itself properly?
Certainly it does. However Windows uses the desktop windows manager so its not done on your CPU... Its done on your GPU. Again, since Vista.
As far as I know OS X does this on CPU. However the latest version probably moves this to GPU considering how much faster Anand days the UI performance is
I don't claim to know the fine details of Windows' DPI scaling, but given that Windows normally renders windows to off-screen surfaces and then composites them, I would expect the battery impact to be minimal. It just has to upscale some of those surfaces.
I'm actually interested to see how this actually works in practice, as I've had issues with any non-96 dpi setting in Windows for ages. It's not unusable, but it can be irritating -- I remember at least one application where you couldn't click the "Close" button because of messed up scaling. I'll have to try and find that program to see what happens on Windows 8.1, but I've got lots of other stuff keeping me busy so I'll wait for an shipping 8.1 device to arrive rather than trying the 8.1 Preview. :-)
The thing that gets most people is when they use 125% scaling on vista, 7 or 8... It default checks the "use XP style text scaling" box where it DOES NOT off screen render and rescale. Only 150% did that by default. The work around is use "custom scaling" at 125% and uncheck the box yourself. I hope 8.1 changes this bad default behavior.
I've had problems when I've tried to run at 150% for any period of time, application developers don't test nearly as much in that mode and it's not as seamless as the scaling is on OS X. The instance I clearly remember was when Diablo 3 came out, and the mouse cursor would not work while the system was in 150% mode.
That's because OSX is 200% in every setting it allows you to choose. There is no non-integer scaling factor in OSX. Windows has the option(for better and for worse) of going at any value between 100% and 200%, 1 and 2 respectively.
Is it better to run that panel at the native 3200x1800 resolution with 200% scaling, or at the non-native 1600x900 resolution with no scaling ? I'd assume the latter as it's less heavy on the GPU but I'm not sure if image quality/sharpness is equal.
But... this isn't a macbook pro retina competitor, because the XPS 15 doesn't have a regular voltage CPU... :( This is just a supersized ultrabook, which isn't bad by any means, but after you get to a 13 inch, super thin, long battery life, acceptable keybaord, and good quality 1080p panel, everything else after that just feels like extra... I mean, why add a GPU option for the XPS 15 and not have a full voltage quad core CPU?
I assume there was demand from OEMs for them. TIt has 300 mhz higher CPU speeds than the 37W equivalent; but the GPU is still HD4600 at 400-1150mhz. I'm mildly surprised they gave it a different model number though instead of just making it a +10W TDP up option on the 37W version.
It's clear from the price that its a trade off between price and TDP. You can't compare it with the Core i5 4300M though, as the Core i5 4200H is one of the chips for the September refresh. The refresh chips spec quite a bit better so I guess the yields are improving rapidly for Haswell chips.
The 37W alternative is the Core i5 4330M, with 2.8GHz-3.5GHz speeds.
The pricing manufacturers get from Intel would vary massively from their official price list as they get volume discounts. The 4200H would be bottom bin for Intel and likely is priced lower than 37W alternatives like the 4300M/4330M, and for manufacturers that would use want a cheaper CPU on a Laptop with much less worry for thermals it would be a fit for them.
Funny thing is that apple is now thoroughly surpassed by android/windows devices in PPI race apple heavily marketed. Personally I think anything>1080p is silly though.
Why? Smaller pixels also means better non-native resolution quality. Best thing would be infinite PPI, that way we could have any resolution we want look exactly right.
So you want an entire 3200x1800 area of working space on a 13"-15" screen? While that might appeal to you, most users don't want everything on their screens to be tiny. They want sharp text, but medium-sized UI elements. Non-native resolution allows that to happen.
You are confused between UI scaling and resolution scaling. UI scaling is good and that enables usable sized UI elements while making fonts as sharp as possible. Resolution scaling makes EVERYTHING fuzzy, as it just 'simulates' different resolution by upsampling.
I have the Sandy Bridge XPS 15 with a gorgeous 15.6" screen at full HD. You think it's silly to have more, I think not. In fact, I don't give a rats arse to Haswell processor or new nVidia GPU for gaming, but the new screen a great feature that compels me into buying this laptop.
Have you ever seen a 15 incher QHD+ next to a plain full HD with your own eyes? It's night and day. Everything looks sharp and detailed. The screen is almost magnetic, you can't avoid looking at it.
It's pure marketing. MBP has been stuck with VERY low resolution panels (1280*800 for 13" and 1440*900 for 15" and people were happy with that for almost a decade. They STILL sells MBPs with that resolution at higher than $1K. And all of a sudden they release 'retina' MBPs and everyone is crazing for high resolution now.
Of course rMBP looks VERY good compared to low-resolution TN screen of older MBPs (and OSX renders fonts worse than windows as well) but they have marginal difference with 1080p panels, unless you use magnifying glass or stick your nose to the screen.
Oh for crying out loud. We heard this same crap repeatedly when the iPhone4 came out, how the retina display there was unnecessary. How's that worked out in the phone world? Accept the fscking truth --- a double resolution display on a laptop looks gorgeous.
(The same is true of desktop displays, FWIW. a few months ago, for a particular reason, I did a bunch of work that involved working with a late 2012 model 27" iMac and a retina Macbook Pro side by side on a desk, and, although the 27" iMac has a beautiful screen, side by side it was obvious that the rMBP was substantially crisper, and that a double-resolution iMac would be desirable when the GPU can support it.)
Please do some math. 20/20 eyesight can resolve up to 300PPI at the distance of 10 inches. 27" iMac only has 108PPI, so it can be outresolved at the distance of 30 inches by 20/20 eye and 15 inches by 10/10 eye.
On the other hand, 15.6" 1080p has 141PPI, and 20/20 eye cannot outresolve it beyond 21 inches, and 10/10 eyes cannot beyond 10.5 inches. And no one recommends to keep looking at the screen closer than 20 inches. So any higher PPI laptop screen is totally meaningless, just like crazy high fidelity audio files. (Most people even cannot distinguish 128kbps MP3 from wav)
Sorry, but you are wrong. A pixel size that you can almost resolve does no give you a perfect image quality. At the very least, you want any digital sampled system to have twice the sampling frequency of the maximum resolvable analogue resolution. So if you look at a screen from 12 inches with your 20/20 eye, and can resolve ~240DPI, than your screen should show at least 480DPI for a perfect image quality.
For the same reason CDs contain 44 k samples per second, even though nobody can hear frequencies over 22 kHz. Of course that mostly matters if you listen to a good soprano singer with a pleasant voice where that third and fourth harmonic of the high c note are still relevant. If you just wath a movie or play a game and care to hear explosions and footsteps, than anything above 10 k samples should do the trick. And if you connect a cheap audio system with a lousy distortion factor than of course it does not matter how clean the original sound file was.With a good piece of music and a good sound system, I ensure you most people will even be able to distinguish 320kbps MP3 from CD sound.
It's true that Apple has heavily marketed their Retina display, but I don't know what makes you say they started a race.
Isn't a race something competitors continually progress in? Apple's approach is actually more to settle on as few resolutions as possible for as long as possible in order to make the job easier for developers. In iOS's case, that allows developers to use constants for dimensions/positioning/layout constraints, which is easier to work with than relative dimensions if you want to make pretty apps with pixel-perfect positioning and no blurry bitmaps.
I guess Apple people can tell you this a million times and you will not get it. Apple has not been "surpassed" because Apple is not in this race.
Apple sells "We give you the best screen that is currently practical". They don't sell "We give you the highest PPI screen". "Best" screen is a whole complex of things --- resolution, color fidelity, calibration, energy usage, viewing angle, etc etc. Apple can get away with a claim like this because they have a demonstrated pattern of (at the high end) selling screens that are well-balanced in their capabilities. Opponents cannot because they have a demonstrated pattern of pushing one of these dimensions too far beyond balance then advertising the heck out of it, but in the process selling an unbalanced screen.
Apple simply chose EASY way of just doubling the resolution instead of supporting variable PPI for different screens. (They DID try before and flopped, and windows still has that scaling feature and they don't work very well either)
While this is a dell thread, I just wanted to say that I think the Lenovo T440 has it right. 14" 1080p IPS display. That's where I think the sweet spot is for portability, screen real estate, and quality.
I wish all manufacturers would offer this as an option. I don't want a 13" 1440p display, I want a native 1080p (preferrably 1200p, but I'm trying to be realistic) 14" IPS display.
The problem is not of 1080p vs. 1440p. I would always run at DPI scaled resolution anyways. I would use this laptop for coding mostly which means I am staring at text most of the time. So I appreciate sharper text (because of scaled stuff). While 1080p is also nice because of the extra screen real estate. I could settle for 1600x900 (equivalent) with sharper text. Depends on usage scenario. The 15" is really tempting. My choice (when both available) is between this & the Lenovo T440p (specifically the p series) . The lenovo is tempting though for another reason , its user upgradeable which means I can get more RAM ( something useful in my line of coding) for cheap & plug it in myself , same goes for SSD. The insanely large 9+6 cell battery on the T440p is also very tempting.
But you can run a 3200x1800 or 2560x1440 13" display at 1920x1080. Most native Windows apps scale just fine if you disable "Windows XP Style Scaling." Most third party apps will become DPI-aware sooner or later.
This way you can keep the 1920x1080 screen real estate, but still have crystal clear text.
I wont be holding my breath for the better screens. The Inspiron 15 7000 supposedly comes with a "good" screen in the specs list, yet the only way you can buy it right now is with a 1366 x 768.
And what DisplayPort version do these have? Don't just assume 1.2 and expect pass through to work on Dell's own monitors eg the U3013. Apparently the new (Haswell) XPS 12 has only 1.1 despite using Intel chippery that supports 1.2. So no pass thru support. There was a bunfight on Whirlpool about it.
Touchscreens add literally no value to laptops, so I better not get charged for it. Also, Windows 8 nulls out any value you may have had. Hopefully they provide Windows 7 drivers.
what amazed me is that it's hard to find a decent priced laptop with 1080p screen in the first place, so many craptops with 768p only. Who cares about such high useless resolution on 13 inches overpriced panels. There is clearly a lack of middle ground here. OEMs should begin by putting 1080p screen as a standard, that'd be a good start.
ASUS, Acer, Belinea, ChiliGREEN, Dell, HP Compaq, Lenovo, MSI, Medion, Schenker, Sony, Toshiba and Wortmann already offer Full-HD panels on laptops in the 400€ to 800€ price range. Are you missing any specific OEM, or did you just forget to inform yourself?
Resolution is the most important thing for me in an ultrabook. That's the reason I did not buy the new MacBook Air, and that's why I'm currently considering either Yoga 2 Pro, or Ativ Book 9+.
I'm so tired of 1080p (or even less) on 13" screens. I can't wait until 4K arrives.
Looks good but two things kill it. Dell XPS line has had overheating problems on their last two models (I owned the LX 502 and 98 degrees when throttling to 1.2 ghz playing skyrim is unnacceptable). GPU drivers must go through dell so be prepared to spend the lifetime of the device on release (or near- 6mo after introduction) drivers.
This is provably false, as I've used non-Dell drivers for years on XPS laptops. The throttling is definitely a concern, but I'm hoping Dell fixed it this round.
what's wrong with you people that don't want higher resolutions? There are obvious advantages of higher resolutions. I have 4 displays with 2048x1152 res, but will gladly change those for three 1440p monitors. That will be great working environment, more space for programs, information, data to watch. I'm not playing games or watching movies, just plain work. Also such resolution on notebook would make nice addition to that environment. Other advantage is just having clearer picture (well, even better to render at twice the resolution of 1440p and scale back to 1440p).
So what will a new XPS 15 with a 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM (at least it has SO-DIMM's), i7-4702HQ with GT 750M, 91Wh battery and 3200x1800 screen cost?
You have to remind yourself and the audience that the DPI-scaling will work as always which basically means the (graphics-)driver will have to do the scaling instead of Windows (though custom 160% scaling might work well) which will with this resolution probably work best at 1600x900 which pretty much renders it moot. The 1920x1080 screen needs to be really bad in order to warrant the upgrade. The only thing they change this round is that they try to fix DPI-scaling with multiple monitors somewhat and that you don't have to go to the custom tab to choose 200% but 200% is still kinda broken for some stuff. You will probably run stuff like Photoshop at native res with no scaling, at least as long as it isn't properly dpi-aware, good thing you can choose to launch applications in "compatibility mode" that don't apply the (Vista style) DPI-scaling then. Don't expect much for flying spaghetti monsters sake.
Not a fan of the keyboard on that hybrid, nor of leaving keyboards exposed on the back.
I can kind of see theoretically using the duo 12 as a tablet. I'm not sure if it might feel think or a little unwieldy or not, but the mechanism seemed to work shockingly well, and it seemed lablet-y when I've played with it.
Leaving the keyboard exposed on the back makes no sense to me, and you might as well forget the keyboard if it's going to be touch based.
It's neat there are all these experimental solutions again-feel like we haven't seen that since the Palm days, and maybe before that the early portable-computer days. But to me this setup makes less sense than the duo 12, and seemingly what HP does with those split units works really well, or arguably a Surface with a type cover (though that still seems a lot worse than HP's very notebook-like keyboard).
Huh, really like the XPS 13. Small bezels. But I don't want 1366x768 or 1920x1080 in this size, shock horror. I want a totally non-scaled Windows 7 desktop to be perfectly readable. Honestly, that means 1600x900 at 13". I have a laptop with this size and res, and find it to be perfect.
But I'd take 1920x1080 in a pinch. The real problem is the crappy GPUs. Wake me up when they put core i7-4558U in it.
Pricing is out... $2300 for the top of the line model with QHD screen, 512GB SSD, bigger battery, 16GB RAM, i7-4702HQ. Seems too rich for me; hopefully it goes on sale.
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djscrew - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Dell is putting 1440p battery draining 11.6 inch screens on a convertable laptop and we can't get decently priced 1440p screens? I welcome 1080 as a necessity but 1440p seems totally pointless and maybe even aggravating to most users. The obsession with resolution reveals the lack of vision these people have. It's numbers for their marketing departments. Why do you think Apple went retina in the first place but they don't obsess over ever increasing resolution? It's because their engineers are respected within their organization. Dell is run by their marketing department, clearly.Gloomy - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
It's IGZO, so it uses as little as 37% as much power as traditional displays. It probably uses less than what a 720p IPS would use.Windows 8.1 improves the display scaling in Windows. This is why Dell is waiting until 8.1 to release these, even though we've known about them for months.
I love how you think you know more about how to ship a product than Dell does. You should email Michael Dell and his hardware enablement teams and tell them what you think.
DanNeely - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
From what I can gather IGZO is just an alternative to silicon for making the transistors in an LCD. That appears to be unrelated to how the liquid crystals themselves are oriented (eg TN, VA, IPS); but in all the mentions in reviews/etc put IGZO as an equivalent type designator to IPS, etc.My questions are: do IGZO displays need a distinct liquid crystal configuration that makes that usage valid? If yes, what is different about it vs the types used with conventional silicon transistors. If no, which existing type do the currently available displays use and are there any technical reasons why we won't eventually see IGZO replacing Si in all three types in the future?
JlHADJOE - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
IGZO transistors have very low power in their off state, hence the power savings vs traditional SI-based LCDs.https://www.semiconportal.com/en/archive/news/main...
JlHADJOE - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Aw crap I totally misunderstood what you meant.AFAIK there's nothing stopping IGZO from totally replacing SI in all forms of LCDs, but since the manufacture of IGZO is patented and only licensed to a couple of companies, it makes sense to use it only in the high-end displays with bigger margins -- hence, IPS.
DanNeely - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Thanks. That's a reasonable approach now; in a few years when race to the bottom panel lines start making IGZO-TN panels while only mentioning the IGZO part to inflate margins on what's otherwise a 6bit dithering 200:1 contrast ratio failscreen things will be interesting.Gigaplex - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Windows 8.1 only improves multi monitor scaling when the screens have differing pixel densities. It doesn't change anything for single screen configurations.Hrel - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I agree, any resolution beyond 1080 is stupid. One day, when can achieve a resolution boos that actually matters, like 100800, then I'll care. But until then it just feels like I'm being nickel and dimed. Most content doesn't even support 1080p yet and that's been out for almost 20 years. For fuck's sake companies still think they can get away with charging more for "hd" content.surt - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Resolution above 1080 isn't for watching movies. Facepalm!PEJUman - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
You can't keep everyone happy it seems, always something to complain. I have various displays in use, anywhere from 768p, 900p & 1080p @ 11.6", 1080p @ 17,21, 24" all the way to a 1600p @ 30" that I been gaming on for the past 5 years. I am always a sucker for high resolution screen, and will never complain if the technology is increasing display resolution. if the price/power consumption/weight are too much for you, just buy something else or wait it out for 1 or 2 generations.Although I agree that 1440p @ 11.6" is overkill for now(and I have better than 20/20 vision), If you really want to save some GPU power, 720p is still square pixel re-scaling. While re-scaled 1080p should look OK too. With the option of 1440p when looking at pictures, 4k content, etc. Backlighting load should be resolution independent for the most part.
Just vote with your money, and count your blessings that technology finally done with 768p.
speculatrix - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Perhaps Dell will start using panels with self refresh?Zodiark1593 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Still waiting for a GTX 780M and a 3200 x 1800 display. :/Joseph F - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Why? It's not like you'd be able to play any modern games at decent settings with that resolution. In my opinion, 1920x1200 ought to be the highest resolution offered in laptops with <17" screens to keep performance good while offering more than enough resolution.Joseph F - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
For 17" laptops, SLI GTX 780Ms, and 2560x1600 ought to be an option.hrrmph - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
+1prateekprakash - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
+1cptcolo - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
+1 This is exactly what I am waiting forTolga - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
+1 Completely agree! I am so tired of seeing super hi-res and 4k 13" laptops, an no 17" laptop with anywhere near the same resolution! I am a developer and need a bigger screen. 2560x1600 would be just fine. Although I wouldn't turn down a 4k 17" laptop either. drool!I currently use 1920x1200 and despise 1920x1080. Just not enough vertical screen real estate.
Zodiark1593 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I do more than game. CG graphics, for instance. The path-trace engine I use benefits greatly from CUDA, having that, and a great display to view my work would be nothing short of spectacular.Spunjji - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
You could always game at 1600x900 and still enjoy the extra definition for everything else you do..?Hrel - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
nothing runs at that resolution. For professional work that does, autocad, you're going to be using an external display anyway.ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Some game developers have been wise enough to implement subsampling options in their engines, e.g. Guild Wars 2: Meaning, the 3D scene could just be calculated on 1600x900, while the 2D GUI on top of it is rendered on the full 3200x1800 resolution. I figure once more screens like that get around, this kind of dual-resolution engine will become more common for strategy and MMO games.prateekprakash - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
+1skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Jarrod, applications that do not advertise themselves as DPI scaling aware are rendered to an off-screen surface and scaled up on screen by windows 8.1 (and vista and 7 and 8) exactly like OS Xsolipsism - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Does this have any negative affect on the battery life if you let Window 8.1 deal with it in this off-screen rendering method as opposed to updating your program to advertise itself properly?skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Certainly it does. However Windows uses the desktop windows manager so its not done on your CPU... Its done on your GPU. Again, since Vista.As far as I know OS X does this on CPU. However the latest version probably moves this to GPU considering how much faster Anand days the UI performance is
ChaosinaCan - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I don't claim to know the fine details of Windows' DPI scaling, but given that Windows normally renders windows to off-screen surfaces and then composites them, I would expect the battery impact to be minimal. It just has to upscale some of those surfaces.skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Just incase people ask. This is my reference http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/8/0/B8080...JarredWalton - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I'm actually interested to see how this actually works in practice, as I've had issues with any non-96 dpi setting in Windows for ages. It's not unusable, but it can be irritating -- I remember at least one application where you couldn't click the "Close" button because of messed up scaling. I'll have to try and find that program to see what happens on Windows 8.1, but I've got lots of other stuff keeping me busy so I'll wait for an shipping 8.1 device to arrive rather than trying the 8.1 Preview. :-)skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
The thing that gets most people is when they use 125% scaling on vista, 7 or 8... It default checks the "use XP style text scaling" box where it DOES NOT off screen render and rescale. Only 150% did that by default. The work around is use "custom scaling" at 125% and uncheck the box yourself. I hope 8.1 changes this bad default behavior.klagermkii - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I've had problems when I've tried to run at 150% for any period of time, application developers don't test nearly as much in that mode and it's not as seamless as the scaling is on OS X. The instance I clearly remember was when Diablo 3 came out, and the mouse cursor would not work while the system was in 150% mode.ananduser - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
That's because OSX is 200% in every setting it allows you to choose. There is no non-integer scaling factor in OSX. Windows has the option(for better and for worse) of going at any value between 100% and 200%, 1 and 2 respectively.skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Oh and to be clear... I'm buying the XPS 15 or the m3800 for work asap thanks for covering it :)only thing for me that would be better is if they dropped the GPU I don't care about and used a higher spec quad i7 like the 4950HQ or 4900MQ
ananduser - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Is it better to run that panel at the native 3200x1800 resolution with 200% scaling, or at the non-native 1600x900 resolution with no scaling ? I'd assume the latter as it's less heavy on the GPU but I'm not sure if image quality/sharpness is equal.skiboysteve - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
No. The former will be much better for non gaming use. Apps like Firefox are high dpi aware and will look gorgeous.solipsism - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Interesting that Jarred thinks they are IPS — which I don't doubt — but that Dell isn't advertising it.Check101 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
But... this isn't a macbook pro retina competitor, because the XPS 15 doesn't have a regular voltage CPU... :( This is just a supersized ultrabook, which isn't bad by any means, but after you get to a 13 inch, super thin, long battery life, acceptable keybaord, and good quality 1080p panel, everything else after that just feels like extra... I mean, why add a GPU option for the XPS 15 and not have a full voltage quad core CPU?nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
"i5-4200H (2.8-3.4GHz dual-core, 47W TDP, HD Graphics 4600) or the i7-4702HQ (2.2-3.2GHz quad-core, 37W TDP"andykins - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
How come Intel has released 47W dual cores? They've never done that before. Will have good graphics performance for a 20EU part?DanNeely - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I assume there was demand from OEMs for them. TIt has 300 mhz higher CPU speeds than the 37W equivalent; but the GPU is still HD4600 at 400-1150mhz. I'm mildly surprised they gave it a different model number though instead of just making it a +10W TDP up option on the 37W version.IntelUser2000 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
It's clear from the price that its a trade off between price and TDP. You can't compare it with the Core i5 4300M though, as the Core i5 4200H is one of the chips for the September refresh. The refresh chips spec quite a bit better so I guess the yields are improving rapidly for Haswell chips.The 37W alternative is the Core i5 4330M, with 2.8GHz-3.5GHz speeds.
The pricing manufacturers get from Intel would vary massively from their official price list as they get volume discounts. The 4200H would be bottom bin for Intel and likely is priced lower than 37W alternatives like the 4300M/4330M, and for manufacturers that would use want a cheaper CPU on a Laptop with much less worry for thermals it would be a fit for them.
Check101 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Definitely looking forward to the XPS 13, with that form factor and increased battery life, probably going to be my new ultrabook companion!nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Funny thing is that apple is now thoroughly surpassed by android/windows devices in PPI race apple heavily marketed. Personally I think anything>1080p is silly though.Death666Angel - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Why? Smaller pixels also means better non-native resolution quality. Best thing would be infinite PPI, that way we could have any resolution we want look exactly right.nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I don't understand why we need to use non-native resolution at all. That's even worse than using lower-resolution panel at native resolution.stacey94 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
So you want an entire 3200x1800 area of working space on a 13"-15" screen? While that might appeal to you, most users don't want everything on their screens to be tiny. They want sharp text, but medium-sized UI elements. Non-native resolution allows that to happen.nerd1 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
You are confused between UI scaling and resolution scaling. UI scaling is good and that enables usable sized UI elements while making fonts as sharp as possible. Resolution scaling makes EVERYTHING fuzzy, as it just 'simulates' different resolution by upsampling.kmmatney - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Isn't that sort of how a CRT works? Never had any scaling issues with thoseYuLeven - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I have the Sandy Bridge XPS 15 with a gorgeous 15.6" screen at full HD.You think it's silly to have more, I think not. In fact, I don't give a rats arse to Haswell processor or new nVidia GPU for gaming, but the new screen a great feature that compels me into buying this laptop.
Have you ever seen a 15 incher QHD+ next to a plain full HD with your own eyes?
It's night and day. Everything looks sharp and detailed. The screen is almost magnetic, you can't avoid looking at it.
nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I don't agree, it's already hard to see pixels at 15" FHD at normal working distance. And I have many friends with rMBP.DigitalFreak - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Need glasses?nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
It's pure marketing. MBP has been stuck with VERY low resolution panels (1280*800 for 13" and 1440*900 for 15" and people were happy with that for almost a decade. They STILL sells MBPs with that resolution at higher than $1K. And all of a sudden they release 'retina' MBPs and everyone is crazing for high resolution now.Of course rMBP looks VERY good compared to low-resolution TN screen of older MBPs (and OSX renders fonts worse than windows as well) but they have marginal difference with 1080p panels, unless you use magnifying glass or stick your nose to the screen.
name99 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Oh for crying out loud. We heard this same crap repeatedly when the iPhone4 came out, how the retina display there was unnecessary. How's that worked out in the phone world?Accept the fscking truth --- a double resolution display on a laptop looks gorgeous.
(The same is true of desktop displays, FWIW. a few months ago, for a particular reason, I did a bunch of work that involved working with a late 2012 model 27" iMac and a retina Macbook Pro side by side on a desk, and, although the 27" iMac has a beautiful screen, side by side it was obvious that the rMBP was substantially crisper, and that a double-resolution iMac would be desirable when the GPU can support it.)
nerd1 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Please do some math. 20/20 eyesight can resolve up to 300PPI at the distance of 10 inches. 27" iMac only has 108PPI, so it can be outresolved at the distance of 30 inches by 20/20 eye and 15 inches by 10/10 eye.On the other hand, 15.6" 1080p has 141PPI, and 20/20 eye cannot outresolve it beyond 21 inches, and 10/10 eyes cannot beyond 10.5 inches. And no one recommends to keep looking at the screen closer than 20 inches. So any higher PPI laptop screen is totally meaningless, just like crazy high fidelity audio files. (Most people even cannot distinguish 128kbps MP3 from wav)
http://office-ergo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/...
ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Sorry, but you are wrong. A pixel size that you can almost resolve does no give you a perfect image quality. At the very least, you want any digital sampled system to have twice the sampling frequency of the maximum resolvable analogue resolution. So if you look at a screen from 12 inches with your 20/20 eye, and can resolve ~240DPI, than your screen should show at least 480DPI for a perfect image quality.For the same reason CDs contain 44 k samples per second, even though nobody can hear frequencies over 22 kHz. Of course that mostly matters if you listen to a good soprano singer with a pleasant voice where that third and fourth harmonic of the high c note are still relevant. If you just wath a movie or play a game and care to hear explosions and footsteps, than anything above 10 k samples should do the trick. And if you connect a cheap audio system with a lousy distortion factor than of course it does not matter how clean the original sound file was.With a good piece of music and a good sound system, I ensure you most people will even be able to distinguish 320kbps MP3 from CD sound.
p_giguere1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
It's true that Apple has heavily marketed their Retina display, but I don't know what makes you say they started a race.Isn't a race something competitors continually progress in? Apple's approach is actually more to settle on as few resolutions as possible for as long as possible in order to make the job easier for developers. In iOS's case, that allows developers to use constants for dimensions/positioning/layout constraints, which is easier to work with than relative dimensions if you want to make pretty apps with pixel-perfect positioning and no blurry bitmaps.
name99 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
I guess Apple people can tell you this a million times and you will not get it.Apple has not been "surpassed" because Apple is not in this race.
Apple sells "We give you the best screen that is currently practical". They don't sell "We give you the highest PPI screen". "Best" screen is a whole complex of things --- resolution, color fidelity, calibration, energy usage, viewing angle, etc etc.
Apple can get away with a claim like this because they have a demonstrated pattern of (at the high end) selling screens that are well-balanced in their capabilities. Opponents cannot because they have a demonstrated pattern of pushing one of these dimensions too far beyond balance then advertising the heck out of it, but in the process selling an unbalanced screen.
nerd1 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Apple simply chose EASY way of just doubling the resolution instead of supporting variable PPI for different screens. (They DID try before and flopped, and windows still has that scaling feature and they don't work very well either)James5mith - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
While this is a dell thread, I just wanted to say that I think the Lenovo T440 has it right. 14" 1080p IPS display. That's where I think the sweet spot is for portability, screen real estate, and quality.I wish all manufacturers would offer this as an option. I don't want a 13" 1440p display, I want a native 1080p (preferrably 1200p, but I'm trying to be realistic) 14" IPS display.
arnavvdesai - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
The problem is not of 1080p vs. 1440p. I would always run at DPI scaled resolution anyways. I would use this laptop for coding mostly which means I am staring at text most of the time. So I appreciate sharper text (because of scaled stuff). While 1080p is also nice because of the extra screen real estate. I could settle for 1600x900 (equivalent) with sharper text. Depends on usage scenario. The 15" is really tempting. My choice (when both available) is between this & the Lenovo T440p (specifically the p series) . The lenovo is tempting though for another reason , its user upgradeable which means I can get more RAM ( something useful in my line of coding) for cheap & plug it in myself , same goes for SSD. The insanely large 9+6 cell battery on the T440p is also very tempting.GreenThumb - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
Can Anandtech do a review of the 15" high resolution Dell laptop?stacey94 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
But you can run a 3200x1800 or 2560x1440 13" display at 1920x1080. Most native Windows apps scale just fine if you disable "Windows XP Style Scaling." Most third party apps will become DPI-aware sooner or later.This way you can keep the 1920x1080 screen real estate, but still have crystal clear text.
Gunbuster - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I wont be holding my breath for the better screens. The Inspiron 15 7000 supposedly comes with a "good" screen in the specs list, yet the only way you can buy it right now is with a 1366 x 768.NeBlackCat - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
And what DisplayPort version do these have? Don't just assume 1.2 and expect pass through to work on Dell's own monitors eg the U3013. Apparently the new (Haswell) XPS 12 has only 1.1 despite using Intel chippery that supports 1.2. So no pass thru support. There was a bunfight on Whirlpool about it.Hrel - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Touchscreens add literally no value to laptops, so I better not get charged for it. Also, Windows 8 nulls out any value you may have had. Hopefully they provide Windows 7 drivers.kallogan - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
what amazed me is that it's hard to find a decent priced laptop with 1080p screen in the first place, so many craptops with 768p only. Who cares about such high useless resolution on 13 inches overpriced panels. There is clearly a lack of middle ground here. OEMs should begin by putting 1080p screen as a standard, that'd be a good start.nerd1 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
With $700-800 range you can get a laptop with haswell QC and 1080p display.ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
ASUS, Acer, Belinea, ChiliGREEN, Dell, HP Compaq, Lenovo, MSI, Medion, Schenker, Sony, Toshiba and Wortmann already offer Full-HD panels on laptops in the 400€ to 800€ price range. Are you missing any specific OEM, or did you just forget to inform yourself?p1esk - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Resolution is the most important thing for me in an ultrabook.That's the reason I did not buy the new MacBook Air, and that's why I'm currently considering either Yoga 2 Pro, or Ativ Book 9+.
I'm so tired of 1080p (or even less) on 13" screens. I can't wait until 4K arrives.
whyso - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Looks good but two things kill it. Dell XPS line has had overheating problems on their last two models (I owned the LX 502 and 98 degrees when throttling to 1.2 ghz playing skyrim is unnacceptable). GPU drivers must go through dell so be prepared to spend the lifetime of the device on release (or near- 6mo after introduction) drivers.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
"GPU drivers must go through Dell..."This is provably false, as I've used non-Dell drivers for years on XPS laptops. The throttling is definitely a concern, but I'm hoping Dell fixed it this round.
mem8 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
what's wrong with you people that don't want higher resolutions? There are obvious advantages of higher resolutions. I have 4 displays with 2048x1152 res, but will gladly change those for three 1440p monitors. That will be great working environment, more space for programs, information, data to watch. I'm not playing games or watching movies, just plain work. Also such resolution on notebook would make nice addition to that environment. Other advantage is just having clearer picture (well, even better to render at twice the resolution of 1440p and scale back to 1440p).Penti - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
The new XPS'sSo what will a new XPS 15 with a 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM (at least it has SO-DIMM's), i7-4702HQ with GT 750M, 91Wh battery and 3200x1800 screen cost?
You have to remind yourself and the audience that the DPI-scaling will work as always which basically means the (graphics-)driver will have to do the scaling instead of Windows (though custom 160% scaling might work well) which will with this resolution probably work best at 1600x900 which pretty much renders it moot. The 1920x1080 screen needs to be really bad in order to warrant the upgrade. The only thing they change this round is that they try to fix DPI-scaling with multiple monitors somewhat and that you don't have to go to the custom tab to choose 200% but 200% is still kinda broken for some stuff. You will probably run stuff like Photoshop at native res with no scaling, at least as long as it isn't properly dpi-aware, good thing you can choose to launch applications in "compatibility mode" that don't apply the (Vista style) DPI-scaling then. Don't expect much for flying spaghetti monsters sake.
Wolfpup - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Not a fan of the keyboard on that hybrid, nor of leaving keyboards exposed on the back.I can kind of see theoretically using the duo 12 as a tablet. I'm not sure if it might feel think or a little unwieldy or not, but the mechanism seemed to work shockingly well, and it seemed lablet-y when I've played with it.
Leaving the keyboard exposed on the back makes no sense to me, and you might as well forget the keyboard if it's going to be touch based.
It's neat there are all these experimental solutions again-feel like we haven't seen that since the Palm days, and maybe before that the early portable-computer days. But to me this setup makes less sense than the duo 12, and seemingly what HP does with those split units works really well, or arguably a Surface with a type cover (though that still seems a lot worse than HP's very notebook-like keyboard).
ac427 - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
I love high resolution displays but it's a touch screen so isn't glare going to be an issue.Perhaps free Raybans should be given away with touchscreen laptop.
Also someone mentioned that they may as well do away with the keyboard because it is backless. Isn't that a tablet ?
piroroadkill - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Huh, really like the XPS 13. Small bezels. But I don't want 1366x768 or 1920x1080 in this size, shock horror. I want a totally non-scaled Windows 7 desktop to be perfectly readable. Honestly, that means 1600x900 at 13". I have a laptop with this size and res, and find it to be perfect.But I'd take 1920x1080 in a pinch. The real problem is the crappy GPUs. Wake me up when they put core i7-4558U in it.
piroroadkill - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Oh, and I couldn't give a single shit about touchscreens. Take that away and make it matte.ochoseis - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Pricing is out... $2300 for the top of the line model with QHD screen, 512GB SSD, bigger battery, 16GB RAM, i7-4702HQ. Seems too rich for me; hopefully it goes on sale.omaudio - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
When?No deets on Dell site.
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/campaigns/xps-c...
contentsetter - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - link
Great planthis is the first time I am using this application . first time itself it is impressive.
http://contentsetter.com