Laptop screens (panel types)

fish99 · 16 Jan 2008 at 03:22

Hi,

My laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li 1818. It has a TN+Film screen with criminally bad viewing angles which ruin the black depth and make it larely useless for either dark scenes in movies or dark games. As an example, if you set the whole screen to black, you get a black bar across the middle third of the screen but on the top and bottom thirds you can see the black fading to grey, even with your head still and the screen tilt adjust set optimally.

What I want to know is can you buy laptops with quality screens, specifically S-IPS, P-MVA or S-PVA panels? It seems screen panel type is never listed in the laptop specs, all you get is reponse time rating - no contrast ratio, no viewing angles, no panel type.

Cheers,
Simon.

fish99 · 16 Jan 2008 at 20:20

Here's a look at what I'm talking about-

You can imagine how that would ruin a dark film or game. There must be some laptops with better screens out there.

Guru · 16 Jan 2008 at 20:57

A laptop I am in the process of repairing has an amazingly nice screen, it's only 15.4" but it's got a native res of 1680x1050 and it looks delish!

I'm not sure how to find out what kind of panel is in it, but I've noticed the viewing angles seem miles better than other laptops I've used.

I'll see if I can find out what the panel is.

G

Spyhop · 16 Jan 2008 at 21:16

That's a right state - I'd try and return it as faulty

beermonster · 16 Jan 2008 at 22:55

you find this on a lot of the cheap models from acer fuji toshiba etc, higher up the scale they tend to be much better, best is to try and physically look at one in the high street as manufacturers tend to not give any details on tft type fitted

fish99 · 17 Jan 2008 at 14:48

I'm not too fussed about the problem on my Fujitsu, it was cheap afterall and I only bought it for web/e-mail really which it does fine. The screen is pretty decent when there's anything bright and colourful on screen, like apps, wallpaper, web etc. What you can see in that picture isn't actually backlight bleed (aka clouding) btw, it's just the limited viewing angles, so it's not like I could get a better example by getting it swapped out. If I tilt it back then the bright glow at the bottom dissappears (which doesn't happen with backlght bleed), but the one at the top gets worse.

However I'm thinking of getting a gaming laptop in the future, but another screen like this would be a real deal breaker for me. It's not just a TN, it's a bad TN. It's good to know there are some better screens out there. Also good advice about trying them out in person. Thanks.