What resolution for a 14 in screen? 1920x1080 or 1600x900?

I am leaning on getting a 14 inch laptop. It allows configuration of up to 1920x1080 or the standard one that it comes with which is 1600x900.

1920x1080 should be a no brainer usually but keep in mind, this is a 14inch screen. On my 15inch computer right now, 1366x768, the text and icons are comfortable for me so if the screen size decreases and the resolution increases, everything might get too small for my comfort. There are options to manually scale down the resolution but what exactly is the fuzziness that comes with it? and is it fixable?

Pros of 1920x1080
-Large screen real estate
-will allow for easy multitasking/browsers
-super sharp display at 14 inches
-generally 1080p displays are IPS high quality

Cons of 1920x1080
-less battery life
-concerned about the size of icons/text/etc
-if I were to scale down resolution, it wouldn't be as good
-might be more than I need


What do you people think of this? 1920x1080 or 1600x900 on a small 14 inch?

I plan to go to store and play around with the resolution and scaling for me to know for sure.but I would welcome any advice and responses.

 

Well first since we have no details as to which laptop your referring to anything could be said of the laptop. So what make and model are you talking about? And I don't recall seeing or hearing a 14" coming in 1920 or 1600 resolution that is to small. I see those resolution on 16" to 17" lcd only so far. The cost and most likely your viewing on such a small tight resolution wouldn't benefit you visually or productivity on it.

 

I was referring to the lenovo u430 that isn't out yet but is being released soon. That was what I thought, although 1080p does have 30% more pixels than 900p, those extra pixels probably wouldn't be utilized in an efficient way either. The option to scale down resolution with a 1080p display still makes me indecisive on which one to go with.

*added a poll to the thread too

 

Problem will be 14 is such a small screen to make your icon or Metro smaller that would either be a boom or headache to read such small fonts. I think that higher resolution would be more beneficial to 16 to 17 inch lcd.

 

What's wrong with changing the DPI of the text in those icons? Keep the high detail and real estate of the 1080p resolution, and minimize any possible eye strain. Though personally, I have no problem with using 100% DPI (smallest text) on either a 15.6" 1080p display or 12.1" 1050p display, and that's coming from someone with horrible natural vision.

 

Personally I'd go with 1600x900 of those options. I find 1920x1080 on a 15.6" screen is doable, but wouldn't want to go much smaller than that (and I prefer 100% DPI on my screens). Though I'd prefer 1680x1050 over either of those two, as a nice midway point with more vertical pixels but not too dense of a DPI.

 

The 1080p screen on my Clevo 13" is awesome. Having that desktop real estate is priceless. It really isn't that bad. Heck I can switch my screen resolution to 1366x768 or 1600x900 and it still looks great, so you have the best of all worlds. And depending on the screen, it may or may not be worse with battery life. The IPS LCD in my laptop is super bright and can run at 40-50% brightness pretty much to be comfortable and that reduces the power consumption considerably.

 

I'd suggest not buying any higher resolution until you see a notebook in person with said resolution. Even the same resolution you have now on a 14" display will be smaller. It's a number called pixels per inch (PPI; not to be confused with printer DPI).

1600x900 usually ends up being a good middle ground.

 

Thanks for the responses people. As for now I think I will stick with 1600x900 and spend the extra money on i7 processor. That all hinges on how the display will look in store though. Just hoping that Best Buy will carry one of these bad boys.

 

I find 1920x1080 to be comfortable on my 21.5" external displays. On a 14" laptop, 1080p is for sure too small.

 

I have 2560x1600 on my N10 tablet, 1080P on a 14" for me is the way to go. I run text as small as possible on the N10 too, I know it will scale well but I like a lot of info there.........

 

I'm really getting mixed signals here. The comments lean for 900p while the votes favor 1080p.

Has anyone specifically used 900p or 1080p on a 14 inch laptop and can share their experience on it?

 

Using 1080p on a 13" right now. Awesome, excellent, would never consider going lower res.

 

Every ones vision is different and so will be their experience. If for reading you have 20 vision the 1080p at 14" should be fine but may not be comfortable with extended daily use. Then again it could be your preference. Look at it as are you more comfortable with the regular print on the fine print on a document. A good way is get a eye chart and see where you are at. When I go to the optometrist office I usually am most comfortable at reading distance with the 10 but can read the 5 fine.

Your best bet is to try one out. Now if you can't find someone locally BB has a 13.3 in store with 1080P at Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook 13.3" Laptop 4GB Memory 128GB Solid State Drive NP900X3E-A02US - Best Buy so you may want to look at this one in store. If you find without scaling it is comfortable or just a slight tad too tight then 14" 1080P is for you..............

 

The main reason I am hesitant is that I am using 1366x768 on a 15.6 inch screen right now. I set the display setting to 100% since medium at 125% would be too big.

1366 x 768 at 15.6 inch
1920 x 1080 at 14 inch

I'm thinking that by setting the display(1920 x 1080) to Medium - 125% or even Larger - 150% would make text and everything else look decent.
@HTWingNut and @TANWare, what are your settings on 1080p screen, small, medium or large?

http://i.stack.imgur.com/1alrg.jpg

I found this 1920 x 1080p picture, that picture with the text and two windows looks comfortable to me, if thats how 1080p screens are then I can definitely handle the higher resolution.

 

I have used 13" 1080p, and I dont have any problem, its a major pain when i go game in a 16" 768p screen

my dpi settings were 100%, 125% there isnt a major distortion but higher than that some apps wont work well in windows.

I will tell you that one of the great joys of running a VM on my mbp 13 is to have a 1200p res in windows, its just wonderful for coding

 

Personally I always use 100%. My n10 runs auto scaling but I try to run the text as small as possible............

 

1080p @ 13.3" + Sublime Text, aww yeah.

I never understood arguments for lower resolution. Most of things that don't scale you don't need to read more than once (and remember). Browsers, word processors, PDFs, text editors, almost everything will scale text if you ask it to. Except a lot of games.

 

I had the same issue! I run a HP DV6 with 768 all day before. Bought a new machine from Sony Vaio with 900 as of now. It's ok for me as of now to go with 900. Since coming from 768 in which i can read seamlessly, to a 900 where I need still adoption to the new display. Moreover getting a 1080 is fine for multimedia any day but for entire productivity with office in a 14" is a serious issue and a lot of web might strain eyes in navigation all day along in long run! Don't believe that scaling with DPI in Windows 8! It looks weird with some tiles!

At the end of the day you should be happy with your eyes too!

 

I would not, if it can be avoided, scale apps in Win 7 or 8. As far as eye strain, not all of us have issues at 1080P at 14". Every ones vision is different..............

 

For productivity I think larger resolution is better, side by side windows, larger space for windows, just more productive in general. If it's too small for you just scale the screen to 1600x900. With a smaller screen and high PPI you can scale the screen and not notice the difference.

 

If you have a real OS or a semi-functional window-manager , then you want as high resolution as possible.

(Or, you could basically go for lower resolution to increase the text. And work the shutter speed slower to film in slow motion. And have higher octane number to drive faster. And a battery with higher volt to avoid it burning out so fast. And a larger laser-beam to read more data. And a larger gear in the gear-box to go faster. Etc.)

 

I'm running into issues with this right now. Brand new AW14 with a beautiful 1080p IPS panel. 100% is too small for me to read comfortably and scaling 125% causes issues for some apps in Win7. Does Win8 handle scaling any better?

 

Win8 is pretty much the same, but Win8.1 is a little better:

See:
Windows 8.1 and high-PPI displays: Better, but still lacking | Ars Technica