Who has the best photo editing screen in a 1000USD 17.3 laptop?

No gaming. Photo editing and moderate level CAD. Matte screen. Touch not important.

Candidates so far...

Asus Vivobook 17. Compares well on spec to other 1000USD laptops. Tops the list simply because they are explicit in the display they ship in this class (price range). 72% NTSC 100% sRGB 1080 17.3 inch screen. I'm looking very closely at this laptop.

HP Envy. Hp does not, anywhere that I can determine, specify anything about the screens in their "consumer" level laptops, including the Envy. That's not a chance I'd like to take. Very good color and brightness are high on my priority list for photo editing. Too bad since It's not hard to "configure" some of their models very nicely for the money.

HP Probook. They do list the screen specs. They are not very good by any comparison with other 17 inchers at this price point. Of course, its a business machine and not a "creative, entertainment" laptop. But I very much like the fact that it's a "business" class, better built, at least some degree of military spec, and qualifies for HPs business class level of customer support. But the screen... damn.

Eluktronics. They're really very good with customer response to questions and have very good specs in this price range. Very nice LG screen on the model I looked at. Unfortunately, apples to apples on spec compared to the bigger names they come in a few hundred dollars more per laptop. If they were somewhat less instead of more expensive I'd be quite willing to take a leap of faith with an less well known company.

Acer Aspire. Just about every review I've located finds their screens pretty poor, TN and IPS alike.

A few others. But it's tough going trying to determine what screen manufacturer and reliable specification you're going to get with your 1000 dollar laptop.

Can anyone point me a little further down the road?

thanks

 

I would suggest buying the most 'hardware' (CPU, RAM and Storage ports) you can get in a notebook chassis and also get an external monitor for your more critical work.

May even pay less than $1K for a decent setup...

At the price point you're asking - all options are tradeoffs of one aspect or another in the grand scheme of things.

 

Thank you very much. I neglected to mention that I haven't any desire to own a separate monitor. Because of my work habits I like to be mobile. I'm well acquainted with the compromises and trade offs. I'm hoping that someone else might have similar enough needs to have some insight as to how to track down the manufacturer/origin of screens to the extent that I can shop 17 inch laptops according to who uses a well regarded well reviewed screen.

 

Well if you not looking for the fastest/newest hardware, some of those older mobile workstations HP,Dell,Lenovo (2nd gen i series to 4th gen) have some of the best ips displays, and upgrade ram/cpu/gpu if needed and can be had for well under a 1000$ more like 500$, but there also some premium consumer laptops (thinner) with great lcd's but harder to find info, and upgradablilty.

 

I think your best bet is to buy a laptop for $800 then to upgrade the screen to this panel: AUO B173ZAN01.0 which covers 100% of the sRGB colour gamut and 88% of AdobeRGB. You'd then have to colour calibrate it before you could use it professionally. The panel shouldn't cost more than $100. Bear in mind that the display requires a 40pin connector (eDP 4 lanes) than the standard 30 pin connector (2 lanes).

 

Thank you for the additional info.

At this point then; your $1K budget seems to be limiting you immensely.

In your situation with a firm budget as you seem to have, my main criteria would be local availability of the notebook so that I could evaluate it in person ('overall') before I committed to buying.

Even at $2K the compromises would be immense if accurate color work is required of the platform. Consider including in your budget the cost of a quality screen calibrator (like a Spyder, for example).

 

$2k would be fine, maybe even $1.5K, but $1k compromises will be made. I recommend a M6700 or 8770W with a IPS/Dreamcolour screen and upgrading to a 3920XM and 8950M, should be cheap enough and very decently built