1600x900 vs 1920x1080 on a 14"

[James Devenberg]

I'm considering a couple of very similar systems (Alienware 14 and Razer Blade), one of the big differences being resolution. The AW14 is full HD and the Blade is 1600x900. Will this be a noticable difference at 14"? I have a 1600x900 18" monitor that looks good to me, but if it will be a big noticable difference, it could be a deciding factor for me.

 

[burdenbound]

I would go with the higher resolution, it gives you the ability to better multitask. Plus games will look a little sharper, it's more strenuous on the gpu during gaming but you don't have to turn AA up as high for the same affect because the pixels are smaller.

 

[Zooshooter]

Is a larger monitor an option? Text on-screen at 1920x1080 may be very difficult to read.

 

[expl0itfinder]

I'm considering a couple of very similar systems (Alienware 14 and Razer Blade), one of the big differences being resolution. The AW14 is full HD and the Blade is 1600x900. Will this be a noticable difference at 14"? I have a 1600x900 18" monitor that looks good to me, but if it will be a big noticable difference, it could be a deciding factor for me.

At 14", I highly doubt there will be any noticeable difference. I would go for 1600x900, because you can buy a less powerful GPU and obtain the same frames as a more expensive one. 1920x1080 will not give a better multitasking experience. Games will not necessarily look sharper, especially not when it is only a 14 inch screen.

 

[James Devenberg]

Is a larger monitor an option? Text on-screen at 1920x1080 may be very difficult to read.

I don't want a giant laptop. If I want a bigger screen, I'll hook up to an external monitor.

I'm considering a couple of very similar systems (Alienware 14 and Razer Blade), one of the big differences being resolution. The AW14 is full HD and the Blade is 1600x900. Will this be a noticable difference at 14"? I have a 1600x900 18" monitor that looks good to me, but if it will be a big noticable difference, it could be a deciding factor for me.

At 14", I highly doubt there will be any noticeable difference. I would go for 1600x900, because you can buy a less powerful GPU and obtain the same frames as a more expensive one. 1920x1080 will not give a better multitasking experience. Games will not necessarily look sharper, especially not when it is only a 14 inch screen.

Th pretty much what I had thought. I didn't think there would be a big difference at this screen size. If we were talking a 17" laptop or a 20"+ monitor, 1080 (or higher) would be the obvious choice but not so much at 14".

 

[MC_K7]

Depends... If you only play games or multimedia, the higher resolution is obviously better. But also requires more resources to display, might affect performance in certain games.

But as others mentioned before, if the laptop is also used to browse the web or do some work, characters will be difficult to read in 1080p on a 14" screen.

If I would buy this for me, I'd pick the 1600 x 900 resolution.

 

[jaguarskx]

1920x1080 resolution on a 14" screen means text might be a bit small for you to read depending on your vision. It would be best to go to a local computer store and look at laptop with 1600x900 and 1920x1080 resolution screens if possible.

In terms of performance, if both have the same graphics card, then the laptop with the 1080p screen will give you less performance because a 1080p screen has 44% more pixels to push than a 900p screen. Simplistically, that means that you will get about 70% the performance compared to 900p.

The advantage with a 1080p screen is that you can always lower the resolution to 900p if you feel that game performance is too low at 1080p or text is too hard to read at 1080p. But text and graphics will not look quite as sharp when using lower resolution.