Help me choose screen size and resolution for my laptop

ratko

Honorable
Oct 17, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hi,
I'm struggled between Acer V3-771G and LENOVO Z500.
They both have Intel Core i5-3230M, 128Gb SSD, similar GPUs GeForce GT 730M 4 GB on Acer and GeForce GT740 2GB on Lenovo, 8GB ram. The main difference is screen size and resolution.

Acer: 17.3" Full HD 1920x1080
Lenovo: 15.6" HD 1366x768

I want to:
- watch movies: you can say take 1080p but I'm pretty sure I won't see any difference on such small screens between 720p and 1080p right? So the quality of picture doesn't matter. Of course it is better to watch movies on 17" than on 15" but am I right about the importance of quality? 1080p is recommended for 40" TVs.

- work: 1366x768 gives too small area to have many windows open but isn't 1920x1080 too big? I mean the websites or the text won't be too small to read?

- some gamining: 1366x768 seems to be better because the GPU isn't able to handle with Full HD. I can of course set lower - non-native resolution on my 1920x1080 screen but will it be blured? I've been searching about this and 50% of people say never play games with lower than native rez, others say that the difference isn't very noticeable. What is true?

I don't care about mobility, carrying 17" isn't a problem, I'm not a weak little girl who can't carry 3-4kg ;)
What to choose?
 

burdenbound

Distinguished
Aug 9, 2011
142
0
18,710
I would only get a 17.3" if it had all the bells and whistles, I just don't see the point in lugging something that large around with very little benefit over a smaller laptop. The 730m is a pretty weak graphics card so neither one is great for gaming. You will get better performance with the smaller resolution but if your going to be doing a lot of work on your laptop I would prefer the 1080 screen.

Lowering the native resolution will make the screen appear blurry so your better off just playing on low settings at that point.
 
I personally would not buy either. 17.3" is simply too big and heavy to carry around. However, if it is simply going to sit on your desk most of the time then that argument won't carry to much weight. I actually prefer 1920x1080 resolution, but on a 15.6" screen. 1366x768 is just too low for my tastes since I do a bit of multitasking so i like to have many Windows / programs open at the same time. The main reason why I am looking for a new laptop is because my current laptop is 1366x768.

To find out if 1920x1080 resolution makes things too small just walk into a computer store and check out a 15.6" and 17.3" to see if the text is too small for your liking.