News I'll never buy a 4K laptop and you shouldn't either — here's why

[admin]

4K screens are more and more common on laptops, but is paying extra for pixels you can barely see worth it?

I'll never buy a 4K laptop and you shouldn't either — here's why : Read more

 

[tomsyoungerbrother]

But what about screencasting? It's my understanding if I use HDMI to HDMI smart TV the picture quality maxes out at the laptop screen quality, so I would want the 4K on the laptop inorder to have a 4K picture on the TV. Correct?

 

[User_2412]

I’m sorry but this article misses the point of 4K screens altogether. Going by the logic of the author, sports cars don’t make sense either because speed limits exist. Yet the handling of an 911 is leagues better than an average sedan at the same speed.

Similarly, the point of 4K isn’t to make text smaller. It’s to simply make the same text crisper. The 300% is not 100% is an unfortunate outcome of the laptop manufacturer factory settings. If phone screens were running at “100%” the text on that too would be terribly small for most people. 4k is not “make text small”. It’s “make everything sharper”. A laptop screen at 13”, 4K, has a lesser ppi than an average iPhone. It’s a software configuration issue.

 

[Question Authority]

Your first mistake was going with a 13" laptop and 4K. I'd never have done that. I DO, however, have a 15.6" Dell with touch 4K and, as a commercial photographer, when combined with AdobeRGB, I'd never go back to FHD. Why, you may ask? No jaggies when enlarging a photo to 200, 300, or even 400%. Clients sometimes want to see the details on a garment or product I'm shooting, making sure they can see everything. 4K also offers finer gradation and movies in the hotel room after the shoot really pop. FHD screens are plain ugly beyond 100%. So, 4K is definitely worth it, but only if you choose a larger screen; 13" is barely beyond tablet territory.

 

[lanceward410]

I agree, the price for squinting has earned itself an expensive price tag. However, majority of the time, I work with 4+ windows open at a time, and this is fine and dandy when I am at my desk with my dual monitor setup. When I'm on the go though, the only times I'm using my laptop, my 1080p screen greatly limits my ability to view 4 containers simultaneously, and I prefer the 4k laptops for that. It's more screen real estate for the price of squinting sometimes, but personally I have a huge appetite for screen real estate.

That aside, I mostly agree - for gaming, don't need 4K. For youtube/movies, don't need 4K. It's kinda nice to be able to hook into a 4K TV, but I frankly, I never end up doing such things anymore.