Best laptop for image-viewing?

[lindsey10]

Hi everyone,

 

Pretty basic question. I'm a year into my PhD, but I am shopping for a new laptop right now. I was using a 7 year-old Dell laptop from undergrad, but it is no longer meeting my needs. I am in art history, so I don't really need a top-notch processor or the ability to run fancy software, but the screen quality should be as great as possible. I'm looking at images all day, so the clearer the better. I am also reading a lot of digitized books, which are usually 200-250 years old and full of engravings. My poor netbook, which I've been relying on, can't handle these books.

 

Can anyone recommend a laptop that might fit this criteria? Price is of course a consideration but I want to gather some candidates and price them from there.

 

Thanks!

[Between Fields]

Well, basically any laptop with a 1080p screen is going to work well for you. Test a few out to see if you like glossy or matte better--if you work outside a lot or in a sunny room, matte is a better choice. 4K is the new thing, but very few laptops have it yet, and those are mostly gaming laptops.

 

I just got a Macbook Pro with Retina Display, which has a much higher pixel density than most laptop screens. The idea is that the pixel density of the screen approaches the human eye's threshold for seeing pixels, i.e. they're so closely packed that you couldn't see a pixel at all ever with normal vision at the normal viewing range. The resolution's also a little bit higher. But the price point on these machines is also higher. The retina display is also only glossy, now, so keep that in mind.

[victorydance]

Yeah, any laptop with 1080p is going to be virtually the same.

[GeoDUDE!]

Yeah, any laptop with 1080p is going to be virtually the same.

 

Actually, its important to get an IPS display vs a TN panel: IPS displays maintain color accuracy and vibrance longer than TN panels, and have better viewing angles. TN panels are generally used in cheaper monitors (or, on the other spectrum, fast refreshing gaming monitors):

 

[juilletmercredi]

 I use a Mac and am a devoted Mac user, so my suggestion is the Retina display MacBooks - but any high-definition laptop screen will work.  I think most mid-range monitors these days are IPS as opposed to TN.

 

I also don't know very much about this but the graphics card might also be a concern for rendering those engravings?  But I don't know; you'd want to ask someone who knows about it.  You could do a Google search about it (but don't ask the sales associates at Best Buy, because in my experience most of them will simply try to upsell you rather than impart any interesting information).

 

As a side note, you may want to consider getting a Retina screen iPad + an inexpensive desktop with a monitor, or at the very least purchasing a monitor and external keyboard + mouse to go along with your laptop.  Working on a desktop monitor is way way way better than working on a small laptop screen.