Laptop question: 4K panel worth it?

[woodyggg]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

 

[CAcreeks]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

Unless you have old low DPI software, the only downside is increased power consumption.

 

[Simon Garrett]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

Unless you have old low DPI software, the only downside is increased power consumption.

I have a 4K 15 inch screen, and pleased I have. However, quite a bit of software is not DPI-aware, and some that is in theory DPI-aware but doesn't necessarily scale well on high-DPI screens.

However, Windows makes a fairly good attempt at scaling non-DPI-aware software. In most cases the worst that happen is that text is a bit fuzzy.

 

[Austinian]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

Some of the FHD laptop panels are quite limited in their color gamut, but the 4K/UHD panels I've seen are usually much better. And high-dpi text is visually superior IMO.

 

[XiaoDeer]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I see little point going 4K on screens smaller than 24 inches. And any apps that are not built for hi-dpi will be a PITA even on much larger screens.

 

[tkbslc]

Laptop screens are too small to benefit greatly from 4K. You really can't see the pixels on a 15" screen past about 1440p, even leaning in close. 1080p looks really nice, too, with only a tiny difference moving up to 1440p.

So I wouldn't make it a priority. Certainly do not skimp on other features to get a 4K screen. I would be more worried about viewing angle and color accuracy if this is to be used for photography software.

 

[Simon Garrett]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

Some of the FHD laptop panels are quite limited in their color gamut, but the 4K/UHD panels I've seen are usually much better. And high-dpi text is visually superior IMO.

Definitely! A 4K laptop will have pixels too small for most people to see, and doesn't add a huge amount to viewing images, but text (in my experience) is noticeably clearer and better formed, as there are more pixels per character.

I don't know about laptops in general, but the 4K screens used in Dell XPS 15s for the last 3 years have been good contrast and wide gamut (approx Adobe RGB), compared to around sRGB for the FHDs

 

[CAcreeks]

Some of the FHD laptop panels are quite limited in their color gamut, but the 4K/UHD panels I've seen are usually much better. And high-dpi text is visually superior IMO.

Definitely! A 4K laptop will have pixels too small for most people to see, and doesn't add a huge amount to viewing images, but text (in my experience) is noticeably clearer and better formed, as there are more pixels per character.

I don't know how Photoshop does it, but with GIMP and Darktable you get actual 1:1 pixels, as opposed to 1:2 (200%) as in web browsers. So you can see more of your camera's image (actual pixels) at once. This is a great boon for photo editing in my opinion.

I don't know about laptops in general, but the 4K screens used in Dell XPS 15s for the last 3 years have been good contrast and wide gamut (approx Adobe RGB), compared to around sRGB for the FHDs.

Yes, it is difficult to get a good FHD screen on a laptop. You probably have to buy one separately and install it yourself.

 

[Simon Garrett]

Laptop screens are too small to benefit greatly from 4K. You really can't see the pixels on a 15" screen past about 1440p, even leaning in close.

Yes, but even so text is noticeably sharper on a 4K screen even at 15 inch. Compare text at 96dpi (the original standard screen resolution) with 284dpi.




96dpi. Ignore the artefacts from upscaling a screen grab.




284dpi, which you get on a 4K 15 inch screen

Notice the better formed characters on the higher dpi screen. See the better formed serifs on the descenders.

These samples are enlarged from about 11 point (as I recall), to show the extra detail in character formation, but even at normal reading size the characters are more readable.

1080p looks really nice, too, with only a tiny difference moving up to 1440p.

So I wouldn't make it a priority. Certainly do not skimp on other features to get a 4K screen. I would be more worried about viewing angle and color accuracy if this is to be used for photography software.

As Austinian said, the 4K screens used in laptops may also have better colour than FHD screens.

--
Simon

 

[rb0321]

All good considerations mentioned so far. Another option would be a 2K or QHD screen, which is roughly what my HP x360 has ---> 3200x1800. Mine's not 100% aRGB but is 99% sRGB, which is all I care about. Text also looks as smooth as 4K as far as I can tell. Plus there's not as big a hit on battery life.

 

[BillyBobSenna]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

I have owned a Dell XPS 13 4K for a couple months and could not be happier. The primary purpose of the laptop is high speed photo editing while on assignment. I mainly use Photo Mechanic, Lightroom Classic CC, and photoshop. I have no issues with scaling.

I have only compared the screen with my Surface Pro 4. Both screens are beautiful.

 

[robertfel]

If so, get it. If it's a good one, not some TN gaming panel.

I've had clients comment on how good their images look on my Dell XPS 15 4k screen.

 

[CBR1100XX]

I have one, though I have it at 1080P a lot of the time since Lightroom runs a lot faster in preview generation and culling. With 4k it's a long, long time to get a big shoot ready to go (1000+ images) and will lag if I try to go through them quickly. And this is on a system with an i7-7700HQ, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1050Ti, and NVME drive for the photos.

When doing the edits in the Develop module of lightroom performance is fine (I edit with smart previews) but the UI can be harder to use especially with things like curves.

Photoshop works perfectly at 4k though. And it's nice to have but not game changing.

Honestly if you can find a color accurate 1080P IPS display that's bright enough go for that. The issue is in a lot of cases at least when I was shopping for my laptop the 1080P screens were lacking in all those aspects on the models I was interested in so the choice for a 4k one was easy.

 

[tkbslc]

Laptop screens are too small to benefit greatly from 4K. You really can't see the pixels on a 15" screen past about 1440p, even leaning in close.

Yes, but even so text is noticeably sharper on a 4K screen even at 15 inch. Compare text at 96dpi (the original standard screen resolution) with 284dpi.

96dpi. Ignore the artefacts from upscaling a screen grab.


284dpi, which you get on a 4K 15 inch screen

Notice the better formed characters on the higher dpi screen. See the better formed serifs on the descenders.

These samples are enlarged from about 11 point (as I recall), to show the extra detail in character formation, but even at normal reading size the characters are more readable.

1080p on a 15.6" screen is 141 DPI

1080p on a 14" screen is 157 DPI

You wouldn't be at 96DPI until 23" screen which is so much bigger than any laptop.

1080p looks really nice, too, with only a tiny difference moving up to 1440p.

So I wouldn't make it a priority. Certainly do not skimp on other features to get a 4K screen. I would be more worried about viewing angle and color accuracy if this is to be used for photography software.

As Austinian said, the 4K screens used in laptops may also have better colour than FHD screens.

That's definitely not a fixed rule, so definitely check each specific panel.

 

[woodyggg]

If so, get it. If it's a good one, not some TN gaming panel.

I've had clients comment on how good their images look on my Dell XPS 15 4k screen.

Yes I do shoot professionally.

I understand the ips/tn - color gamut (sRGB aRGB) issues - what I am asking is if 4K is really worth it for the extra cost. Yes, I'll probably get it - better to have it and not need it than the alternative - but just wondering pros and cons. I can see from this thread that there's a lot of disagreement in this area.

Asking what's the real pros/cons - the benefits and drawbacks.

Slower processing in LR was named. I do use LR (a lot) - and PS, along with DXO, ON1, etc.

Thanks for the help!

 

[svOwl]

Following the advice in this video solved the "slow" problem with UHD and LR for me:

 

[tokumeino]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

I've bought a laptop 2 months ago. 100% RGB was a strict prerequisite and provided this constraint among others, I actually didn't have alternatives than an UHD screen. Such screens take an obvious bid on power consumption, and you'll need more horse power to drive it. But provided most FHD laptop screens cover a very small gammut, what choice do we have, anyway ?

 

[Simon Garrett]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

I've bought a laptop 2 months ago. 100% RGB was a strict prerequisite and provided this constraint among others, I actually didn't have alternatives than an UHD screen. Such screens take an obvious bid on power consumption, and you'll need more horse power to drive it. But provided most FHD laptop screens cover a very small gammut, what choice do we have, anyway ?

All monitors are RGB. Do you mean Adobe RGB colour space?

--
Simon

 

[tokumeino]

I realize this is a - 'is it worth it to me for the price increase' question - and only we can answer that question for ourself...

I'm about to purchase a laptop - the only reason I'm upgrading from my previous laptop is for photo editing. My current plan is an i7, ssd, 16+ gig, etc... I have that part down. My real question is, how much will I benefit from having a 4K panel? What will the real benefits be? I do a fair amount of pixel peeping - will that matter? Seems like it will. I love my 4K panel at home, glad I upgrade - I'm just weighing the upgrade at this point - whether or not I should spend the money. Thanks!

I've bought a laptop 2 months ago. 100% RGB was a strict prerequisite and provided this constraint among others, I actually didn't have alternatives than an UHD screen. Such screens take an obvious bid on power consumption, and you'll need more horse power to drive it. But provided most FHD laptop screens cover a very small gammut, what choice do we have, anyway ?

All monitors are RGB. Do you mean Adobe RGB colour space?

Monitors are not RGB or Adobe RGB : they are able to display a finite number of colors. The question is : what percentage of sRGB and AdobeRGB can they display ? The Adobe is wider so a display rated 100% sRGB will often be like 70% AdobeRGB or such. Reviewers like https://www.notebookcheck.net do test such things.

Most FHD displays (not only TNs) are far below 100% sRGB and won't be able to get properly calibrated to display accurate colors.

 

[tokumeino]

Laptop screens are too small to benefit greatly from 4K. You really can't see the pixels on a 15" screen past about 1440p, even leaning in close. 1080p looks really nice, too, with only a tiny difference moving up to 1440p.

So I wouldn't make it a priority. Certainly do not skimp on other features to get a 4K screen. I would be more worried about viewing angle and color accuracy if this is to be used for photography software.

I agree : 1440p is the sweet spot for laptops but unfortunately, there are not so many on the market, especially if you want to cover at least 100% sRGB. So in practice, provided the actual market, you often have to choose between a low color accuracy FHD, and a UHD if color accuracy matters. It's very unfortunate but as a recent laptop buyier, I had to deal with this issue, and bought UHD.