Notebook Computer Screens

One of the most important parts you use to interact with your notebook computer is the screen, you can now find notebooks with screens that have wide viewing angles, very high resolutions, wide aspect ratio such as 16:10 or 16:9, and brightness rivaling desktop LCD displays.

Notebook screens have a fixed amount of pixels which is the native resolution and what they function best at, higher resolutions give a larger desktop area which will let you see more of your workspace on screen at once. UXGA or other high resolutions are available on some 14 inch screens but the text will appear tiny and barely readable to many people so it is recommended to choose larger screens if you want higher resolutions.

Aspect ratio describes the shape of the screen where 4:3 is the standard box like shape and 16:9 or 16:10 would be wide screen.

Term Used	Native Resolution	Aspect Ratio
SVGA	800x600	4:3
XGA	1024x768	4:3
SXGA	1280x1024	5:4
SXGA+	1400x1050	4:3
UXGA	1600x1200	4:3
WXGA	1280x720 or 1280x800	16:9 or 16:10
WXGA+	1440x900	16:10
WSXGA+	1680x1050	16:10
WUXGA	1920x1200	16:10

You can use lower resolutions than the native resolution but may have issues such as blurriness or fuzzy text and distortion where pictures or games may look wider than they're supposed to be.

You can choose not to stretch the lower resolution to fit the screen by turning off ratiometric scaling in the bios or by a function key or key combo (check manual) or in windows advanced display properties (anything that refers to scaling the image to panel size). When you turn this off you will notice black bars around the edges of the visible area of the lower resolution.

Other Common Notebook Screen Terminology

TFT - Thin Film Transistor, underlying technology of active matrix LCD screens. The standard for bright and colorful notebook screens.

Xbrite - name for bright screen LCD technology used by Sony.

CASV - name for bright screen LCD technology used by Toshiba.

UltraSharp - name for bright screen LCD technology used by Dell.