CHOOSING YOUR LAPTOP SCREEN: A BUYER’S GUIDE

The first thing to decide on when choosing a laptop display is not HD vs UHD or even LED vs OLED, but the screen size that you want. A bigger screen is not always better. It’s how you use it that matters most.

A larger screen size of 18”, will provide a beautiful, large display for enhanced immersion — similar to a desktop monitor. These are great for gamers and content creators who plan to use their laptops mostly at home.

Smaller displays, such as 14” screens, make better options for on-the-go gamers. If you travel a lot, you might value portability over a bigger, heavier laptop.

Regardless of what screen size you go with, Razer Blades are some of the thinnest and lightest laptops available for gaming while balancing what matters most to gamers — performance. Go to your local computer shop or Razer Store, to get a feel for the different laptop screen sizes and find one that you’re comfortable with before starting to review laptop display specs.

When it comes to laptop screens for gaming, higher resolution means deeper pixel density and more detailed graphics. Although higher resolutions are generally better, you may not need a gaming laptop with a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) display if FPS is your priority. FHD (1920 x 1080) will give you the fastest speed in-game, while QHD (2560 x 1440) offers a nice balance between speed and beautiful pixels.

Think of it this way when weighing your options between 4K UHD vs QHD vs FHD laptop displays: If you play immersive games or render high-res media frequently, consider going 4K Ultra HD or QHD. If FPS is your sole priority when gaming, FHD is a viable choice.

Thankfully, gamers today can easily enjoy the best of both worlds with Razer’s new screen technology exclusively found in the Razer Blade 16: the world’s first-ever dual-mode display combining UHD+ and FHD+ native resolutions — but more on that later.

Measured in hertz, the refresh rate is the number of times per second that the screen updates itself. Higher refresh rates are better for gaming that requires split second decisions and trigger-timing. Serious gamers should be looking for at least 120Hz when choosing a display.

Response time is the amount of milliseconds (ms) it takes for a pixel to change colors. This is important to have in order to avoid things like ghosting or screen tearing. You want to be looking for laptop displays with response times of 3ms and below to ensure you don’t miss a kill round-after-round.

G-Sync is a technology developed by NVIDIA that limits ghosting and tearing by synchronizing the panel with the video card. Similar to response time and refresh rate, this technology will help you see what’s coming around a corner faster than the other player. AMD has a similar technology called FreeSync.

Color accuracy is crucial, especially if you intend to use your laptop for creative work like photo or video editing. Even for gaming, better color accuracy provides a more enjoyable and immersive entertainment experience. Many developers add intricate details to their games, and if you love experiencing a game's story and cutscenes, you'll appreciate it more so with precise and vivid colors.

Razer measures its color accuracy by a standard known as DCI-P3, which offers an even wider range of colors than sRGB. Basically, you want your colors to be as accurate as possible, so look for a spec of 95% or greater.

Laptop screen brightness is measured in nits and becomes a factor when considering what environment you’ll mostly be using your laptop in. Will you be using it in a dimly-lit setting? If so, brightness may be less of a concern. Will you be using it outdoors or in brightly-lit environments? Then, think carefully about how much brightness you need. Usually, you want a brightness of at least 300 nits for indoor use with average lighting — more is often better, as you can always turn down the brightness whenever you don’t need it.

Note: Certain screen technologies offer greater or dimmer brightness inherent to the technology itself. The differences in brightness with regard to LED vs OLED, LCD, and other displays will be discussed in the following segment.

There are other specs you’ll see when shopping for a display, such as touch-screen capabilities, anti-glare coating, HDR-support, contrast ratio, and even displays that claim to be kinder on your eyes. All of these are great features to have, so take your time when considering what screen works best for you when picking out a gaming laptop.

When looking at screen technologies, you may see some references to LCD and IPS displays. However, LCD screens tend to be thicker and bulkier, making them unsuitable options for laptop displays. Meanwhile, IPS (In-Plane Switching) is simply a subset of LED-based screen technology. In other words, there are essentially only two main competing screen technologies for laptops: LED vs OLED.

LED and OLED displays are great in different areas. LED screens offer greater brightness and incredibly fast refresh rates, while OLED screens produce a greater contrast ratio and more accurate colors. The latter is because IPS panels on LED screens have one light zone in the back that powers all the pixels, whereas OLED screens light each individual pixel and require no backlighting.

While it’s best to go check out the technologies for yourself and see where your personal preferences lie, Razer is excited to announce an exclusive world’s first dual-mode Mini-LED display.

Mini-LED displays offer the best of both worlds: brightness levels not even usually seen in IPS panels (1K nits!), incredible color accuracy (DCI-P3 100%), and super-rich, vibrant, HRD-supported colors you could once only find in OLED screens. The reason mini-LED can achieve all this is due to 1,024 lighting zones powering the display, which allow for greater control of color and deeper blacks between the spaces.

Fundamentally, the dual-mode mini-LED display allows you to switch between two native resolutions and refresh rates: Full HD+ 240Hz to prioritize high frame rates for intensive gaming and UHD+ 120Hz for content creation and immersive games. You get both modes on the same great panel, so you don’t have to choose!