'They often have to make the choice as to what the consumer would want (or the business) and a down-res screen is an easier sell (and takes out more costs to hit a pricepoint) than a shift in processor, or RAM, or sometimes even weight or thickness,' Baker told me. NPD Analyst Stephen Baker says that 1366 x 768 displays are so common, because manufacturers want to save money. In 2015, 78 percent of business systems had low-res screens so that number dropped by 27 percent in just two years. A full 80 percent of Chromebooks sold in 20 x 768 displays.īelieve it or not, even though two-thirds of consumer laptops still have crappy screens, that percentage has dropped from 72 percent in 2016 and 84 percent in 2015. In 2017, 66 percent of all consumer notebooks had low-res screens while 51-percent of business systems were less than full HD. According to NPD, in 2012, 82 percent of all laptops sold had low-res displays. Slow Progressīack in 2012, I wrote a column entitled 'Note to Notebook Makers: 1366 is a joke,' and sadly, today, we're still hearing the same stale punchline. Only when you can compose an email in one window while looking at Web page in the other can you truly multitask. However, with 1920 pixels, you have just enough space to stack two windows side-by-side (2048 or 2560 would be even better). With only 1366 pixels of space, you can't fit two full-size applications on the screen at once, without scrolling horizontally or having them overlap each other. Most applications and Web pages need around 1,000 pixels of horizontal space to show their content.

So, if you're going to get a laptop with a low-res screen, you better start practicing your two-finger swipes.

Looking at the New York Times home page at both resolutions, the 1920 x 1080 screen has 10 more lines of text on it.

On some online articles, you can't even see past the headline on a low-res screen. Even worse, a 1366 x 768 display doesn't provide enough screen real estate for reading Web pages, editing documents or multitasking.

Vdmx looks low res in full screen