Thinkpads Forum

I have an IBM-era ThinkPad T42. It has the 14" 1400x1050 screen. The screen has been replaced once, in May 2007 by IBM Australia, under warranty.

The screen has always sucked a little. The colors are not as rich as my Dell 1901FP desktop LCD. On battery power, the brightness is lacking and the visibility in sunlight is nonexistant.

Does your T-series screen suck this badly? Have they improved the screen in the current Lenovo T61 offering? I love my ThinkPad in every way but I don't think I'd buy a new one if it comes with the same screen given the amazing screens that I see on offer at Best Buy and Circuit City.

barak obama,

I wish you could see my T61p screen. Crisp, clear, and bright/brilliant.

There are two sources for the LCDs and my screen is the Philips LG screen. Others say the second source, Samsung, is as good as Philips after adjusting the color, if necessary.

All relative I guess. The matte screen of Lenovo is well known to be better in sunlight or light reflections.

Good luck in your PC pick.

Hillary

No, current notebook display quality went back about 10 years since FlexView displays are no longer available. Everything is just crappy TN panels.

Mr_Mbuna:
there is a setting in BIOS which will enable full backlight brightness when running on battery. If that doesn't help, check power management settings in Windows and ThinkVantage software.

Puppy wrote:Everything is just crappy TN panels.

I haven't seen very many ThinkPad displays, one of the few i've seen is a T61 with a 14.1" Samsung XGA. The screen is bright and contrast is good. I've seen a test of another 14.1" docking capable notebook with a matte 3:4 screen. That screen was even brighter than the ThinkPad screen. Not that i would need a brighter screen than the T61 XGA has now, but a brighter screen would leave more room for diminishing backlight brightness (which comes from backlight aging). Meaning that such a notebook could have a longer life. On the other hand, that other notebook had a loud fan, and if there's one thing i can't stand in a notebook, it's noise. I understand that some want a higher resolution than XGA. I remember one member of this board commenting on his or her T61 sxga+ screen. He or she said it was bright.

mr_mbuna wrote:Does your T-series screen suck this badly? Have they improved the screen in the current Lenovo T61 offering?

I can't speak for T61, but my T60 14" 1400x1050 have the same quality as previous T40p 14" 1400x1050.
Maybe even worse. The light is leaking on the bottom so much that it is like a line of grey. On t40p I think it wasn't that bad.

My next will be flexview T60, but first I have to convince myself to 15"

I had (still have) a T42p 14.1 SXGA+ and have the same size/resolution screen (Samsung) in my recently acquired T61p so I feel qualified to add my two satang here. When I initially received my T61p, after some adjustments and switching color profiles, I was impressed by the brightness and richer more saturated colors as compared to my T42p which had a Hydis display. The whites were whiter and the blacks were blacker on the T61p and the T42p whites looked somewhat yellow by comparison. BUT . . . , imho, text was crisper and sharper on the T42p and this initially was a big disappointment to me. I found that lowering the brightness a bit made the fuzzy text less noticeable. Also I think after a few weeks I adjusted to it because I no longer notice it much and am more or less satisfied with the display.