Thinkpads Forum

Those of you who own a X200, is the X200 WXGA brightness bright enough to be used comfortably outside under the sun? If not, I would than consider a T400 with a brighter screen (am I wrong with that beleive?)

I believe the X200 is 200 nit.

The X200s will be available in 200-nit (CCFL) and 250-nit (LED) displays.

To be able to reasonably use an LCD outdoors it needs to be at least 300 nit IMO. Even at 300 nit the screen is barely decipherable in daylight and useless in direct sunlight. For extended direct sunlight viewing an LCD needs to be at least 750 nit.

Dell has just released a latitude notebook with 750 nit brightness intended for use outdoors.

I would not recommend a regular consumer grade or business class notebook if you are doing anything other than infrequent and short bouts of outdoor use.

Another (and IMO better) way to get outdoor viewability, other than just boosting the brightness to extreme levels, is using special multi-layer polarizers, kinda like the onle on the X6x Tablet Multiview screen, only better. Some rugged notebooks designed specifically for outside work employ these.

The Fujitsu A6210 offers an optional 450 nit screen which is quite viewable outdoors. That's if you can find a spot that's not in sunlight. It's a glossy screen which has mucho glare.

Thanks all for your suggestions. I will look into those. My outdoor needs are only seldom when it is a beautiful summer day outside and I would work on the patio at home.

An alternative option is to buy a laptop with transreflective LCD such as Toshiba R500. It uses the sunshine as "backlight",ie outdoor you can switch off the backlight and still be able to see the content of the screen. However, I heard the overall quality of this kind of display is not that good.