LED backlit displays

[geb]

I just came across an online review that provided three screenshots of a T400 LED backlit display next to a CCFL lenovo display. I was ready to dismiss the 'hype' until I saw this.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.a ... %2D+14%2E1

I, and I think many others, would just LOVE to see a few similarly direct comparisons of the wsxga+ ccfl 15.4 screen and the wxga led 15.4 option posted here.



I am reasonably certain that I want no less than a 15.4 inch display in wsxga+. I need my next laptop for cad work and non-critical photo editing and hope to be able to move about with it (no separate monitor).



I'm stuck in indecisionland now with this talk of LED backlighting. I did read somewhere that the WSXGA+ TFT, w/ CCFL Backlight option for the T500 is very bright and possibly not even distinguishable in brightness and color from the LED backlit screens. I noticed that someone asked of the R500 anticipating a WSXGA+ screen with LED in another forum. No answer as of yet. Is it the case that there just are no 15.4 inch LED backlit screens being manuf now? How can that be? They've been announcing this improvement in the trade publications for years now!



I realize that that anticipation of this sort of thing in terms of real dates is probably verboten among industry insiders. If I'm holding off a decision to purchase based on this, then I'm probably not alone. Maybe it's not in manufacturers marketing interests to let anyone know that it will be available next month? Or is this not the case?



Just what is the status of this stuff?



As a postscript... there are, evidently, 15.4 inch LED backlit screens available (like the wxga option listed for the T500) but I've found that a few other brands offer the same compromise... either LED backlighting in lower resolution, or CCFL in higher resolution. Does anyone know why this is? Is it a matter of consumer demand and marketing or is there some engineering difficulty in matching LED backlight with higher resolutions in a laptop screen?

[ZaZ]

I believe the other notebook in the review is a 15" SXGA+ IPS T60.

[geb]

I'm pretty amazed that there is not more discussion on this. Has everything I mentioned above pretty much been covered elsewhere? I actually do anticipate using my laptop outdoors with some frequency and this would be a great advantage. If there is a more comprehensive look into this elsewhere, with some eyes on experience of both types of screen and hopefully some screen shots, could someone kindy point me there?

[ajkula66]

Well, people were raving over LED-lit displays when X300 first came out, especially for the fact that it offers an interesting size/resolution combo with WXGA+ on a 13.3" widescreen, which is probably one of its strongest points.

If you know what to look for, you'll see how pathetic (although much brighter) that LED-backlit panel is when compared to an IPS display in the review that you've linked. There's a reason author only gave brightness a thumbs-up when comparing the new LCD to a FlexView screen...

Now, let's throw the whole IPS comparison out of the picture and discuss Lenovo's offerings of today...they most certainly could offer LED-lit LCDs in any screen size/resolution combo if they felt that the demand was sufficient, which they obviously don't. Many people are skeptical towards new technologies and will give it a generation of laptops before they actually decide to switch to LED. Some of the other users are looking for ways to max out things that are more important to them, such as CPU/GPU/HDD and are willing to cope with sub-standard TN panels that Lenovo (as well as most of the other manufacturers) drowns us with nowadays...

Having said that, and adding that LED-lit displays on X300 and T400 have failed to impress me, I'd take a LED-lit display over the same CCFL-lit panel any given day...and I can't wait to get my hands on X200T which offers (as an option) LED-lit AFFS screen, which could easily be the best LCD available on any laptop today...but of course the resolution spells mediocrity as in WXGA...

My $0.02 only...

[Troels]

Having taken photos of LCDs myself i must say that what you see if definitely not what you get. You cannot choose a white balance that makes a LED illimunated area look nice compared to a fluorescent light illuminated area - although the differences in real-life is very much that one isn't better than the other.
It is obvious, the photographer set the white mode to that of the LED backlit LCD. If he set it to that of the CCFL lcd, the LED LCD would appear extremely blue in comparison.
Also - cameras are - unlike the eye - much more affected by differences in light intensities, that being said - what appears to be the LG Flexview, is a dimmer flexview.

Personally, i generally wouldn't touch LED with a 10 foot pole yet, until they learn how to diffuse the light properly... if something looks crappy, i't uneven backlighting, which i haven't seen to be as severe on good CCFL displays yet. Also, there are still problems with LED spectrum shifts over time, which means that some LEDs turn more yellow, others turn more blue. When using an assembly of 64 LEDs for example, this will look nasty if it isn't somehow combined/diffused properly. Checkout the Macrumours forums, and search the older threads for "yellowing".

The only people i'd trust to do this properly is Hydis on their AFFS lcds, but they are nearly nowhere to be found, except in the x200t mentioned.

[lparsons1]

I have to say that I am also on the fence due to the lack of a high-res LED backlit display on the T500. My current Thinkpad is a T42 that completely lost it's CCFL backlight after 3 and half years. It had been getting progressively worse for at least a year. Needless to say, I don't want to deal with that in the future. I've heard great things about the MacBook Pro's 15 inch LED backlit display, which, btw, has a decent resolution in between the options on the Thinkpad 500. Darn Apple does make some good design decisions.

Basically, if LEDs are done right, they can be brighter, draw less power, and last longer than CCFLs. I hear the T500 low-res LED is of poor quality, but people seem to like the T400s and the MacBooks LED screens quite a bit. If they just had a higher-res LED on the T500... Maybe I will just have to get that MacBook.

[liteswap]

My T42 is also feeling its age - now almost 4.5 years young but the disk is full, the screen res is too low for me to do what need, the CPU is a tad slow and the graphics are definitely too slow. And the legends are wearing off the keys....and LED/faster WiFi would be very nice too as I move alot of video data around our local area network.

But I've been waiting for an LED backlight on a T500 for ages now - and I'm getting a little fed up waiting. Although I'm a TP addict, Dell can do me a laptop to the spec I want for about £100 cheaper than a T500 without LED: I've been so tempted...help!

[phr]

I don't think the CCFL's in backlit screens usually go dim. Usually it is the dc-dc converter that runs the CCFL. The usual symptom is that the screen goes dim and red. This happened to my 770 after almost 3 years of near-nonstop 24/7 operation. I sent it to ez-serve just before the warranty expired and they fixed it good as new.