Thinkpads Forum

I currently own a T61p and truly appreciate its Samsung WUXGA LCD. The trouble is, the only way to take full advantage of it (make things large enough to see) is to enable display scaling, which Microsoft only recently figured out how to do semi-properly in Windows 8.1 and 10. After having run it for almost an entire year, I love the scaling, but there are other aspects of Windows 10 that are seriously starting to get on my nerves, and I'm beginning to think that (as nice as the scaling is) it just isn't worth the hassle, so I thought of upgrading to a machine with a lower density screen (as unusual as that sounds).

My question is this - are the WSXGA+ (1680x1050) panels that they put in the W500 any good? I know that the datasheet cites lower light output, but are any of them at least as bright and as white as the Samsung WUXGA screens that they used in the T61p? What are the chances of getting a good one? Or are all of them crummy and yellow?

It is said that the WSXGA+ panels are the best you can put into a 15.4" Thinkpad. They also tend to be brighter than the WUXGAs. LG displays are favored over Samsung displays for being brighter, maybe having slightly better viewing angles, and having better colors.

From the Thinkwiki page http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/TFT_display you'd want to get one of these WSXGA+:

Samsung: LTN154P2-L05 (from T500,W500,R500) FRU 42X4641, 42T0329
Samsung: LTN154P3-L02 (from T61p) FRU 42T0488

LG Philips: LP154W02-TL10 FRU 13N7020 42T0423

I'd try and get the LG Philips out of the above, but either of the Samsung WSXGA+ should be brighter than the Samsung WUXGA you're already fine with.

Beautiful (AND better!) WUXGA screens are also available from Sharp, models lq154m1lw2a and lq154m1lw02, as used in several Dells.
You'll need to carefully cut off some clips first, but other than that it's a drop-in.

Dell ultrasharp D830 WUXGA displays (superior to any of the 15.4" ones found in Thinkpads) can be put into your T61p, but I wonder if their 15.4" WSXGA+ ultrasharp screen can also do the same. This would give better picture than the LG display. However, it may be a tad bit dimmer.

When looking at used W500 laptops, is there any way to tell what kind of panel it has? I remember Lenovo used to have some kind of magical engine into which one could specify a machine type and get specific information about what kind of stuff was inside (more detailed than the kprelay lookup). Do they still have that someplace or did they do away with it as part of their increasingly-lousy decision making?

SurrealMustard wrote:When looking at used W500 laptops, is there any way to tell what kind of panel it has? I remember Lenovo used to have some kind of magical engine into which one could specify a machine type and get specific information about what kind of stuff was inside (more detailed than the kprelay lookup). Do they still have that someplace or did they do away with it as part of their increasingly-lousy decision making?

Yes, see here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=115772

brchan wrote:
Yes, see here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=115772

Thanks. That looks like it provides mostly the same information as the kprelay site did, but this one is a good backup in case the former goes down (as it currently is right now).

That said, as far as LCD panels that were installed in the W500 from the factory are concerned, are there any real stinkers to watch out for? I ask because I was working on a few Dell Precision M6400 laptops over the summer, (very nice 17" machines) and while most of them had excellent LG panels, one had an AU Optronics screen that was dimmer and quite yellow.

Try this one instead: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/partslookup
Preferably on IE or similar, and enter the SN without -