Thinkpads Forum

Hi.

I'm about to order a T470, but need to know the difference in quality and other diffrences between the touch and non-touch versions.

a) Is there any quality difference in terms of
a1) Luminosity?
a2) Color accuracy?
a3) Other (clarity, ...)?

b) Is there a difference in how matte/reflective they are?

c) Is there a frame around the screen the same way on both? On the T450's, the touch version meant that the whole area - including the frame - was covered by the front screen layer, essentially preventing the use of 3M privacy screen.

d) Any other things I should be aware of before making the decision?

Background: I think it would be nice to have touch, but not if it has a too high cost on other parameters. The use of the ThinkPad is primarily business (MS Office, Web), but will also be used as the PC with me in the field when taking photos, offloading the photos from DSLR SSD (real image processing will be done back home docked with proper external monitors).

Thanks for any input

Brgds,

Niels (Denmark)

Welcome to the forum.

Here's a T470 (non-touch) review, with all the LCD-info you need: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Th ... 130.0.html
Not so enthusiastic about T470: https://www.notebookchat.com/index.php?topic=64679.0
Seems that the T470 is not really up to date...

A touch version increases the weight and has a more shiny/glossy screen, which is a magnet for (dirty) fingerprints.

Personally I won't go near any touch-screen laptop.
IMHO touch should only be used on a tablet, not on a laptop. YMMV.

Touch screen LCD panel is slightly thicker/heavier, and draws slightly more power from your battery, hence slightly less battery life. And a magnet for fingerprints as RealBlackStuff said.

I once had a smartphone facing me, and I said, how can I see the smartphone screen with fluorescent tube glare from the ceiling showing through?
It was then that I realized that my Thinkpad LCD matt screen was also tilted the *exact* same angle towards the ceiling, and there was no glare on my matt screen (so that I can continue to work with no distractions)!
ymmv.

NiA wrote:Background: I think it would be nice to have touch, but not if it has a too high cost on other parameters. The use of the ThinkPad is primarily business (MS Office, Web)...

It is indeed nice to have touch. Different input interfaces excel in different circumstances. Once you have learned when to use the touchscreen, or trackpoint, or touchpad, or external mouse, or keyboard shortcuts, you will find that productivity increases. Another benefit of using multiple interfaces is that it helps avoid repetitive strain injury.

Even on my desktop at work, I use not just an external mouse and keyboard, but also a touchpad and a touchscreen monitor.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Welcome to the forum.
Here's a T470 (non-touch) review, with all the LCD-info you need: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Th ... 130.0.html
Not so enthusiastic about T470: https://www.notebookchat.com/index.php?topic=64679.0
Seems that the T470 is not really up to date...
A touch version increases the weight and has a more shiny/glossy screen, which is a magnet for (dirty) fingerprints.

Thanks - have been reading quite a bit here over the years though And thank you for taking time to respond.

Good links - I actually did read the review linked. It does not however give any hints to the touch-screen. In the discussion forum, there is some guessing/assumptions in how someone believes the [normal] screen you receive will be random quality. Seems more like a mostly unfounded rant from someone who apparently don't get all the features he really wished for...

Not too fussed about a bit of extra weight from the touch screen, but very much so in terms of the ergonomics. So that they are still significantly more reflective - I understand that it's something between the normal matte and a glossy screen (like the T450?) is a great concern. That also goes to the "fingerprint magnet" issue, which is also very dependent on the display front material structure. Again, if it's like the T450 it's certainly an issue.

pianowizard wrote:

NiA wrote:Background: I think it would be nice to have touch, but not if it has a too high cost on other parameters. The use of the ThinkPad is primarily business (MS Office, Web)...

It is indeed nice to have touch. Different input interfaces excel in different circumstances. Once you have learned when to use the touchscreen, or trackpoint, or touchpad, or external mouse, or keyboard shortcuts, you will find that productivity increases. Another benefit of using multiple interfaces is that it helps avoid repetitive strain injury.

Those are very much part of my my considerations, and the reason for thinking of getting touch.

I am however increasingly concerned over the remarks by RealBlackStuff and w0qj. Currently leaning towards a non-touch option. Still would be nice with some report from someone who have had the T470 touch in hand to confirm or qualify some of the assumptions above

Usually, a touch screen will be a bit darker than the identical non-touch version of the screen due to the additional sensitive touch layer that has to be added on top of the panel itself. Expect to lose between 20-40 nits of brightness because of it, which would bring the T470 down from slightly below 300 nits to somewhere between 260-280 nits of maximum brightness.

And regarding the topic of touch on a notebook: I've had an ASUS laptop for about a year that had a touchscreen and have not used it after the first few days - basically after the novelty factor wore off. It's too inconvenient for two reasons: a) the screen is too far from the keyboard and your upper body, thus it's a highly unergonomic task to move your hand from the keyboard to the screen, then hold it stretched out to touch stuff, and b) there is no way to rest your hand anywhere, which means it gets strenuous after a few seconds. A touchscreen is great on a tablet or a convertible like the Yoga series or HP's x360 series but for a regular laptop I really don't see any advantages whatsoever.

Thanks mj0, another stone to tip the scales in favour of the non-touch

Well, I can tell you guys that I now feel crippled when using a non-touch laptop. I agree it's not immediately obvious how touch is helpful for a laptop, but once I figured that out, I have been taking full advantage of it on my Sony Pro13, Dell Inspiron 15, and Thinkpad 8 (which I use sort of like a laptop). When I use other people's non-touch laptops, I often find myself touching the screen out of habit.

On this forum I am notorious for being obsessed with minimizing laptop weight, and yet I am willing to give up 0.2 - 0.4 lbs in order to have touch. This shows you how much I have benefited from touchscreens. To me, touchscreen vs. non-touch makes a bigger difference than SSD vs. mechanical HDD.

Some misinformation in this thread.

mj0 wrote:Usually, a touch screen will be a bit darker than the identical non-touch version of the screen due to the additional sensitive touch layer that has to be added on top of the panel itself. Expect to lose between 20-40 nits of brightness because of it, which would bring the T470 down from slightly below 300 nits to somewhere between 260-280 nits of maximum brightness.

w0qj wrote:Touch screen LCD panel is slightly thicker/heavier

RealBlackStuff wrote:A touch version increases the weight and has a more shiny/glossy screen, which is a magnet for (dirty) fingerprints.

The Touchscreen on the T470 uses On-Cell-Touch (refer to the PSREF: http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF ... ations.pdf). This means that its a totally matte Touchscreen without the layer of glass that would increase weight. The Touchscreen-version of the T470 FHD is exactly the same in quality as the non-Touch version.

You can see this in action with a T460s here: http://bit.ly/2nOpB3B

Ibthink wrote:Some misinformation in this thread.
(...)
The Touchscreen-version of the T470 FHD is exactly the same in quality as the non-Touch version.
You can see this in action with a T460s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[censored]

Thank you - that is actually much closer to my expectations of this recent generation touch-screen. Thanks for pointing this out.

The link to Youtube was censored, but I guess it was to the Lon.tv review - I had not seen that before, so very useful indeed

So essentially, there is 'no cost' to choosing the touch-enabled display except for maybe a slight(?) loss in battery life (and the obvious extra finacial cost)?

Yes, the Touchscreens has no pain points, except the slightly higher price and the extra power consumption you mentioned.

No idea why the link was censored. It was to the lon.tv review, I think the linked is fixed now.

That link is censored by the Forum software.
If you want to watch it, you need to remove the space between U and k at the end of the link in below Code