Thinkpads Forum

My apologies for hijacking this thread, but I'm curious --- how good / useful is the outdoor screen?

I ask 'cause my ThinkPad x61 is supposed to have an outdoor viewable display, and it's nowhere near as visible outdoors in bright / direct sunlight as the transflective LCD on my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121.

Is that typical? Are there no machines being made now w/ transflective LCDs?

WillAdams wrote:My apologies for hijacking this thread, but I'm curious --- how good / useful is the outdoor screen?

Hijacking a FS thread is *never* a good idea.

I ask 'cause my ThinkPad x61 is supposed to have an outdoor viewable display, and it's nowhere near as visible outdoors in bright / direct sunlight as the transflective LCD on my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121.

None of the ThinkPads from that era have screens that are actually usable outdoors. Modern machines are a different animal.

WillAdams wrote:x61 is supposed to have an outdoor viewable display, and it's nowhere near as visible outdoors in bright / direct sunlight as the transflective LCD on my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121.

I think your memory is faulty. As always when using a notebook/tablet outdoors, the brighter the screen the better. The brightest screen on the X61 was the SuperBright offered on the X61s. It is rated at 180, which is not sufficient for outdoor usage. The X61 tablets, were slightly brighter, but still no bright enough.

The X220 I had is rated at 300 nits and did work decently outdoors, but not in direct sunlight of course. The X230t has a MultiTouch and an Outdoor screen, but they both use the same screen as the X220, but with a tablet you're going to get glare due to the glass used for the touch surface.

If you want a ThinkPad tablet that works well outdoors, you might want to look for a X200 or X201 tablet. They had an optional 400 nit LCD for outdoor use. There's a review showing the X201t with the 400 nit screen here with some outdoor footage towards the end. I believe it was a Toshiba LCD. The first gen core CPU still should be a solid performer as long as you're not pushing.

Yes, you'd think with everyone taking their notebooks and tablets everywhere, someone would put some effort into transflective displays. I seem to recall seeing a small number of options a decade ago, but not much since. Perhaps they didn't sell well or don't work with touch screens, which are on almost everything now.

I'm jumping in on this thread because I'm very interested in outdoor readable displays. I do have a x201t core i7, and upgraded the screen to the 400 nits version one after I could get my hands on a a few "brand new" ones (that's hard- you mostly get pulls)

The screen is great - the black are gorgeous indoors (PVA screen, better than the IPS on my desk where the blacks are grey even at the lowest brightness setting) and perfectly readable outdoors even when directly exposed to the sun on a very bright winter day

However, with a luminance meter, it gives the same reading as a macbook pro 15' mid 2012, which has a 300 nits screen. That's not 400 nits. Since I am quite sure the screens are new and of the right model, I wonder if the LT121ee08000 screen (PN 27R2491 13N7297) was produced in different settings - say in 2 version, a 300 nits and 400 nits version.

(I started a thread on http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=116989)

For x230t modders, what's the best screen that can be put on a X230t? (Alternatively, I wonder if the initial LEDs could be replaced by modern brighter LEDs)