ThinkPad W510 screen, multitouch or no multitouch?

[bono81066]

Hello,

I am considering getting the multitouch touchscreen option for my new ThinkPad W510, but am quite concerned about the impact of the touchscreen layer on the display and readability of text.

I have read through multiple reviews and all the posts on this forum regarding the touchscreen. So far, I get the following impressions. Here is a summary of the information I have gotten so far regarding the ThinkPad W510 touchscreen:

Pros:
1) You get a touchscreen interface. Some people seem to like the touchscreen interface and have grown accustomed to it and use it regularly for some common tasks (and intuitively start trying to touch the screens of other computers they use ).
2) You get a touchscreen interface
3) You can use the touch screen for mouse clicking and dragging in any Windows application.

Cons:
1) The screen brightness is reduced (from 270nit to 242nit, see here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... -75377#vid). From various reports it seems like even with the reduction in brightness, the screen is still brighter than the screen of the T61 series ThinkPads. Also, some reports that the full brightness of the screen without multitouch (270nit) is simply too bright and people never use the screen at full brightness (70-80% max? being enough).
2) The touchscreen layer adds a grainy appearance to the screen
3) A very fine grid of lines (a few mm apart?) is visible under some conditions (lighting / viewing angle?). One person here described the impact of the touchscreen layer being similar to that of a privacy filter.
4) A couple of reports out there of the screen "touching itself." This appears to be rare though, likely a small number of defective units slipping through the cracks?
5) There are really no applications on Windows that take advantage of multi-touch gestures at this time, other than the built-in photo viewer, web browser and a handful of multitouch games from the Windows 7 Touchpack. As pointed out in the pros section, you can still use the touchscreen for click and drag in any application.
6) The pinch zoom and rotate gestures in the photo viewer and web browser are not smooth, and it is therefore hard/impossible to zoom a photo to the exact size you would like, for example, unlike what you get with an iPad/iPhone.
7) The multitouch supports only 2 fingers, unlike the 4-finger multi-touch on the T400s?
8 ) edit The multitouch surface add 1-2mm thickness to the lid (not sure if a multitouch thinkpad is actually thicker than a regular thinkpad) and the screen is visibly sitting behind the 1-2mm thick multitouch surface (as though embedded behind a transparent glass pane).

I am primarily concerned with cons 2 and 3 above. Some people who use their ThinkPad W510 for photo editing have reported here that the graininess and grid lines make the multitouch option unacceptable for their type of work.

I am a software engineer, and my primary use case being different (reading lots and lots of text), I am not sure if I would have the same problem.

I really wish I could look at some high-resolution videos or pictures of the two screens - one with multitouch and one without, up close and side by side, that would really help me make a judgment.

The W510 review on thinkpads.com does have some pictures of the multitouch screen only, but those are from a bigger distance and only highlight the color reproduction from various viewing angles, which, the LCD matrix being TN, really show no surprises at all - good horizontal viewing angles and severe color shift under wide vertical angles.

I scoured my local stores in an attempt to try out the touchscreen experience myself, on any touchscreen device I could get my hands on, hopefully a W510 or T400s included. I visited Fry's, Central Computers, Micro Center, Best Buy and Office Depot. Unfortunately, I did not find any touchscreen ThinkPads, but I did try the touchscreen on 2 tablets, an HP all-in-one PC (the slate?), and the iPad.

The screen of one of the tablets had a very grainy look, which might be a problem, the other tablet's screen looked as sharp as a regular screen. AFAIK, tablets use different types of touchscreen, however, since they need to support operation with a stylus, so this is probably not indicative of the properties of the capacitive touchscreen on the W510.

The iPad screen had no graininess, no surprises there, but the biggest surprise came from the HP touchscreen. The display appeared to have a dense grid of very fine dots, which would have been fine, except for the fact that the dots caused the image on the screen to tremble, especially visible on the glass surface of window titlebars. This is a major concern for me, since a trembling screen can translate to headaches after only short periods of staring at code on the screen.

In terms of touch experience the iPad was the best, along with one of the tablets, for which I have no complaints. The other tablet's touch screen appeared to have a calibration problem, as it kept registering my clicks (touches) slightly below the point that I actually intended to touch. The HP slate was the worst, as it kept confusing my rotate gesture with a zoom gesture, and a very extreme zoom on top of that (it would suddenly and randomly zoom out or in by a huge amount as I am trying to rotate). The calibration on the HP slate was OK though and I had no problem hitting the intended targets with my finger.

All of this said, I really wonder how the touchscreen experience on the W510 compares to what I saw in the 4 touchscreens I describe above.

Any feedback from fellow ThinkPadders on the Thinkpad touchscreen experience would be greatly appreciated. Close-up pictures of multitouch screens displaying small-type text, would be awesome!

Thanks,
-Nikolay

[bono81066]

Ok, so I did get the new ThinkPad W510 with the multitouch display option in the end.

Overall, I am happy I got the touchscreen option. I can see no gridlines from the multitouch surface, the monitor when off does have a slight reddish tint to it, but when turned on, the colors look great and the brightness is much higher than on my current T61.

The screen does appear a bit more grainy than my T61 (in solid color areas), but that does not impact the sharpness or readability of small text in any way for me.

Here are some pictures to put my words in context:

ThinkPad T61 (WSXGA+ 1680x1050) on left, driving NEC MultiSync 2690WUXi external 26" monitor on top (WUXGA 1920x1200), and ThinkPad W510 FHD (FHD 1920x1080) with multitouch on right.


Java Code in Eclipse on:

W510 *


T61


NEC MultiSync 2690WUXi


The reddish hue on the picture of the W510 looks bad, but this is not how whites appear on the screen when looking at it. I think this the camera white balance algorithm picking up the multitouch layer maybe, but this is not something visible to the naked eye - the white background has no reddish hue when I look at it.

I agree with others who have reported that the antiglare surface on the W510 does leave more glare than on older ThinkPads. Again, this is not a deal-breaker for me.

Here are some pictures of the reflection of a torchiere fluorescent light off of the T61 and W510 screens.

T61 WSXGA+


W510 FHD w/ MultiTouch

[playersnoopy]

The only reason I chose Lenovo was because it had the touchscreen with the options for a high end system. Having said that I knew that it would be a novelty more than anything. The only times it comes to of any great use is when browsing a webpage or document and I need to scroll around or zoom in and out. Other than that it truly is a novelty, show it off to friends is about it. If I didn't want the touchscreen I would have bought an alienware or another tablet if I didn't want performance.

Brightness is hardly an issue though, these screens are actually pretty good, still very bright and reads fine. Cost definitely doesn't justify it but I like my toys so wasn't going to get it w/o it.