At CES 2021, a ton of gaming laptops have focused harder on bringing faster FHD displays, rather than trying to move to 4K, and we applaud the decision.
At CES 2021, Nvidia launched its GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs for laptops. These are led up, of course, by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 – a graphics card that has become the poster child for 4K PC gaming in 2020. However, among all the gaming laptops announced at the virtual event, very few embraced 4K gaming, and instead went all-in on FHD and QHD panels with higher refresh rates. And it’s about damn time. When we’re talking about a laptop display that’s, like,15 or even 17 inches, a 4K resolution is wholly unnecessary. We spend hours looking at laptop displays of all sizes and resolutions, and there are only a few devices we’ve ever been able to look at and say « this is a 4K screen » when it’s not a full-sized monitor. When you look at a 27-inch 4K Gaming Monitor for instance, you’re looking at a pixel density of 163 PPI, and that’s basically considered the golden standard. Then, when you look at a 15-inch laptop, but cut the display resolution down to 2K, or 2,560 x 1,440, it’s actually more pixel dense than the 27-inch 4K display, with 195.81 PPI. So, essentially, you have a more pixel-dense display on the laptop, without needing the extra horsepower that a 4K display demands. Plus, over the last few years, as laptop manufacturers have realized that a lot of creative professionals were buying gaming laptops to do work on, new options have started to emerge. This is pretty much why Gigabyte, for instance, rebranded its Aero line of laptops to focus in more on creatives that want to game on their downtime, rather than going all-in on gaming.
