[HN Gopher] Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive: Display
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Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive: Display
Author : jseliger
Score : 103 points
Date : 2023-06-03 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (frame.work)
(TXT) w3m dump (frame.work)
| endorphine wrote:
| Honest question: why would a happy Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 on
| Debian user switch to the Framework laptop? What are its selling
| points that make it attractive to such a target group?
| deepsun wrote:
| Customizable ports (although I'd want 5-6 slots for ports, 4 is
| a little too few for me, I want USB-C for charging on both
| sides, 2 usb-3, HDMI and DisplayPort at the same time).
| bubblethink wrote:
| Upgradeable wifi would be the main draw. The rest is mostly a
| wash. Thinkpads have better linux support generally. Thinkpads
| have firmware updates on fwupd and no catastrophic issues on
| the igpu models.
| lousken wrote:
| Framework seems almost perfect as a device. If only somebody
| modded a thinkpad keyboard onto it.
| hbgl wrote:
| Could not agree more. Not having full size arrow keys is a deal
| breaker for me.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| This is fantastic. All the specs are fantastic.
|
| I think 2560p is a sweet spot, as 4K is just too hard to drive,
| and (to my eyes) its usable with minimal scaling.
|
| My biggest concern with the framework 16 is cooling. The modular
| GPU inevitably excludes the huge, integrated heatsink designs
| something like a G15 would use.
| jabart wrote:
| Same, have a 13 and cooling is an issue. It may be because I
| upgraded from an older case, don't know.
| dandongus wrote:
| Personally I disagree about the resolution being a sweet spot,
| in my opinion it's almost the worst resolution imaginable for
| this size. The pixels are just slightly too small to the point
| where it becomes annoying and uncomfortable (for most people)
| to use it at 100% scaling, 200% scaling is out of the question
| as everything would be massive and you'd only get some 720p
| equivalent worth of real estate, and fractional scaling is
| generally subpar and not worth using in many cases. I think
| both 4k and 1080p are better options for a 15-16" screen.
| wbsun wrote:
| I've noticed that no other devices can beat the quality of Apple
| device monitors, no matter how high-definition they are. The
| display on Apple devices are just smoothing, natural, easy on my
| heavily myopic eyes. Any expert on display panel? I am just
| wondering why Apple's display quality is always better than even
| the display manufacturers' own devices (Samsung, LG).
| npunt wrote:
| Probably several reasons both hardware and software.
|
| 1. LCD panel grade - panels are graded when they're
| manufactured and Apple buys the 'A' quality panels while others
| including manufacturers tend to use a mix of different graded
| panels or buy the cheaper 'B' and 'C' grade panels which have
| uniformity issues and other perceptible defects. Back in the
| day Dell ultrasharps were famous for the 'panel lottery' where
| you weren't sure what quality you'd get.
|
| 2. Other aspects of panels - There's a lot of little things
| that go into making them that can affect quality including
| polarizers, backlight guides, anti glare, how they're bonded,
| etc. Apple does a lot of investment in display tech (they did
| the first bonded lcds afaik which meant the pixels seemed like
| they were on top of the glass vs behind) and they doesn't skimp
| on quality parts.
|
| 3. Text rendering - At the software layer I believe Apple
| renders text a bit differently than Windows, and as of a few
| years ago killed text antialiasing, tho I'm not up to date on
| whether that results in qualitative difference vs Windows.
|
| 4. Target PPI - All Apple devices are made at target ppis - Mac
| around 227, iPad 264, iPhone 326 (lcd) - 480 (oled) - all of
| which correspond to a near equivalent size to our eyes when
| factoring in target distance from eyes for different form
| factors (e.g. phones closer, tablet middle, computer farther).
| Windows & Android devices are all over the place on this,
| offering tons of different scale factors that may affect.
|
| 5. Color correction - supporting ~100% P3 gamut colors on all
| modern displays along with the software to support it
|
| 6. Whole stack software optimization - when you control hw &
| sw, you can eke out a bit more qualitative improvement. For
| instance, knowing the panels are of a certain PPI and quality
| of color repro means you can pick UI colors (various greys etc)
| with much higher confidence, can create your own custom fonts
| that look great on them, etc, versus a sort of 'web safe
| colors' lowest common denominator equivalent you're stuck with
| on platforms like Win/Android with a lot of variance in device
| quality.
|
| Basically: you get the best visuals when you control the whole
| stack and invest in premium everything.
| kapperchino wrote:
| I think it's because they're glossy while most monitors have a
| matte coating
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I doubt that's it. That may help with "whow, shiny colors!"
| impressions, but I think that pcs just source lower quality
| panels.
|
| I have a 2012 unibody MBP with a matte screen (the last model
| before the retina line). That thing looks so much better than
| my 2021 HP EliteBook it's not even funny. Sure, the HP has
| higher resolution (1920x1080 vs 1680x1050), but the viewing
| angles are poor (it's a 14" panel, but there is no single
| position from which you can see it completely OK, the colors
| always change when you move the slightest). The blacks are a
| darkish grey. The reds are actually orange. This wasn't a
| cheap pc, either. It also has the 8 bit panel. Some SKUs only
| have dim, 6 bit ones. It cost almost as much as a 14" M1 when
| my company bought it (it's a work laptop, I would never have
| bought this crap with my own cash). The only other metric
| except from resolution by which it beats that 11 yo macbook
| is that it's very bright, to the point of being actually
| usable outside if the sun doesn't shine directly on it.
|
| There are many PCs with glossy coating. We also have a
| different model of elitebooks at work that have those (x360
| line). That's an atrocious shitshow. Except for a completely
| dark room, you'll always see some random reflection instead
| of the actual screen content. My 2013 retina MBP does better
| outside than these poor excuses for a panel do inside.
|
| There are PCs that somehow do manage to look decent. A
| friend's Dell XPS comes to mind, though it doesn't look as
| good as an MBP. But these seem to be the exception rather
| than the rule.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| No other monitor I've owned has developed massive scratches
| during normal operation like my macbook m1 screen has.
|
| In my experience Apple stuff looks great and fails
| spectacularly.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| i would love to understand that as well. I am mainly a pc user
| (both desktop and laptop), but at any given generation macbooks
| have just better display "experience".Even when compared to the
| other top of the line devices (MSFT surfaces or dell XPS 13).
| My guess is simply that other PC companies just don't care much
| about the display quality beyond head grabbing specs. That and
| i suspect MACOS is just better at text rendering and color
| repreduction on the desktop
| xpe wrote:
| Your brain telling your eyes that the extra money should be
| worth it? I wrote this in a joking manner, but I do wonder if
| a double blind study has been conducted.
|
| Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual
| appeal. That could explain a lot of it. Not to mention the
| factors you reference, aka antialiasing, smoothing, font
| rendering, and probably lots more.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| That's a fair point, it might be only a placebo effect.
| However, the machines i am comparing it with are mainly the
| dell xps 13 and MSFT surface which are generally in the
| same price range. Plus i have yet to have bough a macbook
| for myself, usually those are company issued devices.
|
| > Not all UIs are created equally when it comes to visual
| appeal.
|
| That's correct. But here i am not comparing the quality
| ofthe UI element. I am don't particularly like MACOS design
| language and prefer windows 11 and ubuntu gnome visual
| esthetics.
| xpe wrote:
| While macOS might get the visual combination better than
| competitors, I'd be somewhat surprised if it has any secret
| sauce left. Oh, yeah, custom silicon... :)
| izacus wrote:
| Why did you have to run an Apple advertisement in a topic
| dedicated to a laptop that very much isn't for Apple audience?
|
| There's plenty of laptops with better and different screens,
| including several OLED ones that run at smoother refresh and
| produce much more vibrant and less eye painful colors. The fact
| that you haven't seen them isn't a testament of Apple skill,
| it's just a reflection of you not walking into anything that's
| not an Apple store.
| gnufied wrote:
| I know there is lot of gripe about the display not being 4k, but
| I personally love 2560x1600 on 16inch monitors.
|
| In Linux I can run this without any fractional scaling at 100%
| resolution. To account for small text, I can change font size by
| 1.1 or something similar via gnome-tweaks and similar font size
| adjustment for apps that don't honor gnome-tweaks setting.
|
| I know this is not ideal if you are coming from Mac, but this IMO
| leads to much more smoother experience and no blurry text
| anywhere. The same setting works if I am plugging into 32inch 4k
| display.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| As I get older, my vision gets worse. Even with decent(?) eye-
| glasses, I don't see the screen quite as clearly as when I was
| younger.
|
| I should probably invest a little time in determining what
| maximum screen resolution actually matters to me at various
| distances.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| You measure your minimum resolving angle as a function of
| distance, then calculate what dpi that corresponds to.
| Except, since it's an angle, distance matters here. So you
| add in what distance you'll be from the display.
|
| But I forget what numbers to plug in. We learned that in
| graphics courses back in uni, and how 4K big screen displays
| are probably only beneficial as though you are getting super
| sampling antialiasing
|
| Edit: a quick google search returned:
|
| > The human eye has an angular resolution of about 1
| arcminute (0.02 degrees or 0.0003 radians) which enables us
| to distinguish things that are 30 centimetres apart at a
| distance of 1 kilometre
|
| You just need some basic trig to do your calculation now, and
| to modify your resolving number based on some experiments
| based on your particular eyes
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Angular resolution is
| where you can distinguish between one or two separate
| objects. You need an entire rod/cone/camera pixel in
| between to pick out the middle. But when it comes to
| viewing edges and lines, it's like using grayscale instead
| of black and white. Differences of position ten times as
| small can be distinguished.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacuity
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I'm 71 and still actively programming. One thing I did years
| ago was to get a pair of _single vision_ glasses set up for
| my eyes ' distance from the laptop screen (about 20"). These
| changed my life.
|
| I use progressives for everyday activity, but at the computer
| I switch to the single vision. I have a triple-monitor setup:
| the 15" 4K display on my ThinkPad P1, and two 24" 4K monitors
| (currently LG, but I've used similar Dell and ViewSonic
| monitors in the past).
|
| The external monitors are mounted on Amazon Basics arms made
| by Ergotron. I prefer the Amazon Basics because they have a
| matte black finish instead of the silver finish of the
| Ergotron-branded arms. They are identical otherwise.
|
| One 24" monitor sits directly above the laptop display, with
| their left edges aligned. The other sits to the left of these
| in _portrait_ mode. This is ideal for reading documentation,
| especially PDF files.
|
| I run the ThinkPad at 300% scaling and the larger monitors at
| 200%. All three are adjusted to be at about the same 20"
| distance from my eyes. The ThinkPad display is in the usual
| tipped-back laptop position. The horizontal monitor above it
| is closer to a straight up-and-down angle (but not quite).
| The portrait monitor is also tilted back a bit. The idea here
| is to have the "normal" for the center of each monitor point
| to my eyes.
|
| It's also important to keep the prescriptions updated for
| both the progressive and single vision lenses, especially if
| you are in your 40s when your vision changes more rapidly.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I appreciate the tip.
|
| I am using single-prescription lenses, and I update them
| every 1-2 years (via Koch Eye Associates). I order lenses
| at the specific focal distance of my monitors.
|
| For some reason, in recent years my eyes never feel
| comfortable with the updated lenses. Not sure if my eyes
| are getting less forgiving w.r.t. focal distance, or if
| something is goofy about the lenses that Koch is selling
| me.
|
| I think my next step is to try another optometrist /
| glasses-vendor.
|
| Another possibility is that I'm using a big monitor, so the
| distance from my eyes to the screen-center is pretty
| different from the distance to the screen-edge. I may just
| need to try smaller screens or (yuck) curved screens.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _Another possibility is that I 'm using a big monitor,
| so the distance from my eyes to the screen-center is
| pretty different from the distance to the screen-edge._
|
| You may be on to something there! About 10 years ago I
| visited the Google office in Washington, DC to finish up
| my work on the 2012 general election map. They had a 32"
| monitor for me to use, and when I put it at the same 20"
| distance as my laptop screen I had exactly the same
| problem. The difference in distance from center to edge
| was too much for me to keep it all in focus.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| One possibility to look into is convergence issues. The
| solution to presbyopia is to prescribe positive lenses.
| However, positive lenses force your eyes to converge
| more. So if you have convergence issues, these can make
| things worse.
|
| This appears to be the issue I have. I've been to a few
| optometrists and they really don't want to hear about it.
| To be fair, regular optometrists probably don't have the
| margins to deal with problems like this. It really
| requires a specialist such as an orthoptist.
|
| For now, I just manage best I can. I can only use my
| reading/computer glasses for a very short period of time
| before my eyes hurt like crazy. Then I revert to my
| distance glasses where I can barely read the text, but at
| least my eyes don't hurt.
| tlamponi wrote:
| Note that with a high enough resolution to enable 2x (or even
| 4x) scaling, text becomes much crisper as anti-aliasing isn't
| messing with the actual color that much anymore.
|
| So, a HiDPI display _might_ make things easier to read/view
| even for people with a worse vision like you.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks, good point.
|
| I guess any conclusions I draw need to consider more than
| just the screen's native resolution. The software-based
| systems for rending fonts, and graphics in general, would
| also matter.
|
| As would the screen treatment (matte vs. glossy), since
| AFAIK all matte finishes add a little bit of blur.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Anti-aliasing should not be messing with the color at all.
| It shouldn't even be messing with brightness and contrast
| all that much; most common artifacts are due to performing
| anti-aliasing w/ an incorrect gamma for the display. Gamma-
| correct and pixel-perfect content makes even a low
| resolution 768p screen quite usable. And a 1080p screen is
| crisp enough already that individual pixels are not visible
| when looking at the whole screen. Anything higher than that
| is pure overkill.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Font anti aliasing, or more specifically subpixel
| rendering absolutely changes color. It of course does so
| in a way that is ideally not perceptible, but it is
| there. Here's an example of an e rendered with subpixel
| rendering close up: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi
| a/commons/f/f3/Subpixel...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| How do you get this gamma-correct antialiasing in
| practice?
|
| I see this often on business 24" FHD displays. It's
| especially atrocious with light text on dark backgrounds.
| Bonus points for the current fashion of super-skinny
| fonts, which seem to have different colors for every
| vertical line.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I don't even like 4K on larger monitors. Running 2560x1440 on
| my 32" displays. (I don't game, and I use my 4K TV for any
| entertainment video)
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Don't the very obvious pixels make text hard to read for you?
| I find 27" is just slightly too big for only 4k.
| tlamponi wrote:
| > 2560x1600 on 16inch monitors.
|
| Yeah, that's 188.68 PPI.
|
| And while more can be nicer, anything above 150 PPI is IMO fine
| enough.
|
| For a real big improvement one would need 3840x2400 (WQUXGA)
| here, that'd give one 283.02 PPI and thus a nice 2x scaling
| could be used, resulting in crisper text/lines. But IMO that
| would be overkill and quite likely not be able to provide 165
| HZ, or the GPU couldn't actually drive it at full HZ.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| I prefer 4k normally, but on Linux I prefer this. It ends up
| like a slightly less crisp 4k with 1.5x scaling, and
| everything works nicely even if your fractional scaling isn't
| behaving
| tjoff wrote:
| The problem is that 2x scaling is too much. Then you'd get
| the real-estate of a 1080p screen which isn't suitable for
| such a screen.
| noahtallen wrote:
| > But IMO that would be overkill and quite likely not be able
| to provide 165 HZ, or the GPU couldn't actually drive it at
| full HZ.
|
| While it might be overkill, I think GPUs would have a fine
| time with it. Low end laptops have been driving 4k@60hz for
| many years now! Powering desktop interfaces is much easier
| than gaming. Finding a 283ppi panel that also does 165hz
| might be hard though.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I have an XPS13 with WQUXGA, and it's absolutely gorgeous.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "and an unusually high 500 nit brightness."
|
| I consider this above average, but not unusually high. For the
| past couple years the MacBook pro can do a peak of 1000nits HDR
| (unlockable to do it with apps like lunar for outdoor computing).
| There has also been the MSI creator 17 that supports 1000 nits
| brightness, and some HP laptop models that do high brightness
| though more for their 'sureview' screen security feature
| kristopolous wrote:
| Are there third party modular suppliers? Could I say, replace the
| keyboard like I can on a desktop?
|
| If not, are they open to that? If I wanted to say, make something
| more "thinkpad" like for people to swap things out, would they
| openly support me selling this?
| JamesAdir wrote:
| https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/InputModules
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This is fantastic! Maybe this means my next laptop will be from
| Framework. The keyboard was the deciding factor in my last
| laptop purchase.
|
| TL;DR:
|
| I really _wanted_ an all-AMD laptop (with dGPU) for development
| and gaming on Linux [0].
|
| So my first purchase was (IIRC) an ASUS ROG Strix G15 [1]. But
| I really hated the feel of the key caps and their action, so I
| sold it.
|
| I ended up settling on a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16ACH6H). I'm
| still bummed about the non-AMD dGPU, but I'm confident I made
| the right trade-off.
|
| [0] I didn't need an nVidia GPU because I wasn't doing CUDA
| development. And I've had better luck with AMD's Linux drivers
| than with nVidia's.
|
| [1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-strix-g15-advantage-
| ed...
| slashtom wrote:
| curious what does linux offer that you can't get through WSL2
| on windows and have the best of both worlds (gaming on
| windows + development through WSL2), I have had no issues
| with accessing cuda through wsl2.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > what does linux offer that you can't get through WSL2 on
| windows
|
| It basically comes down to the typical reasons people use
| Linux rather than Windows.
|
| For the sake of world peace, I'm going to leave that debate
| for another forum :)
| sspiff wrote:
| Same here. I ended up getting a Zephyrus G14 in January, with
| all-AMD CPU and GPU.
|
| If framework announced this laptop before I bought mine, I
| would probably have waited and stuck with my old junk until
| it became available.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Yeah, even with all the improvements, Nvidia hybrid is still
| a nightmare in linux.
|
| Just recently my vscode extensions were all inexplicably
| failing, and I traced it back to electron messing up, which I
| discovered only happens when the Nvidia driver is loaded even
| though I am not even using it for rendering... And this took
| _forever_ to trace.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| My laptop works pretty well these days except for the
| Nvidia hardware, but it's not just laptops either.
|
| I can choose Wayland XOR external displays. I can update
| any kernel or driver and reboot days later, unless Nvidia's
| software gets involved.
|
| The Intel GPU also has some issues (random flickering on
| fullscreen applications for some obscure reason I just
| can't figure out) but they're much less "how can you
| possibly have missed this" and more "this seems like an
| unfortunate edge case".
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Any idea how well (AMD GPU) + Wayland + (external
| display) works these days?
|
| Wayland compatibility is one of the potential reasons I'd
| like my next Linux laptop to have an AMD dGPU.
| petilon wrote:
| This Samsung [1] is only 14" and yet has 2880x1800 display.
| That's 200% resolution. Anything less than 200% is not
| interesting to me. iPhone with Retina display debuted in 2010.
| Isn't 13 years enough time for PC laptops to catch up?
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPJWYQSY/
| sspiff wrote:
| What does "200%" resolution mean?
|
| I prefer displays with a resolution where I don't have to do
| any scaling honestly.
| petilon wrote:
| 200% means double the resolution of the "previous era" (1990s
| and 2000s), which was around 96 dpi. Modern applications will
| not see any scaling artifacts.
|
| Applications from the "previous era" that are not HighDPI-
| aware will get scaling... each application pixel will occupy
| 4 physical pixels.
| tintedfireglass wrote:
| yeah this Asus laptop (https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-
| home/vivobook/vivobook-pro-...) has the same resolution display
| for the same dimensions too. Maybe this is the only high dpi
| panel mass produced enough and 16'' doesn't have an economical
| version due to lower economies of scale? just a guess I am not
| very sure.
| lousken wrote:
| It's ~190ppi and retina is about 200 with laptops. What's the
| big deal? Also the lower the resolution is the higher fps can
| be hit in games.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I guess you're lucky that Apple and Samsungs have laptops that
| you like.
| [deleted]
| manaskarekar wrote:
| Does it use PWM or DC-Dimming? (Don't see it mentioned at a quick
| glance)
| amstan wrote:
| It really shouldn't matter as long as the frequency is high
| enough (>2000Hz). On their 1st gen laptop it seems seamless to
| the point where I can't tell (if it's DC or not).
| bitwize wrote:
| Some Hackernews have slomovision and are sensitive to
| flickering even at frequencies high enough that you'd think
| it wouldn't matter.
| manaskarekar wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. The high frequency doesn't seem to matter
| (example newer Macbooks). Unsure additional parameters like
| temporal dithering play a role.
| dandongus wrote:
| For what it's worth, the three most similar models from BOE all
| use DC dimming:
|
| https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NYC_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_...
| https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NY3_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_...
| https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NY3_BOE_16.0_LCM_overview_...
|
| In fact it seems that most every single one of these newer high
| refresh rate 1440p/1600p laptop panels does, I couldn't find a
| single pwm one.
| manaskarekar wrote:
| That is very good to hear!
| Animats wrote:
| "In the lead-up to opening pre-orders..."
|
| "Batch 3 (of older model) Ships July..."
|
| They've been at this for a while, and they're still acting like a
| Kickstarter.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Electronics is a high-investment but low-margin product. You
| either need to have a ton of cash upfront to pay for components
| and wait weeks to months until products are built and
| especially shipped to customers, or you need extremely generous
| payment terms with vendors. The latter you can only get by
| continuous high-volume orders... which Framework is too small
| for.
| ubertaco wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand whether this is criticism or praise;
| isn't it a good thing for a company that has announced an
| upcoming product line to communicate transparently and
| frequently about progress and timelines for things like
| preorders?
| wmf wrote:
| It's a criticism because mature companies don't do preorders
| at all.
| aPoCoMiLogin wrote:
| last time i've checked a lot of companies are doing
| preorders, heck even the richest like apple.
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