Display Comparison: OLED vs. IPS on Notebooks

[Redaktion]

Welcome to the dark side. OLED displays: undeniably one of the greatest revolutions in the realm of display technology since the first LCD monitor. They lack a backlight, display perfect black and feature vivid colors as well as incredibly low response times. For the first time, the technology has made its way into notebooks.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Display-Comparison-OLED-vs-IPS-on-Notebooks.168753.0.html

[Joel]

Is the effect of PVM causing headache and nausea a proved phenomenon or could it be just a nocebo effect?

[Joel]

> the manufacturer claims a contrast ratio of 20000:1. The resulting black value 0.00015 cd/m² is too low to be measured or confirmed by the naked eye

Shouldn't that be 0.015 cd/m^2? (300/20000 = 0.015)

[Stas]

same QQHD solution of 2560 x 1440 pixels?

Come on guys, you can do much better than that.

Als erstes in unser Testlabor hat es nun das Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga geschafft, bei dem sich das herkömmliche IPS-Panel für glatt 300 Euro Aufpreis durch ein OLED-Display mit identischer WQHD-Auflösung (2.560 x 1.440 Pixel) ersetzen lässt

For the first time, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga has made it into our test lab, whose conventional IPS display can be replaced with an OLED display with an identical WQHD resolution (2.560 x 1.440 Pixels) for a sizable 300 euro premium. 

[Till Schönborn]

Fixed these translation errors, thanks!  :)

[Adrian]

So far the issue seems to be that Lenovo only allows OLED upgrade on high-end i7 models from QHD, so you cannot get the cheapest i5 FHD config but spend the money on the OLED upgrade - so you will end up with a very expensive laptop in the end...

For those of us just wanting an anti-glare panel and not a glossy tablet - the normal Carbon X1 may not get the OLED option at all. Pity...

[Joe]

Is the effect of PVM causing headache and nausea a proved phenomenon or could it be just a nocebo effect?

Definitely not a placebo effect. Here are some resources for you:

http://lrt.sagepub.com/content/45/1/124.refs

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.211.7871

http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/2014-AAER-01/prerulemaking/documents/2014-09-29_workshop/comments/Professor_Arnold_J_Watkins_Comments_2014-11-25_TN-74074.pdf

http://m.lrt.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/10/19/1477153515612526.abstract?rss=1

[Tristen]

I've had an X1 Yoga OLED laptop for a couple of weeks now, using it side by side with a Microsoft Book. For movies, the OLED is clearly better, for word processing, browsers, etc, it is worse. The X1 OLED screen is dim, and almost sepia like compared to the Book screen. The OLED viewing angle is not better (as suggested in the article), at a very slight angle the greenish tinge appears quickly and the screen dims (for word processing at least). My experience is so much different from the claims in the article, I wonder if my unit is defective?

This presents a quandary. The Lenovo keyboard is superior (and easily replaceable if needed), trackpad click buttons are nice, and Thinkpad durability is great. The battery in the Book screen makes balance a little awkward but not a deal breaker. While movies look better on the X1 OLED, movies on the Book are not bad, and the X1 speakers are not great, more worse than the screen is better. The Book has the best laptop speakers I have heard, I think they are phenomenal and I don't feel a need to use external speakers most of the time. (So the X1 Yoga has great visuals but bad sound, and the Book has good visuals and great sound.)  The Book has more screen real estate, which is far better for word processing, but irrelevant for movies. Battery life on the Book is great (but not for the disconnected tablet). I'm not sure about battery life yet on the X1 Yoga, so far, based on the task bar meter, it does not look good. I'll try to report back on the battery, but at this point it looks like 4-7 hours only with WiFi on. Those darn page up/down buttons on the Book are killing me, so maybe I need to work on a paradigm shift to end my reliance on those keys?

I also have an X1 Tablet. The Surface Pro 4 was not nearly as good, and the benefits of higher processor power were not at all worth the trade offs for me. If I had to only pick one device, it would be the X1 Tablet. I have lived with it only traveling and I love it. (My view of the Surface Pro 4 is partly biased because the two I had never had stable display drivers. I had this problem with the Book, but it may have been finally fixed as of late July 2016.)

Thank you for writing your X1 Yoga reviews, they are excellent and helpful.

[markchodotcom]

Thanks to the author for writing this great and thorough review! Notebookcheck.net is an incredible reference for anyone who is picky about their hardware.

Tristen: I also had the same experience as you, going from a Surface Book to a Dell XPS 13 and now to the X1 Yoga with OLED screen. It's funny, I reached many of the same conclusions you did regarding the Surface Book. I too loved the screen and speakers. I wrote a bit about it on my website under the tech section (www.markcho.com)

The Surface Book screen is fantastic, up until the OLED, probably the best 13" screen I've used. However, I think the X1 Yoga's OLED screen beats it. I don't have issues of it being dim or having a tinge, except at very extreme viewing angles. It does sound like you have a defective part ... ?

I would love to see the next generation of the X1 Yoga with an OLED 3200x1800 screen and an Iris video part. One can dream!

[Tristen]

Mark, good to hear about the screen issues. How are you finding the battery on the X1 Yoga? I have only been able to do limited testing. One day it lasted 4 hours with a little bit of Pandora playing and screen very bright. Another day it looked like I could tease it to 7-8 hours.

[markchodotcom]

Hi Tristen, unfortunately I've had the laptop mostly plugged in so it's limited testing for myself, too, but I would expect in the range of 5 hours? I'm in browser windows and Office windows a lot of the time, so a lot of white screens which would increase power usage.

By the way, have you ever tried the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility? I tried it on my Dell XPS 13 because I was having some heat related issues when I was playing games for longer periods of time. I undervolted about 0.1 mV on the graphics package and the processor and it seems to have fixed the problem. I'd imagine you'd get slightly more battery life out of the system this way, too.

[alexgrayes]

Agressive ~200Hz PWM even on next generation display. Very impressive, Lenovo.

[Jörn]

Hi there, I am thinking about X1 Yoga and wonder if IPS might be more versatile than OLED? OLED seems to be not much brighter than IPS, but IPS is less glossy, so IPS should be more comfortable in bright surroundings. Is this assumption correct? Does anyone have the ability to compare IPS to OLED on X1 Yoga? For text/photo/desk/travel use?
Thanks!

[Udo]

Well, from the photos in the article it is clear that glossy screen sucked in outdoor. I have no clue what the author are talking about, saying OLED performs better at outdoor, as his photo show the opposite.

Also OLED isn't capable to change the fact that glossy screens are causing an eye strain (there're peer-reviewed researches), and are generally bad for eyes.

The colors... I think better colors are bad excuse to make screen glossy. I'm talking specifically about OLED, though. Glossy screen would suck at colors too if being compared to the screen with same parameters but the anti-glare coating.

[Jas0nF46]

Is the red glow on the side of Vader's helmet from the camera autofocus or in the image itself?