common lcd panel resolutions for sale

If your screen resolution is too high, icons and texts may appear too small and your hardware may be put under additional strain as the monitor struggles to hit the high resolutions. But if your screen resolution is set too low, it can result in poor image quality that takes up too much workspace and can also harm the results of your work.

The higher the number of pixels a screen can show, the sharper and more detailed the image quality. But, the number of pixels that a screen can show isn"t the only factor involved when it comes to image quality. There"s also pixel density. Monitors come in all kinds of sizes, as well as resolutions. You"ll often find monitors of different sizes that have the same number of pixels, for example a 24-inch monitor and a 32-inch monitor both with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080. The image quality on the smaller monitor can often look sharper and more vivid because of its pixel density. This is measured in PPI (Pixels Per Inch). The smaller screen will have a higher number of pixels per inch than the larger screen.

If you want to change the screen resolution, click the down arrow next to the resolution. This will show a list of all the other display resolutions your screen can handle. Click one, and the resolution will be applied – temporarily at least.

For people working with complex 3D models, such as architects, animators or game developers, going above 1920 x 1080 can begin to put a real strain on your machine"s GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). If you want to go for a higher resolution, make sure your hardware can handle it, otherwise you may find your PC performs very slowly when trying to render at those high resolutions.

For photographers, we"d recommend going for the highest resolution you can afford. Still images don"t require as much graphical grunt to display on high-resolution screens, and most photographs are taken at well above 1080p resolutions. For example, a camera that takes 21-megapixel photos is actually capturing images at 5,104 x 4,092 resolution. Even a 4K monitor won"t display that natively, but the higher the resolution of the screen, the better (and more accurately) your photos will appear.

The resolutions we mention above apply to standard widescreen monitors with a 16:9 aspect ratio. However, some devices have different aspect ratios – and therefore different display resolutions.

Other excellent laptops with high screen resolutions recommended for digital creatives include the Surface Book 2(opens in new tab) (with a 3,240 x 2,160 resolution), the Dell XPS 15(opens in new tab), which comes with either a 2,560 x 1,080 screen, or a 3,840 x 2,160 display.

Every display panel is made up of a series of dots called pixels, and the more pixels you have, the more detail you can fit on-screen. Most laptops come with low-resolution, 1366 x 768 screens that show far less content than high-resolution panels with at least 1920 x 1080 pixels.

If you really want to kick your display quality up a few notches, you can get a screen with an even higher resolution than 1080p. Some laptops are available with panels that are 2560 x 1440, 3200 x 1800 or 3840 x 2160 (aka 4K) resolution. These higher-than-1080p resolutions are sharper, but they also use more power, harming battery life.

When you"re going through spec sheets for different laptops, you may see the same screen resolution referred to with different names. For example, a 2560 x 1440 screen could be listed as a 2K display, or as WQHD. Here"s a helpful table of common resolution names.

Unless you"re buying a dirt-cheap laptop, you should always get a laptop with at least a 1920 x 1080 resolution. You can find a system with 1080p these days for as little as $349, but many $700 and $800 laptops still come with 1366 panels, so spending more doesn"t guarantee a better display.

Though it"s cool, in theory, to be able to reach across your keyboard and poke at the panel, touch screens have three distinct disadvantages:Power consumption:Most touch screens use a lot more power, leading to fewer hours of battery life on the same notebook.

Though resolution and color quality are more important, having a brighter screen provides a better experience. Brighter panels usually make colors pop (though they can also be washed out) and lead to wider viewing angles. If you plan to work outdoors or near a window, you need a fairly bright panel to see anything in direct sunlight.

If you"re buying a gaming laptop, you"ll want to consider two more factors: refresh rate and response time. Measured in hertz, the refresh rate is the number of times per second that the screen updates itself. Most laptop screens have the standard 60Hz refresh rate, but some high-end gaming models like the MSI GS63VR come with 120Hz panels, which are better.

Some laptops come with Nvidia"s G-Sync technology, which limits ghosting and tearing by synchronizing the panel with the video card. The screen knows that the game is running at 60 fps, for example, and adjusts accordingly. AMD has its own synchronization technology called FreeSync.

The predominant display aspect ratio on today’s PC market, including laptops, 2-in-1 hybrids, tablets, and monitors, is 16:9. Also referred to as widescreen aspect ratio, it is suitable for movies and YouTube videos. Narrower screens such as those on Microsoft Surface devices with 3:2 aspect ratio are better optimized for productivity. The latter are closer to aspect ratios of paper documents and have ability to display more rows of text than the comparable 16:9 panels. Another widescreen aspect ratio you can find on mobile computers today is 16:10, but it is used on small number of devices. Primarily on compact 2-in-1 laptop / tablet PC hybrids.

Resolution refers to number of pixels that make up the image on a screen. A higher pixel count on a screen means sharper pictures, movies and text. It also means more space for displaying web pages and applications and side-by-side program use. Display resolution is expressed using horizontal and vertical pixel counts. The most frequently used resolutions on laptop and 2-in-1 PCs nowadays are 1366-by-768 (also known as HD) and 1920-by-1080 (Full HD or 1080p). 1920-by-1080 is the most appropriate screen resolution for laptops, in our opinion. Many of the affordable notebooks come with 1366-by-768 panels, which provide usable but not so sharp picture. However, inclusion of a Full HD display means a higher overall cost of a device and a somewhat greater power consumption. On the other hand, on smaller notebooks such as the popular low-priced 11.6-inchers, 1366×768 provides acceptable crispiness due to higher pixel per square inch (PPI) value.

Some high-end notebooks, regardless of their screen sizes, come with above-1080p resolutions, such as 3200×1800 and 3840×2160, popularly known as QHD+ 3K and Ultra HD (UHD) 4K. They have 3 and 4 times more pixels respectively than Full HD. 3K and 4K deliver breathtaking sharpness of displayed content, but there are some of disadvantages, too. First of all, user interface elements of Windows and programs appear by default very small on 3K and 4K resolutions. In order to make them better visible, users must use Windows’ built-in scaling functionality, allowing enlargement of UI elements. But, not all programs and parts of Windows itself respond well to scaling, which results in blurry fonts, menus, buttons, and dialog boxes. Another way is to decrease the native resolution using Screen Resolution settings in Windows’ Control Panel, but that makes investments in expensive high-res screens absurd and Windows environment may still look blurry. Furthermore, displays with huge number of pixels require more graphics computing resources and tend to consume more power, thus reducing battery life.

How good viewing angles on a display are, depends on panel technology. Two most common types are IPS (In Plane Switching) and TN (Twisted Nematic). IPS provides great viewing angles, close to 180 degrees, so picture on IPS displays looks good from any angle. Older and cheaper TN panels have problematic horizontal viewing angles. If you look at a TN display from a low perspective, color inversion will occur. For instance, black color will look gray, as shown on the first image below. Also, if you look at a TN display from a high perspective, content will appear washed-out.

There are two types of LCD panel coating: anti-glare or matte and glare-type or glossy. The former does a good job of preventing light reflections which are present in bright environments, such as well-lit offices and outdoors. Anti-glare displays, however, tend to show less vibrant colors than their glossy counterparts. The former are usually found on business-class notebooks, while the latter are used on consumer-oriented and touchscreen machines, with a few exceptions. What can help with outdoor usability is good display brightness, preferably above 300 cd/m². Many mainstream and budget laptops, 2-in-1s, and tablets have brightness of around 250 cd/m² and sometimes even as low as 200 cd/m².

A special kind of touch panels are those with active digitizer technology, supporting pressure-sensitive pen input. An example of pen-enabled devices is the Microsoft Surface series.

To sum things up, a high quality laptop display in our opinion has at least Full HD resolution for sharp picture and IPS technology to enable wide viewing angles as bare minimums. Lower resolutions are acceptable only on devices with small screens. Getting premium-priced PC devices with 3K or 4K resolutions doesn’t make much sense currently, due to a noticeably greater power consumption and the aforementioned scaling problem. Folks planning to use their computers outdoors should additionally require a high-brightness screen and anti-glare coating. Imaging professionals and multimedia enthusiasts, should be interested in the rest of the specs, primarily color gamut, accuracy, and contrast, but also willing to spend more money since notebooks with top-quality displays wear hefty price tags. As for gamers who want the best gaming experience possible, they should pay attention to the screen refresh rate which greatly affects smoothness of gameplays.

This chart shows the most common display resolutions, with the color of each resolution type indicating the display ratio (e.g. red indicates a 4:3 ratio).

Variant used commonly for portable DVD players, digital photo frames, GPS receivers and devices such as the Kenwood DNX-5120 and Glospace SGK-70; often marketed as "16:9"

Many of these resolutions are also used for video files that are not broadcast. These may also use other aspect ratios by cropping otherwise black bars at the top and bottom which result from cinema aspect ratios greater than 16∶9, such as 1.85 or 2.35 through 2.40 (dubbed "Cinemascope", "21∶9" etc.), while the standard horizontal resolution, e.g. 1920 pixels, is usually kept. The vertical resolution is usually a multiple of 8 or 16 pixels due to most video codecs processing pixels on such sized blocks. A widescreen FHD video can be 1920 × 800 for a 12∶5 ratio or 1920 × 1040 for roughly 1.85 × 1, for instance.

LCD panels" resolutions are often quoted in terms of raw subpixels, misnamed "pixels" in manufacturer"s specifications. Each real pixel includes one subpixel for each of three colors, so calling subpixels "pixels" inflates the claimed resolution by a factor of three. This bit of marketing obfuscation is calculated as horizontal resolution × vertical resolution × 3. For example: 640 × 480 VGA is 921,600 subpixels, or 307,200 pixels, 800 × 600 SVGA is 1,440,000 subpixels, or 480,000 pixels, and 1024 × 768 XGA is 2,359,296 subpixels, but only 786,432 full-color pixels.

Why you can trust Tom"s HardwareOur expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.Determine your monitor’s main purpose: gaming, professional or general use. Generally, gamers should prioritize fast refresh rates and low response times, professionals should prioritize color accuracy and general use users have less specific needs but will often opt for a monitor with a high-contrast VA panel.The higher the resolution, the better the picture. A monitor’s resolution tells you how many pixels a monitor has in width x height format. 1920 x 1080 (also known as 1080p, Full HD (FHD) and HD) is the minimum you need. But you"ll get sharper images with QHD and even sharper with 4K.Size matters too.Pixel density has a big impact on monitor quality, and our sweet spot is 109 pixels per inch (ppi). A larger monitor will have low pixel density if it"s a lower resolution. For viewing from typical desktop distances, 32 inches is plenty ‘big." It’s not hard to find a 32-inch gaming or general use monitor at 4K resolution for under $1,000.Refresh rates: bigger is better. This tells you the number of times your monitor updates with new information per second and is measured in hertz (Hz). Bigger numbers equal better, smoother, less choppy images. Refresh rate is especially important for gamers, who"ll want a monitor with at least 75 Hz (most monitors designed for gaming offer at least 120 Hz), combined with the lowest response time you can find. If you’re not gaming, a 60 Hz refresh rate should do.Response times: Shorter is better, but it"s not a big priority unless you’re gaming. Response time tells you how long a monitor takes to change individual pixels from black to white or, if its GTG response time, from one shade of gray to another. Longer response times can mean motion blur when gaming or watching fast-paced videos. For gaming monitors, the highest response time you’ll likely see is 5ms, while the fastest gaming monitors can have a 0.5ms response time.Panel tech: For image quality, TN < IPS < VA. TN monitors are the fastest but cheapest, due to poorer image quality when viewing from a side angle. IPS monitors have slightly faster response times and show color better than VA panels, but VA monitors have the best contrast out of all three panel types. For more on the difference between panel types, see the dedicated section below.Consider a curved monitor.Curved monitors are supposed to make your experience more immersive with a large field of view(opens in new tab) and are said to be less eye-straining. However, they can be prone to glare when viewing from certain angles (light sources are coming from various angles instead of one). Effective curved monitors are usually ultrawide and at least 30 inches, which both point to higher costs.

Images on an LCD panel are comprised of millions of tiny dots. Each pixel consists of three sub-pixels, one for each primary color. A monitor’s resolution provides a screen’s length x width in pixels. The more pixels you can pack into each square-inch of a monitor, the more realistic and smooth the image. A higher resolution (QHD or better) is important if you want a monitor that"s bigger than 27 inches.

You can tell how many pixels a monitor has based on the name of its resolution. Some resolutions have multiple names. Below are the most common monitor resolutions you’ll encounter from best (highest number of pixels) to worst (least number of pixels). Except where noted, we’re talking about a 16:9 aspect ratio.

There are three major LCD technologies used in today’s PC monitors: twisted nematic (TN(opens in new tab)), vertical alignment (VA(opens in new tab)) and in-plane switching (IPS)(opens in new tab). Each has several variations that offer different advantages. We won’t get into the intricacies of how these differing panels work. Instead, the chart below explains how each impacts image quality and the best use cases for each panel.

While that graph should be enough to make a quick decision on panel type, if you want to dive deeper, consider the following:Contrast is the most important factor in image quality and reliability (5,000:1 is better than 1,000:1). As such, we consider VA panels to offer the best image quality among VA, IPS and TN.We’ve reviewed plenty of TN screens that can hold their own in the color department with more expensive IPS and VA displays. While the general perception is that TN offers less accurate color and contrast than VA and IPS panels, there’s a chance you won’t notice the difference. Many gaming monitors use TN panels for their speed. We’ve found that color quality differs by price more than it does by panel tech.

Both gaming and professional monitors are more than qualified to serve as general use displays. But if you want to avoid spending extra money on a specialized monitor, you need something that works well for every kind of computing, entertainment and productivity. Here’s how to decide what’s best for you:Contrast is king, so VA panels are too. We consider contrast the first measure of image quality, followed by color saturation, accuracy and resolution. When a display has a large dynamic range, the picture is more realistic and 3D-like. VA panels typically offer 3-5 times the contrast of IPS or TN screens. If you place a VA and IPS monitor next to each other with matched brightness levels and calibration standards, the VA screen will easily win in terms of image quality.Consider flicker-free if you"ll be staring at the screen for over 8 hours. They won’t flicker at any brightness level, so even those particularly sensitive to flickering will be pleased.Low blue light isn’t a buying point. Most operating systems, including Windows 10(opens in new tab), have modes for reducing blue light, based on the theory that blue light interferes with sleep. But although many monitors offer this feature, it"s not necessary. Low blue light can make a computer image less straining on your eyes, but so can accurate calibration. And since reducing blue brightness also affects all other colors, you may experience an unnatural look in graphics and photos. This is especially distracting in games and videos. There"s no need to prioritize low blue light, but it’s becoming harder to find monitors without it.

What bit-depth do I need?Higher is better, and professionals need at least 10-bits. An 8-bit panel won’t cut it for most professional graphics work. If possible, opt for 12-bit. For more, see our article on the difference between 10 and 12-bit(opens in new tab).A deep color monitor won’t do you any good if your graphics card can’t output a 10- or 12-bit signal. Yes, the monitor will fill in the extra information, but only by interpolation. Just as with pixel scaling, a display can’t add information that isn’t there in the first place; it can only approximate. Many consumer-grade graphics cards are limited to 8-bit output.

A 1920 x 1080 native resolution screen will often be referred to as ‘Full HD.’ However, there are also ‘HD Ready’ screens that will have lower native resolutions.

The shape of the pixels can be round, square or rectangle, and because of this, ‘HD ready’ screens can have different resolutions like 1280 x 720, 1366 x 768 or 1024 x 768.

A standard definition TV transmission used to be the most common type of TV picture, although it has been widely replaced by high-definition transmissions.

People ask a common question before they buy a new high-definition TV: Can they still watch things that aren’t in high-definition? The answer is – of course you can!

Even though we now have even higher resolution content, true 1080p images are still not that common. They can still only be transmitted by a relatively small number of sources:

These are all regarded as high-definition image resolutions, and they will all look fantastic on your HD flat panel TV – even though they have different amounts of pixel information.

A rough rule of thumb is that if you are further away than 1.5 times the diagonal screen size, you will struggle to tell the difference between the various HD resolutions.

Because a TV has to handle a few different image resolutions, the quality of the internal processing can be as important as the native resolution of the screen.

And, as most people will find it hard to tell the difference between different resolutions of HD material, you shouldn’t get too hung up on the number of pixels of the screen you buy.

Most modern TVs have a resolution of 4K – which is 3840 x 2160 pixels. This will give you an excellent level of detail. In fact, for most people, older HDTVs with lower resolutions like 720p and 1080p will still provide an awesome picture.

Find the native resolution of your monitor. Knowing the native resolution of your monitor will help you quickly get the clearest image. In Windows 7, 8, and most versions OS X, the recommended resolution will be labeled. Below are some common resolutions for monitors:

Desktop widescreen monitors are usually 1920 x 1080, though 2560 x 1440 and 3440 x 1440 are becoming more popular. Older 4:3 flat panels may be 1280 x 1024.

Change your resolution using the slider. Clicking the "Resolution" drop-down menu in Windows 7 and 8 will display the slider. Drag the slider to change the display resolution on your monitor. Resolutions other than the recommended one will result in a blurry, stretched, or squished image.

Ask yourself this question: What will my team use the monitor for? Unless they need to do a lot of design work or create and edit visual content, you can skate by with a 1920 x 1080 resolution display. It"s one of the most common sizes used for computer monitors and perfect for tasks that aren"t visually heavy, like typing documents and Excel sheets.