Laptop LCD Roundup: Road Warriors Deserve Better

Response Times

Another topic that almost always comes up with LCDs is their response times, especially when compared to CRTs. Of course, on notebook computers technologies like CRTs are not a viable option - not unless you want to haul around one of those old 40 pound Compaq boxes with a 4" display that hides behind the fold down keyboard? (Ed: ah, those were good times!) While even the best desktop LCDs still exhibit some slight pixel smearing, the vast majority of users are okay with the level of performance now available. Considering that laptops now seem to be lagging behind desktops by a couple years in terms of quality and features, though, how do the laptop LCDs fare?

Since we were unable to send the same image simultaneously to multiple laptop displays, we resorted to simply taking pictures of a familiar scene from 3DMark03. We used the first game test in part because it has higher contrast images that make the frame transitions more visible, but also because at least one of the laptops struggled to get above 60 frames per second even at seriously reduced resolution and quality settings. (We ran the MSI at 640x400 rather than the native 1280x800 because the IGP would otherwise average in the low teens on frame rates, resulting in overlapping frames. The other laptops were run at their native resolutions and experienced no difficulties with this rather old benchmark.) We took numerous pictures on each laptop, and then selected one that seemed to best represent the performance. Here are the images we captured:

ASUS A8Js ASUS G2P Dell XPS M1710 MSI S271

Click to enlarge

We couldn't find any manufacturer specifications suggesting what sort of response times we should be experiencing with any of these laptops, but judging by the above images we would venture to say that a rating of 25ms or lower would be appropriate. You can clearly see at least three frames on every one of the laptops, sometimes more. The A8Js and XPS M1710 both show four frames, although at least one of the frames is barely visible on each laptop. Since we also have to account for shutter lag on the camera, we would say that these two laptops appear to take around two frame updates resulting in an approximate response time of 33ms. The G2P and S271 on the other hand appear to take somewhere between one and two frame updates, giving them a response time of between 16ms and 33ms.

Considering that some of these notebooks really won't be used for gaming anyway (particularly the MSI S271), response time is not necessarily a critical factor. However, we certainly wish an "extreme gaming" laptop like the Dell XPS M1710 could provide better response times, and more importantly better overall display quality.