Any Interest in Lower Aspect Ratio Laptops?

Hardware
1

Does anyone else want laptops with lower aspect ratio screens (i.e. 3:2 or even 4:3)? I’m looking enviously at ChromeBook laptops and Surface tablets with their 3:2 screens.

I spend far more time reading and coding than watching 1080p video. The additional width goes to waste and height becomes a premium.

2 Likes
2

I would love a 3:2 or a 16:10 screen, but 4:3 is a bit too square for me. I won’t be in the market to buy such a device for a while though.

3

Definitly 16:10. Havent used 3:2 yet. But in my opinion an often overseen part of apples macbook sucsess is the 16:10 screen. Wich boost the productivite and gives space for the bigger trackpad which is so often called the best.

Even on desktops i try to only buy 16:10 monitors. Which isn‘t easy either. There is still no 4k 16:10 monitor on the consumer market. ( There are $10k+ pro monitors)

It‘s by the way the same argument as goning fir a 18:9 phone scren instead if 16:9. More vertical space

4

Yes! Anything less is, as Benjamin Mako Hill noted, a swindle.

5

I’m all for lower aspect ratio displays. I would venture a guess that most of the Librem owners use their machines primary for text based work, be it programming, writing or just browsing the web in general.

The question is how much such displays cost? I would guess that they’re manufactured in smaller quantities.

6

I bet one could make a fortune selling 3840 x 0 pixel laptops and advertise them as having an “infinite aspect ratio”.

7

16:10 is my ideal ratio. It’s nice to see a lower ratio trend from some manufacturers. I agree with @patch that 4:3 is too square.

8

My constraint is that it has to fit in a practical bag, and I tend to use backpacks that have internal dimensions close to a 2:3 aspect ratio. I suppose that must be close to the aspect ratio of my back, or just a generally convenient size.

16:10 or 3:2 is therefore the best fit for my bag if I want to carry the largest screen possible. 16:9 wastes space in the short dimension. 4:3 would waste space in the long dimension.

9

I configure my workstation to display portrait instead of landscape to get more lines of code on the monitors at work. I hope to be able to do the same with a Librem 12 depending on the design.