how bad is the screen on the t430, really?

[Fayd]

I need a new laptop for school. i'm entering a statistics master's program, and the laptop i have won't cut it for what i need to do. (acer aspire 722. amd c50, 12" screen, terrible keyboard, screen that isn't viewable at any angle.)

i'm looking at the t430 right now, with academic pricing and the loadout i want, i get it for $941.

that includes:
i5-3210 processor
win7 home premium
1600x900 screen
nvidia NVS5400 graphics (mainly looking for cuda cores. may not be necessary or helpful, don't know for certain)
4 gb ram (i'll upgrade that myself)
and trick it out with the webcam, upgraded wifi, backlit keyboard, etc.

my main concern is how the screen is. obviously it's not IPS, but the laptop i have now, the vertical viewing angles are so bad that at any angle, looking at the screen no matter where you're looking from, not all of the screen is actually viewable at proper brightness/contrast. you have to raise/lower your head to see the bottom/top of the screen properly. i want to make sure it's of decent quality.

and of course, if anyone has a better suggestion for a laptop, i'm all ears.

 

[lakedude]

I need a new laptop for school. i'm entering a statistics master's program, and the laptop i have won't cut it for what i need to do. (acer aspire 722. amd c50, 12" screen, terrible keyboard, screen that isn't viewable at any angle.)

i'm looking at the t430 right now, with academic pricing and the loadout i want, i get it for $941.

that includes:
i5-3210 processor
win7 home premium
1600x900 screen
nvidia NVS5400 graphics (mainly looking for cuda cores. may not be necessary or helpful, don't know for certain)
4 gb ram (i'll upgrade that myself)
and trick it out with the webcam, upgraded wifi, backlit keyboard, etc.

my main concern is how the screen is. obviously it's not IPS, but the laptop i have now, the vertical viewing angles are so bad that at any angle, looking at the screen no matter where you're looking from, not all of the screen is actually viewable at proper brightness/contrast. you have to raise/lower your head to see the bottom/top of the screen properly. i want to make sure it's of decent quality.

and of course, if anyone has a better suggestion for a laptop, i'm all ears.

That price does not look bad, but it is not spectacular either. You might want to do a little shopping around say at NewEgg or other retailers...

 

[Fayd]

That price does not look bad, but it is not spectacular either. You might want to do a little shopping around say at NewEgg or other retailers...

the price gets heavily bumped by the minor upgrades that retailers don't put in, along with the 3 year warranty.

 

[lakedude]

Are you big on that graphics card for any reason? It is like a slowed down version of the 540m Fermi card which is generally not suggested for laptops due to high power draw.

At that price you could get perhaps a 660 which is based on the newer 28nm process. The 660 is a much better card and it will draw less power because of the 28nm process.

I guess you are putting your money into the chassis and the screen which is not a bad idea but I'd hate to drop a grand on a laptop that didn't have some nice graphics.

Of course the some of the "improvements" on the new models did result in a reduction of GL and compute performance so maybe that NVS5400 is just what you need?

 

[kevinsbane]

I need a new laptop for school. i'm entering a statistics master's program, and the laptop i have won't cut it for what i need to do. (acer aspire 722. amd c50, 12" screen, terrible keyboard, screen that isn't viewable at any angle.)

i'm looking at the t430 right now, with academic pricing and the loadout i want, i get it for $941

....

my main concern is how the screen is. obviously it's not IPS, but the laptop i have now, the vertical viewing angles are so bad that at any angle, looking at the screen no matter where you're looking from, not all of the screen is actually viewable at proper brightness/contrast. you have to raise/lower your head to see the bottom/top of the screen properly. i want to make sure it's of decent quality.

and of course, if anyone has a better suggestion for a laptop, i'm all ears.

Check out this comparison of the screen quality between the X1 Carbon and the T430.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyjyXZA1oa4

I don't know if that means that the T430's screen is bad, or just that the X1 Carbon's is really good. I'm inclined to think it's the latter, as the X1 Carbon often gets favourably compared to the Macbook Air 13" in screen quality.

 

[Connoisseur]

if it's anything like the t420 screen, it's not that great; standard TN issues. It's bright and everything but viewing angles suck the big one. Even a few degrees (in the vertical especially) affects the brightness and contrast pretty significantly. It works for corporations because you're mostly sitting at a desk all the time.

 

[Bryf50]

From the research i did when i bought my laptop, its pretty bad. Sadly Windows laptops with even just decent TN screens are the exception rather than the norm. Expect terrible viewing angles, terrible color accuracy, a sub 200:1 contrast ratio(brightness might be decent but black levels are terrible), and an odd screen door effect(if its anything like some of the other cheap 1600x900 screens I've seen).

 

[akugami]

The panel is really not that great. I'm typing this post on a T430. Similarly tricked out to what you want, without the backlit keyboard. It has a Thinklight which shines from top of laptop to keyboard. I'm not going to be working in the dark all that much...

Viewing angles are typical mediocre TN panel quality. There is a noticeable color shift at just a few degrees off of the center.

Colors are not great.

There IS a screen door effect, and that's with the 1600x900 screen. I can't imagine what the "normal" panel that they use would look like.

With all of that said, it all depends on what you want from this laptop.

If what you need is mainly word processing or other office productivity related tasks, this laptop will be very good.

The TN panel, for all of its faults is good enough for office related tasks. I've even used it for some quick photo edits where color fidelity is not important. I use a Dell 2407WFP as my main monitor on my desktop (still going strong 5+ years later) for some minor photo editing work and gaming. So I do like a great monitor, but I also found the panel on the T430 adequate for my mobile needs. If you absolutely require a better panel, you might need to upgrade to the W530...

The battery life is pretty good but can drain quickly if you're doing anything processor intensive.

Build quality is one of the best I've used in a laptop. Very very little flex on the main body of the laptop. The lcd panel part could use a little bit of reinforcing though but feels very solid when closed. It would add weight and size as well too.

The keyboard is fantastic for a laptop and while it does take a little getting used to, it is probably the best chiclet keyboard I've used. I still prefer a normal desktop keyboard and am thinking of picking up a mechanical keyboard just to try those out.

I don't have the backlit keyboard but it comes with the Thinklight (FN+Space) as standard. This will shine a light down on the laptop keyboard for aiding visibility of the keys.

@lakedude, The NVS5400 (which I also got) is the max on this laptop.