16:10 vs 16:9 No Doubt About It

[Bacon1]

Lots of people, myself included, use a portrait monitor to get better vertical height, nothing wrong with the 5:4 I used to have one. Does seem pretty outdated these days though.

I prefer ultra-wide (for side-by-side documents / gaming immersion) though.

 

[C1]

So "Life Touch", a major local photography business doing photo directories (big deal as typically one of these jobs costs $20+ grand), displays to the customer the candidate pixes on a 5:4 Dell.

Do people on Anandtech work for a living ????

 

[bystander36]

Increasing the size does nothing. A 24" 1200p monitor has more real estate then a 27" 1080p monitor. You have to step up to 1440p to make up for the loss.

Real estate is the size of the canvas, not the pixel count. If you have a 27" screen, you'd scale the desktop so that everything is the same size as the 24" 1200p screen, and as a result, have more room for icons.

In games, the height of your view area will show the same the same field of view, then they'll scale the width to the aspect ratio of your monitor, giving the 27" 1080p screen a wider field of view, and the same vertical field of view, but the 1080p monitor will have fewer pixels in that vertical field of view.

The actual real estate is the square inches of the monitor.

 

[moonbogg]

I think ultrawide 21:9 will catch like wildfire. Its far superior to the boxy aspect ratios. 16:9 feels super boxy to me now. 21:9 makes more sense and feels more natural. Its because my eyes are spaced apart horizontally. Unless you have an eye below your nose and another one centered on your forehead, boxy aspect ratios disagree with your anatomy.

 

[Bacon1]

I think ultrawide 21:9 will catch like wildfire

Yep, took me a while to upgrade to one from 30" 16:10, but it is awesome and I use my 2 side monitors much less now, sometimes only one and the other stays off.

Anyone who hasn't tried 21:9 for a few days is missing out. Its best for work and gaming, as 2x side by side documents which are basically full screen @ 1720 x 1440 each is great for productivity, and the full screen is super immersive while gaming.

 

[moonbogg]

Yep, took me a while to upgrade to one from 30" 16:10, but it is awesome and I use my 2 side monitors much less now, sometimes only one and the other stays off.

Anyone who hasn't tried 21:9 for a few days is missing out. Its best for work and gaming, as 2x side by side documents which are basically full screen @ 1720 x 1440 each is great for productivity, and the full screen is super immersive while gaming.

Yep, fully agree on all counts. Its supremely badass for all applications. I also think its just about perfect as far as aspect ratios reaching their logical conclusion for a 2D viewing experience. Any wider than this and it would start to become uncomfortable to use as a single screen. It would have to curve around you pretty hard if it was any wider and would start to look like a multi monitor setup. I think 21:9 is perfect.

 

[FelixDeCat]

You were force fed 16:9 by manufacturers back in the late 2000s and have adopted to it. Sad, really.

 

[Abwx]

Probably the most forgettable aspect ratio that ever existed. If for gaming/movies, you will either have to accept missing periphery or put up with black bars above and below a smaller image. Sorry, cant help but feel the need for a massive face-palm at the mention of that aberration of an aspect ratio.

This is much better to dislay a web page or any text, 16/9 in laptops for instance is ridiculously large and lack height wich make browsing uncomfortable, indeed the purely artificial 16/9 format has no other raison d' etre than to maximise the profit of panel manufacturers as it allow better yields than 5/4 or 16/10, it was presented as the best thing since sliced bread but it s actually a regression for the consumer.

 

[moonbogg]

The "P" in 1200p stand for pixels, thus the pixel count. Furthermore, 8:5 is the greatest aspect ratio ever invented for home computers. Only newbs use 16:9.

You were force fed 16:9 by manufacturers back in the late 2000s and have adopted to it. Sad, really.

Actually, you can't fool me like that. There is no 8:5 and never has been. You'll want proof but I can't argue about it now. I have to study for next week's math subject. We'll be starting fractions.

 

[rancherlee]

"The Wider, The Better" for me personally. Built my home theater with a 2.35:1 screen and plan on getting an 34" Ultrawide monitor soon. I replaced my 21" 5:4 with a 27" 16:9 and still have the same height but the added width is great for gaming and having 2 documents/web browsers side by side.

 

[guachi]

The "P" in 1200p stand for pixels, thus the pixel count. Furthermore, 8:5 is the greatest aspect ratio ever invented for home computers. Only newbs use 16:9.

You were force fed 16:9 by manufacturers back in the late 2000s and have adopted to it. Sad, really.

The 'p' in 1200p stands for 'progressive' as opposed to 'i' which stood for 'interlaced'

My first monitor was interlaced at its highest resolution - 1024x768. My last CRT TV was also interlaced at its highest resolution - 1920x1080.

In fact, broadcast TV is still interlaced at 1920x1080

 

[Blue_Max]

I think ultrawide 21:9 will catch like wildfire. Its far superior to the boxy aspect ratios. 16:9 feels super boxy to me now. 21:9 makes more sense and feels more natural. Its because my eyes are spaced apart horizontally. Unless you have an eye below your nose and another one centered on your forehead, boxy aspect ratios disagree with your anatomy.

Considering how awesome it is for movies, I'm a little surprised there aren't any/many consumer TV's in that aspect ratio!

Heh... remember when HDTV was new and people watching a standard TV signal on their 16:9 stretched out "fat" faces? Imagine that stretched out even further to 21:9!

 

[Thinker_145]

Considering how awesome it is for movies, I'm a little surprised there aren't any/many consumer TV's in that aspect ratio!

Heh... remember when HDTV was new and people watching a standard TV signal on their 16:9 stretched out "fat" faces? Imagine that stretched out even further to 21:9!

Because it's not awesome for TV shows which I believe are more popular these days than movies for home viewing.

People are used to having black bars on top and bottom. Black bars on the sides would remind me of watching 4:3 content on 16:9.

But no doubt 21:9 will be awesome for games. Do all single player games these days support those resolutions? Playing a game with any sort of black bars would really suck as it was one of the primary reasons I ditched 16:10 for 16:9.

Sent from my HTC One M9

 

[swilli89]

so many notebooks have ginormous bezels along the bottom of the screen, i have to imagine you could put a 16:10 screen in without much effort. then you'd have more screen and (at a similar DPI) more pixels!



well, yeah, the monitor with significantly higher DPI for a given size is going to have more pixels, but that's eliding the question. with similar DPIs, the more square monitor is going to offer not just more screen area in square inches, but also more pixels. a 27" 2560x1600 screen has more pixels than a 27" 2560x1440 screen. and is bigger.

So much this! 16:10 is so much better than 16:9, it just simply is.

 

[Atari2600]

Anyone who hasn't tried 21:9 for a few days is missing out. Its best for work and gaming, as 2x side by side documents which are basically full screen @ 1720 x 1440 each is great for productivity, and the full screen is super immersive while gaming.

That doesn't give me more vertical space though.

I find having 2048 pixels vertical is brilliant. Graphs and code especially.

It'd be better if it were more like 3072 vertical or something similar (which would be a 4:3) - that would mean each quarter can display a full size doc. Unfortunately that'll never happen.

 

[amenx]

1440p vs 1600p: if you need the extra 160 vert pixels, go for it. Never been bothered about it when on 1440p. Most users are still on 1080p and not bothered by it. Currently on 2160p and dont feel any big practical benefit of the extra vert pixels, but I'm not a productivity guy.

 

[2is]

This thread is from 2016...

 

[Guru]

I'm on Samsung's SyncMaster T200, 1050p and 16:10 resolution. It's actually really good in games as it has a bigger bottom and top screen area, though as some1 else said, if you are buying a bigger monitor with higher resolution you get bigger view area anyways.

 

[senseamp]

Dell's new 2 in 1 XPS is 1920x1200. Maybe the scourge of 16:9 ratio screens is coming to an end.
I held on to my last 1920x1200 at work for ages, until the company stopped supporting windows XP and forced me to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 trash. PC makers basically let Apple to take over the pro market by going to 16:9 ratio. I mean they should have been embarrassed to have those giant useless bottom bezels on a portable device. Especially when Dell moved the stupid nosecam to the bottom to make top bezel smaller, but kept 16:9, so it still looked lame compared to a MacBook. How stupid was that, eliminate to bezel only to have giant bezel on the bottom, and webcam in the wrong place. Duh. Only Microsoft and Huawei figured out that 16:9 AR screen laptop is by definition a movie watching toy, not a professional product. But it looks like others are starting to get a clue.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Dell's new 2 in 1 XPS is 1920x1200. Maybe the scourge of 16:9 ratio screens is coming to an end.
I held on to my last 1920x1200 at work for ages, until the company stopped supporting windows XP and forced me to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 trash. PC makers basically let Apple to take over the pro market by going to 16:9 ratio. I mean they should have been embarrassed to have those giant useless bottom bezels on a portable device. Especially when Dell moved the stupid nosecam to the bottom to make top bezel smaller, but kept 16:9, so it still looked lame compared to a MacBook. How stupid was that, eliminate to bezel only to have giant bezel on the bottom, and webcam in the wrong place. Duh. Only Microsoft and Huawei figured out that 16:9 AR screen laptop is by definition a movie watching toy, not a professional product. But it looks like others are starting to get a clue.

Meh, just put taskbar on the left side of the screen instead of the bottom and your usable application area becomes 16:10.

 

[Midwayman]

I used to be die-hard 16:10. When you were talking 1080p vs 1200, it was a noticeable difference.

Then I got a 1440p monitor. Not only does it have more vertical space than the 1200 16:10, I can now comfortably work on two documents on the same monitor. 8:9 is great for most web and page oriented content.

 

[DominionSeraph]

16:9 is utter crap for working with video:
4:3? Oooh, look -- tiny.
16:9? No way to fullscreen while having access to any tools.

16:10 can fullscreen a 16:9 video while leaving the Windows taskbar up.

 

[Avalon]

I do prefer 16:10, but I'm getting used to 16:9 on my monitor. My old monitor is a 24" Dell Ultrasharp U2412m 1920x1200, and my new monitor i picked up last month is a Nixeus 27" EDG27 2560x1440. On the plus side, the height of the 27" 16:9 monitor is virtually the same height as my 24" Dell, so it's not triggering my OCD by being too noticeably a different height. I think as long as you're getting a 16:9 monitor that's bigger than the 16:10 you had before it, you'll be fine for the most part.

 

[senseamp]

Meh, just put taskbar on the left side of the screen instead of the bottom and your usable application area becomes 16:10.

There is premium experience out of the box and then there are hacks. Just look at the inch thick bottom bezels on modern laptops, that space is just being wasted because they are too cheap to go with 16:10 screen.

 

[ElFenix]

There is premium experience out of the box and then there are hacks. Just look at the inch thick bottom bezels on modern laptops, that space is just being wasted because they are too cheap to go with 16:10 screen.

Yup, complete utter garbage. Surface is 3:2. Now there's a proper aspect ratio.