After testing laptops for well over a decade, we've seen our fair share of configurations and traits that have thankfully died or are on their way to being six feet under. Here are some of our old favorites.https://www.notebookcheck.net/Old-laptop-features-that-we-hope-will-never-come-back.635258.0.html
QuoteRGBW/WRGB Panels
Almost all macro photos of Amoled panels indicate exactly the same cynical deception with the declared resolution compared to RGB IPS. Forget about 280+ ppi on "4K" AMOLED 15.6. Moreover, all AMOLED flicker at a low frequency (50-250Hz typically), harming eyes and nervous system (someone faster, someone slowly, as smoking develops the increased risk of cancer), and there where DC Dimming is used - forget about the "endless" contrast, how they like to boast of cunning marketers. We go further. All AMOLED today have a 2 time worst resource in hours for than a typical IPS (from max brightness drop to 50%). And all AMOLED today in glossy - all The glare and fatigue of the eyes and nervous system are also yours. Well, on the snack - almost all AMOLED (and especially options with "DC Dimming") are very poorly calibrated. The scatter in colors, as reviews on this site almost never fit into dE<2. Moreover, in dark shades is still worse.
Do you need such a future in monitors and laptop panels? I definitely don't. But on smartphones we have already been sentenced to such a future manufacturers without asking our opinion - buy a smartphone with an good IPS panel (with native contrast from 1500:1), as on my old, now it has become almost unrealistic in the middle and top segment, so that without fatigue of the eyes and damage to the view, to calmly read the news from the screen of the smartphone..
QuoteOptical Drives and HDDs
I have nothing against the disappearance of HDD in laptops, although as a capacious (the cheapest one at the same time, despite the increase average prices, since 2015, as the Forbes analyst proved) and a more reliable, long -term period of time storage, it is still non -alternative . Also, flash drives ousted DVD/BD discs. But the need for reliable media did not decrease and exponentially increased for all consumers from the growth of the volumes of stored data. Clouds and the like mate are for idiots who do not care about their data ...
QuoteProprietary AC Adapters
I have nothing against the disappearance of proprietary AC adapters in smartphones and in laptops. But listen - the unreliable usb-C plug perpendicular to the body of laptop is the worst of invented by the engineers. To break such a plug is elementary, because the cable with him rintes to the side and by irony, laptops manufacturers do not make it angular, like previously reliable round power plugs, and even a splash, on the left side of laptop where right-handed peoples have legs (which most on the planet is on the planet) with using laptop on the sofa. As if it is aim - to break out faster or a power plug or a usb-c port. Is it a conspiracy or stupidity of manufacturers? Decide for yourself ...
QuoteNvidia SLI and AMD Dual Graphics
I have not been a player for a long time, too old, but the owners of AMD laptops still feel infringed compared to the owners of laptops with Intel processors, because The latter often have TB3.0-4.0 port with EGPU, i.e. The opportunity even on a business laptop without a discrete card, connect an external desktop level video card and play (use 3D and computing power of the desktop chip). But it is surprising that many consumers do not pay attention to when buying such a clear loss with AMD platform for the future. Apparently consumerism has done its black deal - it is easier for an ordinary gamers to buy a new laptop than to bother about this feature...
QuoteTN Panels
Again, I have nothing against it, but many consumers do not know that the interpixel distance on TN is less than on IPS and the picture looks more monolithic, even with a slightly lower resolution than on IPS. I personally convinced this with a good TN from Samsung 1680x1050 15.4" vs. all panels 1920x1080 15.6 IPS class. Until you see this personally, it is difficult to argue about the taste of oysters ... At the same time, horizontal viewing angles at that old TN from Samsung were even better, than on the current shameful "IPS" with 45% NTSC and even some 72%. Well, what can I say? A good panel is always visible at first glance and most often it costs slightly larger than the average level ...
PS, but there is still a darkness of nuances in hardware, which only an expert knows about ...
Buy a laptop with eyes, ears and tactile. Do not buy such things remotely (and still never buy HDD - the most delicate product in the world), if you can't guaranteed to return it to the seller without money losses.
The f*** are you hating on optical drives for? Optical Media is far superior to that of streaming. I mean if it's a cheap computer it's gonna have cheap parts. Optical drives are great. So I'm not sure why you're hating on the simple fact that you can't go wrong with optical Media. Much faster than a USB stick.
I totaly disagree with the opinion on USB-C chargers. I just ordered anew laptop and I specifically chose one with a proprierary charger because USB-C ports are so vulnerable and hard to replace.
USB-C charging on my T490 which is 2,5 years old already failed because it got worn down and the laptop had to go for a motherboard swap.
So no, I do not appreciate USB-C charging if it is done the way it is now on most laptops - with no way of replacing the connector.
Quote from: NikoB on July 18, 2022, 01:41:32QuoteRGBW/WRGB Panels
Almost all macro photos of Amoled panels indicate exactly the same cynical deception with the declared resolution compared to RGB IPS. Forget about 280+ ppi on "4K" AMOLED 15.6. Moreover, all AMOLED flicker at a low frequency (50-250Hz typically), harming eyes and nervous system (someone faster, someone slowly, as smoking develops the increased risk of cancer), and there where DC Dimming is used - forget about the "endless" contrast, how they like to boast of cunning marketers. We go further. All AMOLED today have a 2 time worst resource in hours for than a typical IPS (from max brightness drop to 50%). And all AMOLED today in glossy - all The glare and fatigue of the eyes and nervous system are also yours. Well, on the snack - almost all AMOLED (and especially options with "DC Dimming") are very poorly calibrated. The scatter in colors, as reviews on this site almost never fit into dE<2. Moreover, in dark shades is still worse.
Do you need such a future in monitors and laptop panels? I definitely don't. But on smartphones we have already been sentenced to such a future manufacturers without asking our opinion - buy a smartphone with an good IPS panel (with native contrast from 1500:1), as on my old, now it has become almost unrealistic in the middle and top segment, so that without fatigue of the eyes and damage to the view, to calmly read the news from the screen of the smartphone..
Most laptop OLED panels have a unique red, green, and blue subpixel per pixel so you're getting the full resolution. They're just not in a stripe layout.
The RGBW/WRGB layout being complained about in this article is where each white subpixel is shared between adjacent groups of RGB subpixels. This is different from LG's OLED TV WRGB layout where each pixel has a unique red, green, blue, and white subpixel. That is also full resolution.
The only misleading OLED pixel layouts (pentile) I'm currently aware of are used in phones and tablets.
Optical drives are still required, Not everyone works on up to date hardware.
In any industry with air-gapped hardware/instruments the use of optical drives becomes essential.
Scientific research in universities involve a wide variety of "new "to "age-old" instruments that are too costly to replace and too difficult to find engineers to fix whenever there is a software or hardware failure. These instruments do not permit usb drives. Mostly due to poor user habits and the risk of viruses that would cripple their old operating systems. There's one engineer for all of southeast-asia with the training to fix an instrument in our university without which the chemistry department is essentially shut down.
I regularly need to transfer data to and from these machines. Mine is one of the last generation of laptops with optical drives. I would like the option of optical drives to be available for professional laptops. Need not be for all but a modular attachment like in the old thinkpad series.
On another note HDD's should go the way of the dinosaur.
Though I do appreciate convenience & breadth of choice, streaming is no way to enjoy your favorites. So if I'm going to re-watch the classic X-Men, it better be an X-Men 1.5 DVD - with all the extra's - and not some shabby Netflix rip.
Quote from: NikoB on July 18, 2022, 01:41:32The opportunity even on a business laptop without a discrete card, connect an external desktop level video card and play (use 3D and computing power of the desktop chip).
eGPUs have proven to be an extremely niche thing for selected geeks, they never made it to mass market. And from a cost-performance perspective, you can usually
benefit more from selling your older laptop and upgrading to a newer model than from purchasing an eGPU dock + a discrete GPU. If for consumers who purchase laptops on an AMD platform a TB connection is irrelevant, then why bother?
Quote from: NikoB on July 18, 2022, 01:41:32but many consumers do not know that the interpixel distance on TN is less than on IPS and the picture looks more monolithic, even with a slightly lower resolution than on IPS. I personally convinced this with a good TN from Samsung 1680x1050 15.4" vs. all panels 1920x1080 15.6 IPS class. Until you see this personally, it is difficult to argue about the taste of oysters ... At the same time, horizontal viewing angles at that old TN from Samsung were even better, than on the current shameful "IPS" with 45% NTSC and even some 72%.
This is just some kind of non-sense. What the heck does it mean for a picture to look more "monolithic"? I've never seen this term, but I think most people would agree that 1680x1050 looks grainy on a 15" screen regardless of its quality. The pixel density is calculated the same for TNs and IPS anyways: its number of pixels divided by screen size. It would be good to know the model of this mystical Samsung laptop. Also, Samsung makes PLS panels, maybe it was this panel rather than TN? Also, no IPS has viewing angle of 72%, not to say 45%. And what the heck is 45% NTSC horizontal viewing angle? Do you mean color gamut coverage? NO TN
in the world can approach even a mediocre IPS when it comes to horizontal viewing angles. The only advantage TNs had were fast response times, which was relevant for gamers. But today's IPS panels are astonishingly fast and leave old TNs in the dust.
I still see a lot of laptops with TN screens, I don't know where you got that data from..
Now write an article "Old laptop features that NEED to come back" e.g. dedicated touchpad buttons, full keyboards with no keys missing or combined with Fn, every feature where usability and function have been compromised by appearance.
My laptop (ROG Strix G15) will never see the MASSIVE power brick removed. It can do 100w over USB-C but otherwise needs a 280w brick. On the upside at least it doesn't need two bricks like some laptops.
You have a very elitist attitude towards optical drives. Optical media is still very important for many people especially those in developing nations that don't necessarily have good Internet connectivity for streaming.
Quote from: Balaji VG on July 18, 2022, 07:31:07I regularly need to transfer data to and from these machines. Mine is one of the last generation of laptops with optical drives. I would like the option of optical drives to be available for professional laptops. Need not be for all but a modular attachment like in the old thinkpad series.
Is there a reason a USB optical drive wouldn't work with your setup?
I can personally confirm TN is better than IPS.
Everyone knows AU Optronics screens are pretty decent. Which is why you find Huawei laptops using them. I have 15.6 inch 1366x768 AUO TN screen laptop (Fujitsu) and also 15.6 inch 1920x1080 AUO IPS screen laptop (Huawei Matebook). The TN screen has better contrast (not how black black is but how much you can tell similar colors apart). Movies/anime look better on the TN screen even at the lower resolution.
OEM stopped using TN panels because they ALL dim the screen by PWM. Consumers are conscious and very wary of PWM today which is why no OEM dares use them. The Fujitsu TN laptop above is no exception, but still kicks the Huawei IPS laptop's butt even in the presence of PWM! Of course, I prefer using the non-flickering laptop, but wrt image quality the IPS screen cannot compare!
The misconception people have is because the TN screen is often lower resolution than IPS, the picture will look grainer and not nice! This is plain wrong. Most IPS subpixels have the shape of a chevron (arrow) while TN subpixels are plain straight rectangles. Which ever dumb idiot engineer thought of this? Why we all gotta suffer because of this? The subpixel shape may explain why even at FHD the IPS screen looks worse than the lower resolution HD TN screen!
HDDs shouldn't go away. Huawei Matebook D 15 is a 15.6 inch ultrathin ultraportable laptop. When you open the laptop up, there is space designed to accommodate a thin HDD drive. This free space is wasted because the system board doesn't have a SATA connection. There isn't a reason why ultrathin laptops cannot provide space for HDD. The Huawei Matebook D 15 (2021 edition) proves you do not have to make any compromises (except being cheap by omitting the license to include a SATA connection on the system board).
HDDs are still cool. Can rewrite as many times as you want without worrying about the data bit cells dying like in SDDs. HDDs are the way to go if you want to run virtual machines. I cannot simply imagine placing a VM on SDDs, the cells will die too quickly from over-writing. Why all OEMs gotta go for inferior (but fast) tech called SDDs? Why can't us consumers have the best of both worlds?
Huawei MateBook is definitely compromised. No informed person would ever buy one. Everyone I know in tech would laugh my head off if I said if I wanted to get one. This is the company that is so dangerous and risky that their products get banned. It's not even manufactured by an actual company: Huawei is a malware operation of the mainland China government.
Don't troll and recommend such dangerous and dubious machines.
I agree with the sentiment on faux K panels 100%. However some of the information here isn't entirely correct.
QuoteSome of these panels, however, would utilize dedicated white subpixels in addition to RGB and so they were not "true" 4K.
These panels did include white dots, and it's absolutely true that they didn't increase density to fit them in the same regions that should already be occupied by RGB. However it's worse: the displays also reduced the total number of dots per denoted pixel to only two: RG then BW (or WR then GB). So the number of effective pixels per row was actually
1920 not 2880.
Really, these panels are best called "RG/BW" and "WR/GB", not "RGBW" and "WRGB". Omitting the slash or other delimiting character fails to properly summarize the issue.
The 2880 case did apply to some LG faux-K TVs.
Indeed, in the article you linked, you can find a comment by me where I already clarified all of this, four years ago. It feels as though I've done my part to correct some of the tangentialities on this subject, so why is Notebookcheck still presenting it inaccurately?
EDIT: The 2880 note has been corrected (removed), so thanks for that! However we still need the terminology updated and a few wordings tuned up.
"Huawei MateBook is definitely compromised."
As opposed to? Let's just assume Americans make crappy laptops the same way they make crappy cars...
Dell -> gone
HP -> gone
And that nobody is an Apple fanboy except the crazies...
Apple -> gone
That only leaves sensible people left with either Acer/Asus or Lenovo or Huawei.
Acer/Asus are known to be budget brands. Nobody in the world thinks of them as luxury or premium items...
Acer -> gone
Asus -> gone
My my that only leaves us with Lenovo or Huawei. It now boils down to choice. I don't know about you but Lenovo is known for hell bent on selling the most laptop they could. That means they rather emphasize marketability than innovation or quality.
Any sensible person can see, outside of Apple, the best laptop they could ever get is a Huawei Matebook!
Quote from: Hunter2020 on July 18, 2022, 22:00:15"Huawei MateBook is definitely compromised."
As opposed to? Let's just assume Americans make crappy laptops the same way they make crappy cars...
Dell -> gone
HP -> gone
And that nobody is an Apple fanboy except the crazies...
Apple -> gone
That only leaves sensible people left with either Acer/Asus or Lenovo or Huawei.
Acer/Asus are known to be budget brands. Nobody in the world thinks of them as luxury or premium items...
Acer -> gone
Asus -> gone
My my that only leaves us with Lenovo or Huawei. It now boils down to choice. I don't know about you but Lenovo is known for hell bent on selling the most laptop they could. That means they rather emphasize marketability than innovation or quality.
Any sensible person can see, outside of Apple, the best laptop they could ever get is a Huawei Matebook!
Ok wumao. Knowing how you are comparing American cars to American computers shows how much you wanna make a point. Also LOL @ you thinking Huawei is a "luxury" brand lmao.
Both Dell and HP have their design offices in Taiwan/USA. Maybe thats why you say they are trash?
Both Dell and HP have solid laptops and computer choices in their corresponding price tag market.
Also, good luck getting a replacement part for that Huawei laptop. 3 years from now, you will throw it away when there are no batteries replacements for it.
Thick bezels, proprietary docking ports, Apple's crappy butterfly keyboard, glossy screens and high pitched fans are all things I hope never to come back.
I don't care for touchscreens and will not buy a laptop with soldered RAM, either.
Quote from: Frog on July 19, 2022, 00:11:20and will not buy a laptop with soldered RAM, either.
We know avg. lifespan of SDRAM sticks to be ~2 years, verbatim. After that, either a generation shifts (DDR4 -> DDR5), or they become way faster (DDR-2667 -> DDR4-3200). Old ones turn to paperweight, or more specifically, electronic waste.
A whole stick (and a socket!) instead of just 4 tiny chips? And what did that accomplish?..
Quote from: Barebooh on July 19, 2022, 06:30:05We know avg. lifespan of SDRAM sticks to be ~2 years, verbatim. After that, either a generation shifts (DDR4 -> DDR5), or they become way faster (DDR-2667 -> DDR4-3200). Old ones turn to paperweight, or more specifically, electronic waste.
A whole stick (and a socket!) instead of just 4 tiny chips? And what did that accomplish?..
If you want to keep using a platform, new developments are irrelevant. Given that processors in laptops are practically universally soldered. Taking advantage of a newer, faster RAM would involve at the very least a new motherboard/ processor. Which typically means a whole new laptop. You're either replacing a faulty module or increasing capacity.
The primary benefit is that you have the option of buying the cheapest memory configuration and replacing it with an aftermarket kit if the factory option is too expensive (and you can't negotiate a sufficient discount) or not available at all (you're still at the mercy of BIOS). Once it's soldered, you have to accept their price and configuration limitations or buy something else. And see how Apple or Microsoft gouge their customers on what should be trivial and cheap upgrades. The end result is that most people buy quite basic configurations and the poor schmucks that need the extra hardware have to pay dearly for it (if it's available at all). Of course, it seems that some people like being gouged and encourage the practice (by buying it).
Oh, I bet your DDR4-2400 sticks from 2017 are super useful right now. Yeah. At least you can always 'upgrade' that crusty, scratched up laptop you have, with its dead battery, cracked hinges and its worn-down keycaps. Splendid.
Quote from: _MT_ on July 19, 2022, 09:17:40Quote from: Barebooh on July 19, 2022, 06:30:05We know avg. lifespan of SDRAM sticks to be ~2 years, verbatim. After that, either a generation shifts (DDR4 -> DDR5), or they become way faster (DDR-2667 -> DDR4-3200). Old ones turn to paperweight, or more specifically, electronic waste.
A whole stick (and a socket!) instead of just 4 tiny chips? And what did that accomplish?..
If you want to keep using a platform, new developments are irrelevant. Given that processors in laptops are practically universally soldered. Taking advantage of a newer, faster RAM would involve at the very least a new motherboard/ processor. Which typically means a whole new laptop. You're either replacing a faulty module or increasing capacity.
Don't forget a lot of mini PCs, such as the NUC type, also use laptop parts. Many of these can use faster RAM with a bios update. Many require buying RAM as well. Some resellers will add the RAM in, but you pay dearly for it, which leads to your next comment ...
QuoteThe primary benefit is that you have the option of buying the cheapest memory configuration and replacing it with an aftermarket kit if the factory option is too expensive (and you can't negotiate a sufficient discount) or not available at all (you're still at the mercy of BIOS). Once it's soldered, you have to accept their price and configuration limitations or buy something else. And see how Apple or Microsoft gouge their customers on what should be trivial and cheap upgrades. The end result is that most people buy quite basic configurations and the poor schmucks that need the extra hardware have to pay dearly for it (if it's available at all). Of course, it seems that some people like being gouged and encourage the practice (by buying it).
I often will upgrade the RAM if it's not soldered on. I too hate soldered RAM. I saved a couple hundred buying the RAM on my own vs having the OEM do it. Downside now is I have 2 SO-DIMMs sitting around doing nothing, but I digress.
A lot of laptops will support faster RAM unofficially. When I upgraded my Acer Predator Helios, it shipped with cheap and slow DDR4, but I upgraded it to DDR4-3200 and it recognized it and configured itself to the SPD timings on the module.
As I've always told people, if you plan on keeping the laptop for awhile, always buy more than you need now. If you swap every year or 2, you can buy just what you need then. But 3-4 years down the road, that cheap laptop's going to be sucking wind as new software continues to bloat and suck more resources.
Memory density also increases. I went from 4GB to 8GB to 16GB on my 2011 laptop, which helped me to use it far longer than I had imagined. At the time when I bought the laptop, I couldn't find 8GB sticks and the max I could do was 8GB total.
But also improvements in memory timing and voltage were important. I went from DDR3 to DDR3L and gained some battery life. I upgraded my DDR4 to performance DDR4 and improved my computer's performance.
Having RAM soldered just means that big businesses have more degrees of freedom to monetize upgrades and you will be happy because you have no choice.
Quote from: Barebooh on July 19, 2022, 06:30:05Quote from: Frog on July 19, 2022, 00:11:20and will not buy a laptop with soldered RAM, either.
We know avg. lifespan of SDRAM sticks to be ~2 years, verbatim. After that, either a generation shifts (DDR4 -> DDR5), or they become way faster (DDR-2667 -> DDR4-3200). Old ones turn to paperweight, or more specifically, electronic waste.
A whole stick (and a socket!) instead of just 4 tiny chips? And what did that accomplish?..
It accomplished the offering of consumer choice. You want soldered chips? You can have them. Lots of excessively thin devices have that, like phones and tablets and super thin laptops. No one is stopping you.
Quote from: Barebooh on July 19, 2022, 13:15:31Oh, I bet your DDR4-2400 sticks from 2017 are super useful right now. Yeah. At least you can always 'upgrade' that crusty, scratched up laptop you have, with its dead battery, cracked hinges and its worn-down keycaps. Splendid.
Even a unit from 2006 which I keep out of sentiment doesn't have dead battery, cracked hinges or worn-down keycaps. The only sign of wear is along the seam between upper and lower parts of the main body where the surface finish got worn a bit, perhaps as a result of being exposed to sweat from palms. Keyboard is in excellent condition and modern laptops can only dream of having a keyboard that good. Back in the day, I liked it more than many premium desktop keyboards. To be fair, I guess the backlight isn't as strong as it used to be. It was dim even when new by today's standards, that's for sure. And that's a laptop I carried every day to school and then university for several years. Back then, premium money got you premium hardware.
I usually just buy what I need but soldered RAM does limit my options, it makes my negotiating position weaker and I tend to have unusual tastes and often hit limits of available configurations - e.g. you want more RAM and not only is it ridiculously expensive (e.g. 500 % of a SODIMM module), you also have to buy an overpriced CPU (€500 extra instead of manufacturer-suggested €100) that you'd never choose. Or worse, there is no such option short of manually swapping chips. In the end, I might overpay a grand (or two) on a laptop. I don't find that funny. I know better ways to spend a thousand euro. I really hate being taken for a ride. Which then leads to me buying as few devices as I can, keeping them for as long as I can.
Quote from: _MT_ on July 19, 2022, 19:38:43I usually just buy what I need but soldered RAM does limit my options
The only option when I am both for soldered memory is if it is HBM with a bandwidth of 200 Gb / s. And at least 32GB in a laptop. Then no questions. Otherwise, Display Port 2.0 is too heavy for iGpu. And that's why the shameful manufacturers of discrete video chips dragged on for 3 years with the introduction of DP2.0 hardware with native support for chic 8k monitors (matrices have been available for a long time, since 2014, but the connection was crooked on several DP1.2-1.4 ports), I don't understand at all clear. Unlike DDR4 / 5 brake memory, video chips use fast GDDR5 / 6 and HBM 2.0, which even 10 years ago had enough bandwidth to service 8k monitors even then (but 8k matrices appeared only in 2013-2014 and there were no still DP2.0 standard).
This is the only cool improvement in Zen4 (it's the first officially DP2.0 certified) and apparently in GTX4xxx in recent years.
For the first time in history, the IT industry, especially NVidia and AMD with their discrete cards, have blunted for 3 whole years with DP2.0! Shame on their management and engineers with such a monstrous delay!
Quote from: Hunter2020 on July 18, 2022, 17:33:37OEM stopped using TN panels because they ALL dim the screen by PWM. Consumers are conscious and very wary of PWM today which is why no OEM dares use them. The Fujitsu TN laptop above is no exception, but still kicks the Huawei IPS laptop's butt even in the presence of PWM! Of course, I prefer using the non-flickering laptop, but wrt image quality the IPS screen cannot compare!
Without exception, all IPS, like TN, use PWM. This is easily verified by the panel datasheets. Usually up to 30 kHz. Depends on how the laptop manufacturer sets it up at the factory. If PWM at a high frequency is much higher than 1kHz even at 5% brightness, there are no problems for the eyes.
But all AMOLEDs flicker vilely at 50-250Hz, and those where they allegedly increase the frequency to 300-600Hz with the accompanying "dc-dimming", the native contrast drops sharply there and there is no stone left unturned from the most key advantage of AMOLED over IPS/xVA .
TN is clearly more pleasing to the eye when reading text at a resolution close to IPS/VA. But it time is gone. Although the current cheap "IPS" panel with 45-46% NTSC are a real shame for the panel building industry, because. often horizontal viewing angles are worse than on expensive TN matrices of the past. Well, there's nothing to say about the shameful color space this "IPS" fake ...
Alas, 90%+ of consumers, which is amazing, looking at such shameful matrices in laptops and at the same time looking at luxurious panels in smartphones, where there are practically no panels below 72% NTSC even in cheap models, do not notice a striking difference in color space. Apparently most of the world's population is color blind. And therefore, marketers skillfully brought them into this situation with shameful 45-46% NTSC panels. :(
Quote from: NikoB on July 20, 2022, 16:20:10because. often horizontal viewing angles are worse than on expensive TN matrices of the past.
There are >1000 observed laptops on this website. Could you provide with at least one example where a TN panel has a better horizontal viewing angle than an IPS panel? I bet no, 'cause this is bs.
My eyes just
bleed when I am looking at a TN panel. Go to a big retailer, like Mediamarkt, and look at rows of different models. The heuristic is simple: if the screen looks crappy - it's a TN, the ones with IPS clearly stand out as you can see the picture from all angles. In contrast, all TN laptops appear to show some blurry bleak blobs, tell me more about great TN panels then.
For example, Samsung LTN154P4-L01 is better in horizontal viewing angles than LG LP154WF4-SPH1 (60% NTSC), and the text is more monolithic for eyes than on this IPS with a much greater resolution ...