Hey guys, any of you have an opinion on LED backlights? Seems like more and more manufactures are using them in their laptops. From what I've read, their biggest advantage is lower voltage and longer battery life. I'm mostly concerned with them being more durable (not having to worry about a CCFL tube breaking, or a CCFL inverter dying).

The laptop that I'm eyeballing as my next purchase, an HP EliteBook 6930p, offers two display options.

- WGXA (1280x800), LED backlight
- WGXA+ (1440x900), CCFL backlight

So it's a choice between a higher resolution, or an LED backlight. Since the rest of the laptop is such good quality, I really want this to be a laptop that I can hold on to for a long time, so I'm leaning towards the LED backlight. But the extra resolution would be very nice as well.

It's a damned shame they don't offer 1440x900 with the LED backlight.

Any thoughts, guys?

This probably won't help, but the WLED 1080p 15.6" screen im using in my laptop is bloody awesome. I'm suprised that HP don't offer a better screen choice on such a high end laptop.

From what I have read and heard, LED has numerous advantages, they have a longer life span then CCFL, brighter, less power consumption, and thinner.

Yeah ... the HP has a 14.1" screen, and 1440x900 would surely be great for me, since that's even the same res as my old 19" LCD.

My current laptop is a 14.1" with 1280x800, and it's not bad, it's just too bad that I can't get the LED backlighting with the better res. It's such a hard thing to have to choose between.

Fly,


Well... kinda hard choice for those early adopters....

The LED is used in LCD HD TV now... I think Samsung are the ones using them... They do use lower voltage, hence lower battery life and runs cooler... especially good for large LCD TVs... but as for long term reliability... that has still to be determine.... My guess is that will increase as well.. only time will tell...


But for the now.... it depends on the size of the screen of that laptop.... My spare laptop has a 14" screen... originally it had a 1024x768 res..... I swapped it out for a 1440x1050... I like the 1440x1050 much better... the icon were or at least seemed way big on the lower res LCD... Also you would run out of realstate really fast... the 1440x1050 ... much better...

Personally... I would probably go for the higer resolution..... unless you had seen both of them side by side and the image quality of the LED version is alot better.... then go for the LED...

Basically, if I feel like the CCFL display is durable enough to withstand a few bumps and bruises here and there, and thus unit as a whole will last at least 5 years or so, I'll go with the higher resolution.

I'm not really worried much about the color, or even the battery life (as I'm on AC power almost all of the time), it's just the durablity I'm worried about. I'd hate to pay a lot of money for a laptop like this, and then worry all the time about a CCFL tube breaking.

I've never dropped a laptop before (and don't plan on doing so), but is that something that normally a CCFL tube can withstand?

Fly,

my spare laptop is a HP NC-6220, it is 5yrs old and the LCD is still working just fine... heck... even the battery is still going strong...

Well, that's good to hear.

It was actually a laptop with a very similar design to your nc6220, an HP Compaq 6910p, which inspired me to look at HP's business-end laptops. I was playing with it and just overwhelmed with how solidly it was built.

Speaking of HP Compaq NC6910P ....... I have that very exact laptop right now, its my work unit.. works great.. and yes... it is built solid like a tank...

Not terribly relevant to McFly's needs, but maybe to googlers...

If it's LED backlighting, check to see if the screen is "edge lit" or not. That means the LEDs are arranged around the edge of the screen pointing towards its center, rather than behind the screen pointing towards the user.

My next LCD will definitely be with LED backlighting. The main reason I prefer it is that there's not really any backlight bleeding going on, which genuinely bothers me when watching movies. If that's not really an issue, I'd definitely take the higher screen resolution.

As far as resistance to mechanical damage from a fall goes, I think the LCD subsystem is more likely to be damaged before either the CCFL or LED lighting subsystem is damaged. And, while the LEDs independently are more durable than a CCFL, it is the mechanical and electrical design of the LED lighting subsystem that determines how "rugged" it will be in a laptop. An LED lighting subsystem could be easily designed such that it is less rugged than an CCFL subsystem, and if they are pushed to keep the costs down to be competitive with CCFLs, you likely will see compromises made in some LED subsystem designs.

As far as power goes, it isn't the voltage that makes the difference. It's how efficiently the power is used to create and distribute the light for a given purpose. I know of a number of LED lamps that require significantly more (3X) power than a fluorescent lamp to provide the same lumen output at a comparable color temperature for the same area to be lit. Operating voltage isn't the only parameter involved. The ONLY way you can determine whether an LED v. CCFL display consumes more or less power is to read the specs or perform the measurements yourself.

My MSI Winds LED lit screen is the best screen I've ever looked at

If that's true, then I suppose it wouldn't matter if my CCFL's broke or not ... hmmz.

Honestly the only times I've been aware of a backlight breaking is of laptops way back from 2003 or so. John brings up a good point in that it usually is the LCD itself that is more prone to breaking, if anything. Concerning durability, look at the overall build, not what it contains. If it's a cheap base-end Dell laptop, you're going to notice some issues with quality somewhere. If you check out a ToughBook, you know it's made to last a while even if the hardware is an earlier generation from 2006.

OLED>LED>BULB>CRT

Well, now I'm leaning towards the CCFL on this laptop. Plus, the HP Business 3-year warranty would likely replace the inverter or tubes if they were to just die (as opposed to me dropping it).

Although now, I'm looking a lot at the Dell Latitude E6400, which has the best of both worlds -- 1440x900 with an LED backlight.

I actually had a similar choice when ordering my Dell XPS M1530. There was 1280x800, 1440x900 (LED or CCFL), and 1920x1200. I originally planned on ordering the 1680x1050 to match my desktop 20" monitor's resolution but that option was discontinued about a week before I bought my laptop. I narrowed it down to the 1440x900 with LED backlight or the 1920x1200 with CCFL. In the end I had to go with the 1920x1200 because it was cheaper then the 1440x900 LED, and because as McFly once told me, "Your a resolution whore".

Oh and by the way I'd get the E6400, and if the Dell logo bothers you cover it with electrical tape. On a side note, if I ever get a MacBook I'm gonna slap a big Windows logo over the pretty white Apple.

McFly,

Hey..... to make choices a little more difficult.... Check this out...


HP Pavilion dv6t Quad Edition series


OS Choices:

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit



Proc choices:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-820QM Processor (1.73GHz, 8MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB)



Memory choices:

FREE Upgrade to 3GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 2GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
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Hard drive choices:

FREE Upgrade to 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
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Graphics card:

1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M




Display:

15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)



LINK - http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/store_access.do?tem...l=hpn_1694|753638|69F1BF992B4F3015|6636E54262037378

McFly wants a business grade laptop not a consumer laptop.

McFly said:

I was considering the E6400 earlier this spring in my pool of choices. As it turned out, my dad was issued one him through work so I was able to try it out. I loved the screen and found the keyboard very stable to type on, but as it turned out the touchpad was terrible. It had nothing to do with the settings, I toggled with them myself to no avail. I would move my cursor across the screen and suddenly it decided that I was trying to select the text (and then by being up by the search box of the browser, it thought I wanted to select more text above, scrolling towards the top).

I haven't experienced this on other touchpads either, such as my girlfriends Inspiron 1525 nor my mother's 1545. I did some quick searching and little to my surprise I found others with my same issue for this line of notebooks. I also found that the Inspirons use Synaptics touchpads and the E6400s use Alps.

Of course, if you plan on using a mouse all the time or the nipple in the center, this won't be an issue; but I was very disappointed in finding this, as I was quite set on buying this laptop myself.