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I wouldn't bother with the screen and battery at this point, but the fan should be a very cheap replacement. But if your situation prohibits you from buying a newer model any time soon, go for it I guess.
Matte IPS LCD would be good in a laptop for reduced reflections and better viewing angles. And better resolution is always better.
I've had laptops with TN LCDs that have so terrible viewing angles that you simply can't see the whole screen with proper colors at once. -
- yes
- yes
- yes
- cheaper Lenovo screens suck, their new 1080p hdr 400 TN panel is nice. The oled in my laptop is nice, but unnecessary
- the Lenovo X1 line (extreme or carbon) are hard to go wrong with. MSI also makes good product for the money, they won't be tanks like a T series though so keep that in mind if youre hard on your stuff
Parts, you're going to want:
- min 16, max 64gb ram
- 6 core cpu, which doesn't really matter with the options on the market atm, skip the i9s in any model
- nvme drive, 1tb+ optimal, 500gb min
- 802.11ax/wifi 6
- accidental damage coverage
Thunderbolt is a nice to have, but is very nice. Any laptop with the equipment listed above will likely have it, or at least USB 3 gen 2 (10gbps). -
Matte vs. glossy: depends on your use case. Glossy does have more brightness and contrast e.g. outdoors in sunshine, but matte avoids reflections. If you use the display mostly indoors, I would go with matte.
Resolution: if you pick a larger resolution without also having a proportionally larger display, the details become more difficult to read because they're smaller. You will need to upscale, and there's still a lot of software that has problems. -
@electrineer
Yeah, I'll definitely replace the fan, it's just about $30. The battery isn't that important since I'm mostly using it at home or at a friend's.
I mean, it's not like I couldn't just get a new one. I just haven't seen one and felt like it's the same quality as my good old T430. And what's all about those 1.30 GHz CPU's? Is that the future? -
@Creep new fan should cost more like 3$
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@Fast-Nop ohh yeah I haven't thought about the resolution problem. The angles on my current screen suck and that's pretty much the only reason I'm thinking about upgrading the screen.
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@SortOfTested Thanks a lot, I'll keep that in mind when I'm looking for a new notebook.
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@electrineer You're right, I meant the whole heatsink. Gonna open it up tomorrow, maybe it's just the bearing of the fan. I'm also thinking about renewing the thermal paste.
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@Creep no point in changing the heatsink if you can find a replacement fan (which should be relative easy). But do change the thermal compound and clean any dust.
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@Fast-Nop I'd imagine that a glossy display is only better in a dimly lit room where you don't have reflections. I'd chose matte for outdoor use but I may be wrong.
And many applications on Windows get blurry if you have any scaling. Kinda defeats the whole point of a better resolution. -
@electrineer
Glossy displays are only better if you want more vibrant colors on the cheap and don't care about glare. -
@electrineer Matte costs brightness. If you are outdoors whith a lot of ambient brightness, that's a problem, which is why smartphones have glossy displays.
It's worst in direct sunlight because the matte structure reflects the sunlight in all directions, not only to the opposite. That stray brightness makes the display unusable. -
@Fast-Nop the first few search results claim the opposite: glossy panels become unusable in sunlight. But I wouldn't trust those sites one bit. You obviously have to position the screen so that nothing the sun shines on is reflected. That is easier with a mobile phone than a laptop.
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Glossy would be unusable for me, but that's a personal choice to a degree. It's fine if you mostly sit in the dark.
I recently looked around and from what I gathered the Lenovo X1 Carbon or T14 seems quite nice (ymmv). Be wary that in many cases RAM is soldered nowadays, so look out for that and don't get anything with less than 16GB in case it's soldered. (Personally I wouldn't get less than 32GB in that case, but that's very rare to find.)
Expect at least 700€ for something with proper build quality.
e.g. https://campuspoint.de/lenovocampus...
seems quite okay. -
@saucyatom
So you know, the carbon maxes out at 16gb.
I kind of need to replace my ThinkPad T430 soon. I bought it for about $200 3 years ago, and I love it and it just works and does it's job. But the fan noise is getting annoying, the battery is pretty much dead and yeah well, the screen does suck.
I've been thinking about replacing said parts, which would cost me about $150. Which is almost what I paid for the device back then, but I don't know I don't really want a new one. The T430 is a sexy old lady, just needs some polishing.
Now to my questions..
Would you say it's worth it?
Is there a big noticeable difference from a glossy 1366x768 LCD screen to a matte 1600x900 LCD screen?
Would you pick matte over glossy?
Do LCD screens always suck?
In case you would just buy a new notebook, can you give me any recommendations? The notebook market is huge and I have no idea what to look for.
I'm not a big Hardware guy as you can see, I have honestly no idea about screens and panels and such.
question