If you're not doing design work (either targeted at print, or for users of high-res displays), I still think 1080p screens are the sweet-spot on laptops. This is different from desktops, where additional pixels can be used to add screen real-estate.
All of those additional pixels require additional battery and CPU power to drive. By contrast, black-levels, backlight-uniformity, color accuracy, and pixel fill can be improved without trade-offs. Most laptops have a lot of room for improvement in these areas, and IMO they lead to a better picture overall versus increasing the resolution. As a bonus, you also get to side-step a ton of unfortunate software weirdness.
And while adding HDR and increasing the refresh rate does come with battery/CPU/software trade-offs, I still think they're more worthwhile upgrades than merely jacking up the resolution on a small screen.
I have no idea whether the Pangolin screens are terrible on these metrics too, I'd just like to see a lot less focus on resolution. It's actually really hard (impossible?) to find an HDR panel that isn't 4K, and IMO that's a shame. We live in a world where Samsung phones run below their native screen resolution by default in order to conserve battery[1], which makes no sense whatsoever. If the native resolution of the screen was lower to begin with, battery life would be even better, and visuals would be improved overall due to lack of scaling!
The point is 1600p or 1920p isn't a super-high resolution any more. Nowadays 1080p is low-end. I don't think anyone even produces 15" screens with a resolution lower than this.
200dpi DPI is fantastic for working with text. The clarity you get is more relevant for text than HDR, wide gamut, or even wide viewing angles. I would heartily recommend it even if you only stare at a terminal all day.
I've found that just increasing pixel fill helps with that more than you'd think. I've also found that better contrast (so, black levels, and theoretically HDR) has a much larger affect on readability overall, although that may be partly a result of my personal migraine triggers.
I'm coding on a 17 inch, 4K display laptop for work. It's not necessary but it's really nice since I can shrink the font size and fit more code on one screen while it still stays legible.
I find that I can fit basically as much text as I want on a 1080p laptop display without losing legibility. It's all about using the right font, e.g. https://proggyfonts.net/. Obviously pixellated fonts don't look as good, but it changes from a functional to an aesthetic concern.
All of those additional pixels require additional battery and CPU power to drive. By contrast, black-levels, backlight-uniformity, color accuracy, and pixel fill can be improved without trade-offs. Most laptops have a lot of room for improvement in these areas, and IMO they lead to a better picture overall versus increasing the resolution. As a bonus, you also get to side-step a ton of unfortunate software weirdness.
And while adding HDR and increasing the refresh rate does come with battery/CPU/software trade-offs, I still think they're more worthwhile upgrades than merely jacking up the resolution on a small screen.
I have no idea whether the Pangolin screens are terrible on these metrics too, I'd just like to see a lot less focus on resolution. It's actually really hard (impossible?) to find an HDR panel that isn't 4K, and IMO that's a shame. We live in a world where Samsung phones run below their native screen resolution by default in order to conserve battery[1], which makes no sense whatsoever. If the native resolution of the screen was lower to begin with, battery life would be even better, and visuals would be improved overall due to lack of scaling!
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-lowers-default-scree...