Interview: Sony R + D: where next for screens on laptops?

Vincent Alzieu
April 22, 2010 10:39 AM

While we were in Tokyo, we interviewed Aoki Makoto, the engineer in charge of displays in the Research and Development department at the firm's laptop factory at Nagano.

We had a lot to ask him about, including the future of different panel technologies, where tech specs (and our own measurements) can go wrong and what developments they have in the pipeline.

DigitalVersus: When will we get IPS displays on laptops?

Sony: We think that the current TN displays are good enough for laptops. They have wide viewing angles from one side to the other, and you just need to make sure you're sitting right in front of the screen to get the best quality. Why would you want another, more expensive technology?

DV: But when you're travelling, and are using your laptop on the train, or in a café, it's not always easy to control the ambient light sources. Sometimes you have have to tilt the screen back or turn it so it's not facing you directly to get out of the way of a reflection. With TN panels, especially glossy ones (we prefer them matte), the image quickly becomes too dark. IPS displays look perfect wherever you look at them from.

Sony: You're right: that's the big problem with TN. But although IPS does have the advantage of better viewing angels, it uses more energy. They need a lot more power (Ed: at the same diagonal size, they can require anywhere from 30% to 100% more) and that has very negative impact on battery life.

The second reason is that, although Apple recently put an IPS screen in its iPad, that's only because there were actually enough available. Before, there just weren't any IPS panels for laptops, and the production is still pretty slow. But we're looking at including other display technologies like PVA or IPS in the future.

(Ed: we didn't talk about this in any more detail, but the fact that Sony admitted that it was looking at PVA screens for laptops, something which doesn't yet exist, without us even mentioning them, is in itself very interesting)

And the choice of glossy screens is an aesthetic one, and we've noticed a change in tastes over time. In Europe, matte is back, while our Asian customers in Japan and China nearly all want a glossy finish. For them, it has to really shine! We can't produce a different laptop for every country, though, even if we'd like to. Some other developments that are on their way might change that.

(Ed: and apart from the problems with reflections, we also got to see two new laptops that will be available later this year. One in particular has a glossy screen, but there's a reason why. We can't say any more for the time being though.)

DV: We have some other problems with today's TN screens though: they struggle with responsiveness, contrast and reproducing colours accurately. The quality of the displays in some of the laptops we test is no better than the computer monitors we saw ten years ago. Even today, we've not seen a single a laptop that can match the quality of an entry-level monitor with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. All too often, laptop screens are under 300:1.

Sony: Yes, we still use 6-bit TN panels with 8-bit dithering (Ed: that is, a native base of 262 000 colours, which logically enough leads to 16 million). And the best panels currently available have a contrast of 600-800:1 at best. Our best series so far on this score was the F Series, which we fitted with panels with a contrast ratio of 600:1.

(Ed: we haven't yet tested the F Series, which is still very new, but we're planning on bringing it to you soon. According to our tests, the Dell Studio 17 is one of the few laptops to reach a contrast ratio of 670:1, while the Apple MacBook Pro 17'' was at just below 600:1. Our absolute record so far in the Apple MacBook Pro 15'', which was at almost 1000:1 once we'd set it up.)

DV: If you are going to stick with TN displays, why not configure the colours more accurately? The average discrepancy between the right colours and those shown on screen, or deltaE, is very high on laptops, and is often above 8.0; desktop monitors, meanwhile, are usually below 4.0. You could even produce calibration profiles? Even if you occasionally change the source of a panel, you know what hardwired you've used and can therefore give users the information they need.

Sony: We do offer calibration profiles for the F and X Series laptops. But it's true that we sometimes have to change our panel supplier, and then we don't update the profile. If we do that, it won't be up to date. It's something we should think about ...

DV: And with responsiveness, can we expect to see 120 Hz screens in a laptop, TN or otherwise? That way there'd be less ghosting and we could play games in 3D ...

Sony: We'll be making an announcement about that later this year when we're good and ready.

DV: One more question about laptop screens. Sony has spent a lot of time working on an alternative technology, FED. Your partner, AU Optronics said recently that its first FED monitor will be ready by the end of the year. Do you think that one day you might release a laptop not with an LCD display, but instead with a FED?

Sony: No: FED technology isn't suited to mobile technology. The displays themselves are too thick and use far too much power. So no, there won't be any laptops with FED.

Acknowledgement: we'd like to thank Sony wholeheartedly for this interview! It's very rare to be able to turn up and speak to the people who are directly involved with working on the technology we write about, and even more rare to get honest answers to our questions. We were pleasantly surprised by how open Sony was with us.

Our most recent Sony laptop tests: