This laptop is a refresh based on the Tong Fang PF5NU1G chassis. Tuxedo just announced their version, the Pulse 15 Gen2 that has a WQHD 2560x1440 165Hz 350 nit display: https://www.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/vrb1me/tux...

There's no limitation for Ryzen itself, it's largely up to the ODM/OEM to decide. For example, Lenovo and Asus have multiple QHD/4K options for Ryzen 5000 and 6000 series (iGPU-only) laptops (just do a search for Yogas, Thinkpads, Zenbook, Vivobook, etc).

Note, certain designs might have display limitations. A couple years ago, for the 1st gen PF5NU1G, Schenker tried to get a 4K OLED panel to run, but failed due to PCON compatibility and then sourcing/logistics issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/izg598/no_4koled_pa...

I've actually found it quite hard to find Ryzen 6000 laptops with just an iGPU. RDNA2 would be perfect for me, you lose the weight and cooling issues that come with a dGPU but still have enough graphical performance to play some games.

Not to say they are common, but they are out there.

https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/For-Home/Zenbook/Zenbook-S-1...

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/th...

And yet there is no "buy now" button and when I go to find the laptop I click on laptops -> for work -> all series -> filter processors -> "more" -> ryzen 7 ... not a single ryzen 6xxx shows up... Seems they are not acutually for sale yet. Same story for lenovo, the laptops with 5xxx cpu's can ship tomorrow, but the 6xxx cpus ship in "3+ months"... so ya, they are not actually available yet.

P16s looks perfect. I didn't want to say in my original post as it was a bit me-specific, but I'm also looking only for 16"+ laptops, and want to avoid the gamer aesthetic a lot of them seem to have, so the P16s looks perfect. Port selection and positioning is a bit odd, but hopefully ultradocks still exist for these newer thinkpads. I have one for my X220 and it works perfectly as a stand+dock

I prefer iGPU solutions as well (primarily for better battery life, less potential driver issues, and hopefully weight savings) but one thing you tend to lose is cooling headroom. Most of the iGPU only designs end up with single-fan single-heatpipe cooling for U chips designed for 25-35W of heat dissipation. As a point of comparison, the Asus G14, which has a 6800H allows you to get up to 75-80W sustained CPU on its Turbo setting! https://www.ultrabookreview.com/53935-asus-zephyrus-g14-ga40...

The G14 is 1.65kg, which isn't the lightest, but is actually the exact same weight as Asus's upcoming iGPU-only 6800H/6900HX Vivobook S 14X: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/Vivobook/Vivobook-S-14...

Look at the Thinkpad T14 / T14s Gen 3. Doesn't have a high-res display though...

The T14s has a 2880x1800, OLED, 500nit, wide color gamut, 90hz, screen option. It's probably the best screen you can get on a laptop right now:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

The T14 has a 4K IPS option:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

With that and USB4 the AMD Lenovos seem to be finally uncorked. At this point the Intel-only X1 is suffering as a supposedly top of the line laptop. The chassis is slightly better and that's about its only advantage.

Where did you even get those links? When I go to lenovos's website I and filter byt processor I cannot actually find any laptops with these specs to order... So maybe these are only available for businesses to order? Or they are not available yet???

The Lenovo websites are really hard to navigate and I think they also use them to steer people into specific configurations they've probably batch produced. I just spec based on the PDFs and then ask a distributor for a quote. It sucks as a buying experience.

To find the PDFs you can navigate psref.lenovo.com. Pick the model and go to the specifications tab. You can just see the content there or click the PDF link to get to the file. And even that website is not always fully updated. Sometimes the distributor can already configure something they haven't published the specs for. Yet another thing they could make 10x better and end up selling more because of it.

I worry that 14" would be a bit small for me, this would (probably) be for a desktop replacement so screen real estate really matters (right now I'm using an x220 with a tiny 12.5" screen and its the main reason Im looking to change).

I've scanned through the Lenovo site as an example and I can't find anything AMD with a display larger than 1920x1080 (at least on the UK site)...

QHD with Ryzen https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/legion-laptops/legion-5...

There were a few other QHD Ryzen gaming laptops. Couldn't find any business/workstation ones on the UK site though.

Similarly, the US has a 4K Ryzen gaming laptop. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/legion-laptops/legion...

Solid laptops. Enough power for a portable homelab. Went from a Legion 5 to a Legion 7 because I ended up liking it enough to make it my main machine. Much fewer random firmware bugs than AMD ThinkPads. They even do KVM GPU passthrough reasonably well.

In Germany Lenovo sells a Legion S7 15 with a 4k display and Ryzen 7 5800H (article number 82K800GUGE). There are also variants of the Yoga Slim 7 Pro 16, the IdeaPad 5 and the ThinkBook 16p G2, each with a 2560x1600 display and a Ryzen CPU.

A bit OT, but I've always found that beyond 2560x1440, I can't really tell the difference on a laptop-size screen. If anything, the only 4K laptop I've owned was a bit more troublesome than the 1440p ones because so many applications had scaling issues that I had to deal with.

Fully agreed and on the other hand once you get used to 2560x1440 (QHD), lower resolution laptop is a real bummer regardless of the screen size. This also applies to desktop monitor and as you grow older the phone screen as well. Strangely, the entry level Samsung Galaxy S20 phone screen is regressing from QHD+ to 1080p in the S22 after two years, and the recently released flagship ROG 6 pro phone from Asus also stucked at 1080p.

> Fully agreed and on the other hand once you get used to 2560x1440 (QHD), lower resolution laptop is a real bummer regardless of the screen size

Yep! 1080p is unfortunately now unbearable to me for monitors and laptops, although thankfully I have not reached the point yet where I'm this picky about phone screens

How's the keyboard on the Pulse 2 from someone who might be very partial to loud, clickety, far travel, mechanical keyboards?

How does Linux do with the high refresh rate display? Does it destroy battery life like I imagine?

If you want a mechanical keyboard, you should probably carry your own, as even the "mechanical" keyboards on laptops like the Eluktronics Mech 15 are IMO pretty lackluster. The NuPhy Air 75 fits exactly over the keyboard deck, btw, so that'd be my recommendation (replaced an Anne Pro I was using, which felt better, but was much bulkier. A Keychron low-profile might work as well, but I can't confirm whether it'll sit on the deck properly or not w/o having to disable the built-in keyboard.

In terms of the built-in keyboard feel, it's adequate. I would say that it reminds me of the keyboards on early-2000s Apple TiBooks. For the previous gen (and in my copy as well) there were reports of slight unevenness of the keyboard deck, although it was more of a curiousity than an actual issue in day-to-day use.

I don't know how high refresh rate displays affect battery life, but in the worst case I imagine you could turn down the refresh rate when you aren't interested in using it (certainly refresh rate is tunable in X11).

> Is there some hardware limitation of AMD Ryzen laptop processors that prevents a high-res display?

It's probably a limitation of the company they source the laptops from (Clevo?) :-)

The recently announced Tuxedo Pulse 2 [0] has a 1440p display; and the teased Starlabs Starfighter [1] is expected to come with a 4K display. Both are AMD laptops.

===

[0] - https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...

[1] - https://9to5linux.com/star-labs-teases-the-starfighter-linux...

I didn't even see the Gen2 release. I own the Gen1 after much consideration (and very nice community management from Tom over at the XMG Subreddit). I got it in December of 2021 for about 600 Euros. (Great Deal).

I know I am very susceptible to "the new shiny" and already have the itch to go for the Gen2 since it really brings some amazing improvements to the table. Mainly more external displays. The rest is nice to have (wouldn't have needed >60Hz panel to be honest). Oh and the Gen1 USB-C charging only works with a subset of all available USB-C chargers. Probably some kind of incompatibility with the IC on the motherboard. [1]

If you're thinking about getting it, I can (at least for Gen1) vouch for it.

To clarify: Tuxedocomputers is a subsidiary(?) of XMG/Schenker. Their "Pulse 15" is equivalent to Schenker's "Via 15 Pro".

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/jx3220/validated_us...

I also liked that they fixed the biggest niggles w/ Gen2 (higher DPI display, 2 x M.2 storage, DP1.4 w/ the USB-C - rare to see any OEM actually fix the shortcomings of the previous verson). If it were a Ryzen 6000, I'd almost definitely upgrade, however, per Tuxedo's announcement [1], the 35W 5700U (Lucienne, so Zen2, not even Zen3 core) basically just matches the 54W 4800H in performance - great from a noise/heat/power efficiency perspective, but sadly, a total sidegrade when it comes to perf.

"This way the 5700U reaches the already high-end performance from its AMD Ryzen 7 4800H-54-watts-equipped predecessor, but it comes with significantly better power efficiency, delivering on-par-performance with over 30% less power consumption!"

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/vrb1me/tux...

I agree that the Gen1 was one of the best Linux laptops around, and the Gen2 is an improvement in every way. My original review from 2y ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/hunyv6/my_mechr...

Also, interesting about that charging chart. I was able to use basically every 65W and 100W USB-C charger I had (about 5 different ones over the years) and also 4 different 100W-capable batteries (Zendure SuperTank, SuperTank+, Baseus Blade, and Shargeek Storm 2) w/o problems (the SuperTank is listed as having issues). I wonder if some of the reported incompatibilities were due to bad USB-C cables...

The Tuxedo Pulse 2 looks amazing. They really addressed all of the complaints we had (purchased at the beginning of the year for our company).

I still have minor nitpicks with it, but those pale in comparison with the display port upgrade they did.

For me the worst on the Pulse is the battery. Had to change one after one year and the new one is losing charge at a seemingly higher pace than other machines. :(

I have a 2y old PF5NU1G (a second run Mechrevo CODE 01) as well, and the battery has decayed to ~73Wh (from a 91Wh original design). The one bright side is that the replacement battery, PFIDG-03-13-3S2P-0, seems to be pretty cheap ($60, shipped by boat from China) if you know you're going to stick to the same laptop for a while... https://www.aliexpress.com/i/3256803017144797.html

It's not a hardware limitation, but many vendors are still using AMD only in their budget SKUs and using Intel in their flagships.

Since the AMD SKUs are aimed at a different price-point, they generally don't have higher end display options.

Can you please explain what use hi DPI displays have in general? I bought one and it was almost nothing but disappointment except viewing photos. For me it concludes as purely wasted computational (and electrical) power.

The text looks a lot nicer, without subpixel rendering which can also save computational power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

Anecdotally, I've used HiDPI alongside 1x res monitors since 2015 now, and I can honestly say I don't care much about which one I'm using for reading and writing.

What does matter though is gray uniformity and the size of the color gamut. Especially for the work I do (video and photography).

Anecdotally, I find non-4K displays incredibly uncomfortable to use after using a 4K one for my desktop for 2 years.

I always disable this crap, fine with pixels %)) OK, I understand pixel interpolation is useful in printed media production, but on displays... Win95 still looks great to me.

It does make a huge difference for readability of Chinese/Japanese/Korean in small sizes (e.g. comparable to reading a normal book or paper).

Now, that makes a good point, thank you!

Well, people have different opinions about it. I personally hate visible pixels with passion. I was an early adopter of HiDPI displays (starting with IBM T221 back in 2007), and I don't understand how anybody could settle for less after they see this gorgeous high resolution.

It's probably the fact that most people haven't experienced it. Regular consumers think macbooks have magically "better" displays than most windows laptops but can't name the exact reason. But just getting a high DPI laptop/monitor gets the same effect.

As others have said, smooth, crisp font rendering. I’ve been using high DPI displays for almost 10 years now and would never consider going back. Using a 1440 monitor, say, feels to me like using a machine with a floppy disk: an anachronism.

My wife though swears she cannot tell the difference and doesn’t care which she uses. This boggles my mind and is actually a bit frustrating to me, but that’s my problem.

So, I’m interested in if you can tell the difference but don’t care or if it’s something else.

I’ve always used a Mac though, maybe that’s the difference? Never seen Linux/Windows in 4K.

I don't care that much but I do notice. Most PC laptops these days are 1080p and at their sizes this is generally 160+ PPI which is about the same as a 27" 4K display so it looks fine to me.

Apple also has made their text rendering look worse on non-retina screens a few versions back which exacerbates the problem compared to Windows and Linux.

I switch back and forth between modern High DPI displays and older ~1440p displays. I don't really care myself. High resolution has never mattered to me.

I'm the same way with video tho, I can still watch 480p YouTube video and it doesn't bother me at all. Whereas some people I know can't stand watching 1 second of video below 1080p.

1440p can be quite crisp if you're using pixel-perfect, antialiased rendering and looking at the whole screen. Even for text. Anything higher is either overkill or (most often) compensating for defects in the rendering pipeline.

(In fact, there's a viable argument that even 1080p ought to suffice, and 768p be "good enough for most uses".)

For me, it's all about text. I spend my whole day staring at text in some form - email, code, etc. A good high DPI display creates a much better text shape for the same physical size text on screen (and doesn't have as much of an issue with trying to snap vertical text to actual pixels, etc).

It makes reading a lot easier for me - and vastly decreases how tired I feel after a day of it.

I had an old iPad (before retina) and used it for general tasks, sometimes. My newer hiDPI iPad has become my primary device for everything but actual work.

I would never have read a book on the old iPad, I read several in hiDPI. It really changes the way you read if the fonts are (perceptually) as crisp as print.

Having said that, I still use a 1080p display for work and watching video

So my tiny iPad has like twice as many pixels as my big screen.

Fonts and GUI elements look much sharper. After going HighDPI i can't go back.

Honestly adwaita will look like crap no matter what the resolution is.

(And before you get upset about the Gnome dev's feelings getting hurt, they've decided that this is the best theme and no one should ever use anything different.)

That's why I use KDE, since I saw how Gnome devs treat font rendering issues from the community[1]. And for some reason this is the most popular linux DE. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

You're not crazy, whatever Redhat decides eventually becomes popular because that's what people get paid to work with. It's very similar to the situation with Windows.

Also, I think most desktop Linux users that care probably use a small WM rather than either Gnome or KDE. Gnome also gets a lot of attention because GTK is easier to work with than QT.

I care but I don't understand the craziness about tiling wms, xfce etc. I like the convenience that KDE provides for me.

To me the guys who casually always mention "btw yeah I'm using this tiling wm and ..." are just smugly showing off, like vegans or people who own too expensive bicycles.

I don't think tiling WMs and Xfce can be lumped together like that. Xfce is very much a traditional DE with "batteries included"; it's more lightweight than Gnome and KDE, but still way closer to them than most lightweight WMs. I'd say it's closest to MATE (which, to remind, is itself a fork of Gnome from before it went nuts).

For a programmer, screen real estate (dependent on scaling). I look at 4k 100% scaling as having condensed two 1080p monitors without bezels.

4k is actually exactly 4 1080p screens' worth of pixels, unless you mean non-100% scaling.

Switching from 1900x1200 to a 4k monitor was night and day for me. So much less eye strain by the end of the day.

In the setup you like now, how far away is your monitor from your eyes? How many pages of text do you keep open typically? seen at once

Better text rendering is the main advantage. This means that you can set text sizes smaller and have a lot more usable screen real estate.

I tried using a 4K IPS display for usual programming tasks, but the usual fonts become so painfully tiny that it's just unbearable (and I have almost perfect vision). Combining a normal old display with modern 4K also creates lots of problems. For example, I drag windows and tool boxes a lot between desktops when working with code or in 3D. The perfect resolution for my old-school self is now a WQHD 2560*1440. Not in any "hi-dpi" sense.

It is for this reason I prefer 2 1080p monitors connected to my work laptop.

I prefer physical size for my screen real estate as opposed to jamming more onto a single display.

Scaling between different display sizes as you move windows around doesn't work well on Windows so I also prefer my laptop display to have the same resolution.

My wife takes a different approach: Giant, cheap 4k TV with windows spread out connected to her work machine.

>4K IPS display

It's not what person above suggests. It's about something like 5K display rendered in 200% resolution, so it's equivalent to 1440p. Then you can have slightly downscale fonts compared to "raw" 1440p since you'll still have more clarity due to higher pixels per inch.

It's a gpu power consumption/battery life issue. Putting a high res display in an Air clone ("ultrabook") means poor battery life unless you can also make a very efficient GPU (which so far only Apple has done).

The battery life on my 4k XPS13 is atrocious and it gets hot enough to burn my thighs.

Battery life vs display resolution is always a balancing act. Even macbooks don't have 4k displays for this reason. Makes me wonder why manufacturers opt to make so many 4k laptops compared to 2k ones.

Economies of scale. Factories are pumping out huge numbers of 4K panels while the more balanced panels Apple uses are likely made to order. So in most cases it’s probably cheaper for manufacturers to use 4K panels, despite their problems.

4k looks vastly better and many laptop users seldom or rarely run off battery for more than an hour or so.

While I agree that my laptop gets used plugged in most of the time, it is nice for it to last a while for the occasions when I'm away from an outlet (which I argue would be the primary benefit of using a laptop).

everyone talking about HiDPI, but everyone seems to miss display brightness. Standard displays are 200 - 300 nits, woefully inadequate if you are going to use it on the balcony, terrace or even near a big window. Very limiting if you open a laptop and it's unreadable.

For the first time I splashed out on a premium 4K monitor 32", and at 600 nits you forget the word glare - there is no glare if the screen is brighter than the sun.

Yes, this is crazy frustrating. The problem isn’t exclusive to boutique Linux laptops either, a lot of manufacturers use terribly dim panels that are barely usable in a well-daylight-lit room, and exacerbating it they’re glossy with extremely ineffective antiglare coating, which adds a thick layer of glare that the dim backlight doesn’t have a prayer of cutting through.

Even expensive laptops can have this problem… I briefly owned a $2k+ ASUS ROG G15 that had an otherwise nice screen (15.6” 2560x1440 144hz IPS satin finish), but had a 300 nit backlight which rendered all that moot except at night.

This is one of those things that Apple nails. The MacBooks I’ve used for work have all had displays bright enough to handle a bright room with ease with very little glare despite being glossy. My Thinkpad X1 Nano also has a matte 500 nit display that’s quite nice.

Which sunglasses do you code with?

My eyes can’t handle the dimly lit room they once could, especially not when reading code. 400 nits is a minimum for me now.

Intel does a fair bit of exclusivity deals to prevent vendors from making certain pairings. It also didn't help that amd mobile CPUs were budget options for a long time. Manufacturers haven't caught on to the demand yet really.

It depends on what you're looking for. There's been a withdrawal on focusing on 4K displays in laptops. Most of them exist as a marketing point, but provide no ancillary benefits.

One thing you might notice is "low res" displays tend to support things like higher refresh rates, might have better color and HDR

I have an ROG Flow X13 2021 with the 1980x1200 display. This "low res" display supports higher refresh rates, variable refresh rate, has good color and HDR support, and works quite well for a 13" laptop.

Nope. See e.g. my reply here elsewhere about the Xiaomi RedmiBook Pro. These are available since a while with ~240ppoi screens (3.2×2k). I.e.the 2021 model already had that resolution.

Also Huawei's MateBook laptop series has been offering AMD CPUs + HDPI screens since years, afaik.

Matebook 16

Amazing laptop. I'm never going back to a small screen or a non 3:2 screen

Very hard to source though. Had to have it shipped specially from China

I wonder what's with all the "3:2 screen" aficionados recently.

Some years ago, a 3:4 screen was considered "bad" and "unusable" and 16:9 or 16:10 was what you needed to have. Now 16:9 is bad and 3:2 (pretty close to 4:3) is back in business?

Is this just about chasing the latest fad? I mean 16:9 or even 16:10 has so much horizontal space that it's perfect if you do software development for example. Why is it so common now to give that up for more vertical space?

4:3 is not a fad, it's superior but lost out due to manufacturers consolidating tv displays with monitors.

I guess they would like you to think it's bad since they don't make them for cost savings reasons. I'd buy 4:3. There are still a few niche makers for medical and industrial purposes but the specs are crummy and prices high relative to mainstream displays.

I'd love to have a 4:3 laptop again. Best general use display. I find it amazing how we have been forced to use widescreens for so long yet our content, except for movies, still doesn't fit it. Office documents can fit on screen. Websites have to pad endless whitespace on the sides. The list goes on. We need to return to 4:3.

It is my belief that wider aspect ratio displays are easier to manufacture, too.

At a given pixel-pitch, you need fewer rows. In extremis, imagine a display that is N x 1 -- much easier to limit defects and handle the necessary multiplexing.

Back when 16:10 and 16:9 displays became common, I remember they weren't received particularly fondly by many of the developers I knew. Non-technical people seemed to like them more. More hardcore developers rather had to somewhat begrudgingly accept them.

Maybe the 3:2 aficionados aren't the same people who started disliking 4:3 displays when widescreen became popular?

I think people realized that the media-centric 16:9 doesn’t handle the piles of horizontal bars (titlebars, toolbars, tab bars, status bars, taskbars, etc) that compose modern desktop UIs all that well, particularly at traditional laptop resolutions (1920x1080 and its 2x counterparts and below).

Personally I don’t need a ton of width, the most I have side by side on a laptop screen are two code panes in an IDE. If I need any more than that I’m docked at a desk with dual 27” monitors. I would say my sweet spot is 16:10, but I’ve not tried a 5:4 or 3:2 laptop and have never used a 4:3 laptop for dev work, so I don’t know if I’d find those more suitable or not.

My guess is this this is a resolution issue. When the resolution was low, moving to 16:9 or 16:10 allowed you to have two side-by-side windows open. Now that the pixel density is higher you can make it 3:2, have two windows side by side even more comfortably, and get your vertical space back as well.

That said, you do sort of need 16 inches. Otherwise things start to get too tiny and you'll want to do scaling (which defeats the point..)

The Matebook 16 for me seems to hit the sweetspot in terms of pixel density and I don't feel the need to scale anything (the DPI is similar to my 1080p 13inch). So I'm actually glad it's not 4K

A few notes that may or may not matter to people:

* great res/aspect ratio, but claimed 300 nits, which is good enough for most indoor usage, but not in brighter environments) - that being said, Notebookcheck tested theirs at 350 nits

* RAM is soldered so you're locked into 16GB (M.2 wifi and 2280 SSD can be replaced)

* no USB-A ports

Overall though it's a pretty great laptop, can't wait to see how the Ryzen 6000 version performs (and if it had a 32GB version would be high on my personal shopping list).

NBC review for those interested: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-...

* no USB-A ports

I'm not sure what you mean. It's got two on the right side. And two USB-C on the left (though one will typically be used by your charger) - which seems to be unusual still..

16GB hasn't been an issue so far - but it's def my number 1 concern. But for under $1k I can't really expect more

Ah, you're right, I had a different Huawei laptop page open for the spec sheet. having 2 x USB-A ports is great (personally, I usually have a wireless keyboard and mouse dongle, so it's something I'm still concerned about).

If 16GB is enough then that's great. Sadly, I will usually end up hitting swap even with 32GB, so getting to at least 40GB (8GB+ soldered, 1 SODIMM), but preferably 2xSODIMMs for 64GB ends up thinning out my options considerably.

How is the serviceability? Can you swap ssd / battery?

nothing special in that department.. It's not a framework

You can see the notebookcheck review for details: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-...

My main concern would be procuring parts. I'd have to order them over Taobao and then have them forwarded and wait a while. Fingers crossed nothing comes up..

Better get a battery replacement before you need it. It becomes really difficult to find replacement parts after a couple of years because the device is not "popular" and most sellers stop keeping stock.

that looks like an interesting machine, reasonably priced

Especially if you purchase on Taobao/VMall - then it's under $1K. I think they also sell a version in Germany, but the price is marked up a lot

I've seen Ryzen 5000 series laptops with premium displays. I wouldn't consider 4K to be the only metric for that, though. My current Ryzen 5900HS laptop (from 2021) gave me the option of a 1920x1200 display or 3840x2400 at a lower refresh rate. Both displays have good color support, HDR, etc, but I went for the 1920x1200 display model for the smoother experience.

When I came out of laser eye surgery, I ended up with exceptional vision. I'd have to pixel peep to see a difference between those 2 display options. I would have preferred something that met half way in the middle, but this DPI is fine for the display size. Outside of that, I get good color accuracy, good brightness with HDR, and the high refresh rate with adaptive sync makes for a very smooth experience.

Do we not consider features like that also premium?

My experience has been that Linux is bad at scaling HiDPI. Maybe KDE is better. In Linux-specific forums and chats, I've seen many people comment that they go out of their way to buy a 1080p display to avoid the scaling issues.

None, I have an AMD Ryzen laptop with a highres display (1440p), and there are with 4k displays. It's just that a loooooot of laptops you're seeing are going to be rebrands of these ones.

I have a 4K display AMD Ryzen laptop (Asus ROG Flow X13 2021 edition), so yes it's actually possible. The Japanese fonts look really pretty when everything is scaled 200% (to be equivalent to 2K display). But I value real estate so I still have everything on 100%.

For some reason, the 2022 edition lineup no longer offers 4K display.

I guess you weren't looking hard enough. I am writing this on a fairly light and slim machine, equipped with Ryzen 5800 and a 16:10 2560x1600 @ 120Hz display. I used to have a 14 inch model with an even higher resolution at same refresh rate. Both were ~1k euro, depending on exact configuration.

If I were to buy a new laptop I'd probably avoid high DPI displays. I can display fonts small enough that I can't read them even though the screen can resolve them on the older 1080p screen my thinkpad has. All the high DPI means is extra trouble and I think they know this.

Nope. Even HP sells a 13 inch 2560x1600 Ryzen laptop for about $700. Asus goes even higher resolution on their 13 inch OLED at 2880x1800 but it costs more.

But I'm not sure there is a difference between 1920 and 2560 for most users at 13-14 inches.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro has 2880*1800 ~ 3k 90hz display with Ryzen 5800h

High DPI on something like a phone screen makes sense since it is often used so close to the face - but are people really getting this close to their computer displays?

For a 1080p 14" screen, and a person with 20:20 vision, you would need to be closer than 50cm to the screen to be able to discern any visual differences. Hackernews has lots of people who like to claim they can tell the difference, but the science of visual acuity is against them and they never back up these claims with studies or experiments.

Given a blind A/B test at a normal desk viewing distance, I'm doubtful any of these people would be able to pick out the difference between 1080p and 4k on a screen so small.

High DPI displays have been available for a decade, since the 2012 retina macbook pro. "Science of visual acuity" aside, the difference is noticeable.

I use a tablet pc and find it bizarre some vendors sell the m with 1080p displays when it's meant to be used closer to the face at be times. 2-in-1 budget laptops also have the same issue when using 1080p panels

Read this article: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/. There's simply not enough pixel to render character correctly on non-hiDPI displays.

I have two laptops, one with a high DPI display (Macbook), and one with a regular 1080p screen. Both running Linux. There is quite zero difference viewing text at a regular viewing distance.

If I move uncomfortably close to the screen, I can of course make out the changes. The examples on this page do not work because they do not take into account viewing distance.

Difference is pretty obvious. I'm 100% sure to pass ABX test.

Is it seriously needed is different question. I strongly prefer it but I can live without it.

currently on a Lenovo P14s with an excellent matte 4k, color calibrated, bright display and Ryzen Pro 5850u.

EndeavourOS (Arch) with KDE/Plasma works great.

Thinkpad T14 Gen2 is shipped with (14") 4K UHD (3.840 x 2.160), IPS with Dolby Vision™, 500 cd/m² and Ryzen 5850U. Linux certified.

Hm, that's not available on Lenovo's UK store that I can find :(

Maybe it's also a regional issue.

edit: or the US store? shows me a T14 Gen 2 (AMD) - Up to AMD Ryzen™ 7 Pro 5850U Processor, Up to 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, anti-glare, touchscreen with Privacy Guard

or

T14 Gen2 (Intel) - Up to 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1185G7 with vPro™, Up to 14" UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS, anti-glare with Dolby Vision™

I bought it from a re-seller. On ThinkPad Germany it is also sold out.