When you’re ready to buy yourself your first laptop, or a new one to replace a broken or obsolete machine, you’re going to want to consider display, of course. A lot of salespeople try to sucker you into making a bad purchase by boasting of “TFT-LCD display!” and “A whopping two hundred and fifty six colors!” Don’t buy into that. All flat laptop screens are LCD, and the top end laptops are bushing tens of millions of colors. What you should be looking for are…
1-   Screen Size
2-   Resolution, and
3-   Brightness
The bigger the better, the higher the better, and the brighter the better. But, you might not have the cash on hand to get the absolute top of the line laptop. Still, you should look for the biggest and best display without having to sacrifice the actual hardware functionality, portability, or a lower price tag.
What you really want to do is open the laptop up and give it a look. If it looks good, cool, you’re set. If it looks dim, if it’s tiny or grainy, ask to see something else. You should consider what you need the laptop for, as well…
Visual Media
If you’re looking for a laptop to use primarily for visual media, like graphic design, editing photos, editing video, or watching movies, then you want the best screen you can get. If you can spare the cash, a nice, big, top of the line screen is really your best bet. You definitely want to look for something that has a bright screen. Dimmer screens tend to give a lot more glare. Just bear in mind that, if you adjust your screen to be really bright, a lot of photo editing programs and such will actually adjust their own brightness settings, as well, and this can cause some problems when editing photos. Try to do your visual editing in a place with less ambient light to glare off of your screen.
Everything Else!
Look, no matter what the salespeople and tech geeks say, if you only plan on writing, doing audio, or goofing around on the internet, you don’t really need the best and biggest screen in the world. “Good enough” really is “good enough” if you don’t plan on doing much with visual media. What you should be looking for is fast, capable hardware. Visuals come second unless visual media is going to be one of the major functions of your laptop use. Look for the best screen within your budget, and without sacrificing all of your other wants (like built in Bluetooth, a lot of RAM and hard drive space, etcetera).
Of course, you do want something decent, regardless, as you don’t want to squint just to be able to read an email, so anything between a twelve inch and an eighteen inch screen really should be enough.
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