Thursday, September 29, 2016

4k Laptop and Desktop Reviews

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4k Laptop and Desktop Reviews – Covers the Best Gaming, Notebooks and Laptops with 4k Displays Available for Sale

Below you will find a list of the latest and highest rated available 4k laptops.
LATEST UPDATE: JAN 5, 2016

Highest Rated 4k Resolution Laptops

Wait, what are 4K Laptops?
Now that 4K TVs, Cameras, 4K desktop PCs and 4K movie projectors are here, it’s only natural that the same should happen to laptops and thus of course it already has.
4K laptops are basically the same as regular laptops except that instead of a screen with 480p SD, 720p HD or 1080p Full HD resolution, they offer you full 4K ultra HD resolution at 3840 x 2160 pixels.
For computing devices whose average screen size doesn’t exceed more than 15 to 16 inches at a maximum, that 4K resolution means a heck of a lot of pixels and thus these machines typically come with the kind of extremely high ppi densities (pixels per inch) that make being able to even see digital pixilation very difficult with the naked eye.
Aside from their crazy, deeply detailed resolution, 4K laptops also differ slightly from their regular counterparts in that they’re also more powerfully beefed up with heavy duty processing and GPU (video card) specs designed to handle all those extra graphics created by their 4K screens.
Currently, a surprisingly large selection of 4K laptop models from a number of different brands are available on the market and while they’re more expensive than ordinary versions, they’re surprisingly affordable and getting cheaper every few months.
Some of the brands which manufacture these machines include Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell and even Apple with its latest lines of MacBooks and their basically 4K Retina technology.
What do I need for a 4K Laptop to Work?
For the most part, any 4K laptop you buy is built to work just fine with its massive resolution right when it comes out of the box. Because we’re talking about a self-contained unit that’s been pre-built by a single company for retail sale, the internal GPU, processor, RAM and other crucial speed/processing oriented specs of any laptop model will be ready to go right away.
This is in considerable contrast to many 4K PCs, where it’s common to see custom rigs being put together by users who grab their own individual parts and hammer them together into a full-blown 4K rig only to find that some component of their machine or another doesn’t sit well with the demands of 4K resolution.
Thus, in this regard, 4K laptops are a compact, slightly limited (more on this shortly) but excellent solution for the lover of 4K PC gaming and visual design work who wants something that’s ready to work out of the box with no need for tweaking hardware and buying new parts.
On the other hand though, while laptops that run 4K screens are definitely powerful little machines, they don’t normally compare well to complete 4K PCs, which are usually much more powerfully designed and better at handling visually intensive ultra HD graphics like those found in games and video editing applications.
Some things to think about Before Buying a 4K Laptop
4K on a small screen
Now, before you rush out and grab your own 4K ultra HD laptop from any of the manufacturers we’ve already listed above, there are a couple things you really need to consider.
First, there is the question of whether or not this device is even worth the expense of getting it. In this case, you need to ask yourself what you need 4K visual display for and understand a fundamental thing: 4K resolution is almost indistinguishable from Full HD resolution on the kinds of small screens that laptops come with.
So unless you mostly want the 4K graphics for the sake of knowing you have them, even if hardly anyone can distinguish your screen from an HD screen, then go ahead, but you might find yourself a bit underwhelmed by what you see.
Graphic Design
On the other hand, if you’re doing graphic design and visual arts work that does really get helped by the enormous 250+ ppi densities of 4K on a 15 inch screen, then go ahead. In these cases, the 4K resolution might just be very useful and especially so if you can also hook up a large 30+ inch 4K monitor to your laptop for domestic work.
Gaming Woes
As for 4K gaming on your laptop, it’s almost unequivocally not worth the effort. For starters, you’ll get barely any visible difference in resolution while having to suddenly deal with all the problems of smoothly rendering all those extra (if not easily visible) pixels on your screen.
And furthermore, although the GPU, CPU and RAM enhancements in a pre-built 4K notebook are definitely designed to handle graphics in 4K, they’re not usually made to manage the kind of 4K movement that goes with fast-action gaming territory. For this, you’re better off putting together or buying a full-blown 4K PC and maybe even getting a cheaper 4K TV as your PC gaming screen if you’re seriously dedicated to the awesome and noticeable graphics improvements that UHD means.
Other Pixel Problems
Finally, there is the scaling problem caused by all those pixels in some laptops. Unlike 4K TVs, which have been carefully designed to smoothly upscale non ultra HD graphics so they neatly fit their screens, many 4K laptops don’t do this so easily.
Instead, what can and often does happen with many laptops is that they directly scale objects in their native pixels. The result, obviously is that, a 500 pixel menu item from some software, which would look fine on a normal HD screen, now suddenly shrinks down to nearly five times less than the size it should have on a normal screen.
Often, this results in ridiculously, unusually small graphics on some ultra HD laptops.
Internet Connectivity
Finally, we should also mention the internet connectivity issue around having a 4K laptop. If you’re going to use that machine to upload and download 4K videos or stream them from sites that offer 4K like Vimeo and YouTube, you’d better make sure that your web connection is also up to the task of handling the UHD content for your UHD laptop screen. This means at least 18 to 25 Mbps of internet connectivity.
Some Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that while 4K laptops create truly, almost impossibly crisp imagery for graphics in native 4K resolution, they aren’t something you really need unless you plan on regularly working with native 4K resolution in terms of graphics and image editing.
Or, if you’re interested in UHD gaming and don’t quite have the cash for a full 4K PC, then a laptop with its own pre-built hardware that includes Nvidia GPU cards, an AMD 4K-ready processor and HDMI 2.0 connectivity or at least DisplayPort 1.2 might just be a modest solution.
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