Audiovisual content under 4K resolution or also known as UHD is already everywhere, but with the announcement of 8K as a future resolution it comes to mind if the smallest screens such as those used in our laptops are the most suitable for this Will 8K be possible in the notebooks of the future or is there a limitation?
The images shown on the screens of our monitors or televisions are made up of thousands and even millions of points that are called pixels, a word that derives from the English dimension “picture element”, in which each one of them has color information in RGB from that specific point on the screen.
We do not do not put our face glued to the screen, well, we do when we use virtual reality devices, where a very curious process occurs with low density, at low resolutions the distance between pixels creates voids that give an image slightly sharp and grainy.
On the other hand, when we are sitting in front of a television, the distance is high enough so that the pixel density is not noticeable, this phenomenon has to do with the fact that depending on the distance at which we are watching a screen, the pixel density for whether these are indistinguishable varies, which means that there is a limit to the density of pixels that we can see.
The concept of retina display
When Apple introduced its iPhone 4 a decade ago, its main novelty was to increase the resolution of the device’s screen 4 times to achieve a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, which is the same as that used in the world of professional printing. .
The image quality of smartphones improved enormously and was copied by the entire industry alike, obviously the catch is that this figure refers to having the screen between 10 and 12 inches, between 25.4 and 30.48 cm, so it is a density ideal for the use of a smartphone, a portable console or a tablet.
But in the case of a PC the distance is somewhat greater, of course not all of us have the desktop mounted in the same way, but the density of pixels per inch taken as a reference is approximately 220, which translates into Any screen with a higher pixel resolution is not going to make a difference, since in theory we cannot see too many pixels.
The problem of 4K in laptops
This brings us to a key question: Are resolutions above 4K feasible on laptops? I am currently writing this article on a laptop with a 15.6-inch screen at 1080P resolution, which means that its density is 141.21 dpi, so my screen has room for improvement in terms of resolution.
If I could increase the resolution of my screen to 1440p then the dpi goes up to 188.28, but what happens if we raise the resolution of the screen to 2160p or 4K? So the density goes to 282.42, even if the screen were 17 inches we would have the same problem with a density of 259.17 dots per inch. In any case we would still have some margin before reaching 300 dpi in the world of printing.
But what happens if we go to resolutions beyond 4K? Already with the 5K resolution we exceed the limit of 300 dots per inch, which makes most of the pixels not distinguishable by our eyes and results in an enormous waste of time rendering those pixels, which leads us to go away. To reach the point where the improvement will not be in resolution, but in other parameters such as the refresh rate, the image quality and even the color depth.
