The Game with 4K Resolution

In a recent experiment, I put two laptops through their paces to see how they handled different types of usage and resolutions. The first test involved playing a game on both laptops at 1080p and 4k resolution respectively. This was done to compare the power draw and battery life of the two laptops when using high-resolution screens. As expected, the laptop with the 4k screen consumed more power than the one with the 1080p screen.

However, the second test involved leaving both laptops completely idle with the screen brightness maxed out at 100% on Windows Desktop. This was done to see if there would be a difference in power draw between the two screens when not being used actively. The results showed that the laptop with the 4k screen consumed less power than the one with the 1080p screen, which is expected since there's less work for the GPU to do.

The battery life of both laptops was also tested. When playing a game on 4k, the battery lasted for about 36% less time compared to when playing at 1080p. However, when leaving both laptops idle with the screen brightness maxed out, there was only a 10% difference in power draw between the two screens.

A Use Case Comparison

When it comes to actual usage, there aren't many scenarios where I think a 4k laptop would be beneficial. For most games, gaming at 4k isn't really practical with laptop hardware, and even then, it may not provide much benefit unless you're sitting quite close to the screen. In reality, better performance and display quality come from the higher color accuracy, brightness, and contrast of a good monitor rather than just the resolution.

If I had to choose between 1080p and 4k for a video editing laptop today, I would still go with the 1080p or 15X option. While having a 4k screen does offer some benefits like better color gamut, brightness, and contrast, these benefits don't actually come from the resolution difference itself. Instead, they're more about the overall display quality of the laptop.

In fact, if I'm editing photos, there may be scenarios where the extra pixel density of a 4k screen could be beneficial. However, for video editing, especially when transcoding footage to lower resolutions like 720p proxies, I don't think it's necessary to have a high-resolution display. The workflow and requirements for video editing are different from those for photo editing or gaming.

Scaling for the Win

Another aspect to consider is scaling for the screen size. With modern operating systems, you can scale up your desktop to fit more content on a larger screen without having to sacrifice performance. This means that even if you're using a 4k screen, you may not need all of its resolution to get the most out of it.

For example, when scaling down to 100% on my 1080p laptop or scaling up to 200% on my 4k laptop, I find that both options look pretty good and offer better productivity. The same is true for editing photos or videos – you may want to scale them up to fit the screen size without sacrificing image quality.

Price Comparison

Finally, let's talk about price. The 15X model costs around $400 more than the 1080p option in Australia, which translates to around $250 USD. This is a significant difference that needs to be considered before making a purchase decision.

While I think having a 4k screen can be beneficial for certain use cases, whether or not it's worth the extra cost depends on your specific needs and requirements. If you're using it for content creation professionally, then yes, I think it's worthwhile. However, if you're just looking for a general-purpose laptop that can handle everyday tasks like gaming, video editing, or photo editing, I don't think the additional cost is justified.

So, what do you think? Would you choose 1080p or 4k for your next laptop? Let me know in the comments below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI recently got a gigabyte error 15x laptop for editing 4k videos and some people questioned the 1080p screen in this video I'm going to compare two identical error 15x laptops the only difference being that one has a 1080p screen while the others is 4k to see what sort of differences there are and help you decide which to get gigabytes center for an error 15x with the 4k screen to see the differences all specs were the same the only difference was the screens with the 1080p screen you have the advantage of the faster 144 Hertz refresh rate while the 4k screen is limited to 60 Hertz so if you're mostly going to be using the laptop for gaming you'd be much better served by the 1080p 144 Hertz screen I've been chucked a game just to show the performance differences between 1080p and 4k csgo is a game that runs quite well at 1080p regardless of settings or hardware but even with this game in 4k the frame rates drop significantly and it's not running that well in this particular test in this example the game was tested on the same laptop just with the resolutions changed so literally the only thing changing is the resolution it is worth noting though that as a stock error 15x it's running single channel memory so we could see some nice improvements with dual channel depending on the game 4k gaming may be possible it is definitely not recommended you can always run games at 1080p on the 4k display though they'll look fine as the resolution scales down perfectly but you'll still be limited to the 60 Hertz refresh rate for most games you need a high-end PC to stand a chance for 4k gaming so I don't think it's something you should consider in a laptop even with the nice specs we've got here and I'd argue there is less to gain with 4k gaming with a 15-inch monitor anyway in terms of color gamut though gigabyte note that the 4k display has 100% of srgb a fair bit higher than the 1080p model straight out of the box I did notice the color difference with the 4k panel it just looked like the colors were more saturated and vibrant I also asked my partner to do a blind test and she instantly picked out the 4k panel was looking better the differences can be seen in there is that I got with the spider fiber the 4k panel was definitely better a bit ahead in terms of srgb but then well in front in terms of both NTSC and Adobe RGB color gamut but wait there's more the 4k panel is also better in terms of brightness and contrast ratio as the 1080p panel has a 300 NIT brightness while the 4k one is 400 nits so it's better in all measured aspects both the 1080p and 4k models come color calibrated out of the box but this trend of the 4k panel having better color gamut is something I've seen with other laptops too so worth checking if you're purely after content creation that's not to say 4k panels are always guaranteed to be better than the 1080p options just that I've noticed they tend to be better so make sure you check more pixels also require more battery power as there are more individual pixels that need to be controlled in displaying different colors so in theory I'm expecting worse battery life with the 4k laptop as both laptops were identical in terms of 94 word alla' battery and hardware components with the only difference being the screen I've run a couple of battery tests on each I did the battery tests with my 1080p error before my recent upgrades in the gaming test I've tested The Witcher 3 cap to 30fps so same workload but the 4k laptop was running the game with a 4k resolution so in theory more work for the GPU to do which results in the battery not lasting quite as long at 1080p the battery lasted for 36 percent longer the second test involved just leaving both laptops completely idle with the screen brightness maxed out at 100% on the windows desktop the idea of this test was that it would show the differences between a 1080p screen and 4k screen in terms of power draw which is why the 1080p laptop was only 10% better this time both still lasted for over 7 hours in this test there's less work for the GPU compared to playing a game at 4k which is why there's less of a difference however it's worth noting I did leave the 1080p laptop at 144 Hertz so it's possible that we could have saved some more power running both at 60 Hertz and both laptops were using the Intel graphics during this test there aren't that many use cases I can personally see for 4k laptops like this for most games with laptop hardware gaming at 4k isn't really practical and as we've seen on battery power uses more GPU power to run I can only think that it may be useful for things like photo editing and maybe some video editing depending on what you're doing but even then I think more of the games come from the higher color accuracy brightness and contrast panel rather than the resolution differences the 4k one just happens to be better in other ways as well but it is of course personal preference personally I'm perfectly fine editing with a 1080p laptop screen Adobe Premiere is perfectly fine to use I transcode all my video footage to 720p proxies anyways so that I can edit much easier because it's less strain on the system I never actually need to view the 4k footage at any point during the editing process but that's just my workflow you of course may be different I export the video watch it back at 4k then upload it but realistically I don't need the full 4k resolution to get any of this done editing photos on the other hand may be more beneficial as you may want to get in close to the pixel level so sing more could be useful it's also worth remembering that while at home or in the office you can always just plug in a larger higher quality monitor to so realistically you'd only be making use of the better 4k screen while traveling technically you can fit more in the screen if you lower the scaling in Windows for example with the scaling set to 200% with a 4k resolution this is what premiere looks like and this is the same as 100 percent on the 1080p laptop here's what 150 % scaling looks like with 4k so you can see we are able to fit more things in the same space and now here's what 100% on 4k looks like I don't know about you but at this stage we're getting too small for it to really be that great to work with and if I'm honest I personally found 200% at 4k nice for me which is the same as running my 1080p laptop at 100% anyway so I don't really gain anything here unless I want to squint so with all of that in mind how much extra does the 4k arrow 15x cost compared to the 1080p version prices will change over time you can check up-to-date pricing using the links in the description at the time of recall here in Australia there seems to be a 400 Australian dollar difference or around 250 US dollars so is this worth it considering it increases the total cost by over 10 percent I think it really depends what you're doing if you're using it for content creation especially professionally then yeah I think it's worthwhile but you can still definitely get by without it for other tasks like gaming I don't think it's worth a third as in most games you won't get great performance and at 15 inches I feel like 4k overall just doesn't help that much unless you're sitting quite close to it that said if I had the choice to pick between 1080p and 4k today for a video editing laptop I'd go with the 4k or a 15 X and just run it with 200% scaling as it does look nicer has better color gamut brightness and contrast so none of the benefits I'd get actually come from the resolution difference let me know which you'd pick in your laptop down in the comments 1080p or 4k and why everyone has different requirements I'd be interested to hear and of course if you're new to the channel don't forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this oneI recently got a gigabyte error 15x laptop for editing 4k videos and some people questioned the 1080p screen in this video I'm going to compare two identical error 15x laptops the only difference being that one has a 1080p screen while the others is 4k to see what sort of differences there are and help you decide which to get gigabytes center for an error 15x with the 4k screen to see the differences all specs were the same the only difference was the screens with the 1080p screen you have the advantage of the faster 144 Hertz refresh rate while the 4k screen is limited to 60 Hertz so if you're mostly going to be using the laptop for gaming you'd be much better served by the 1080p 144 Hertz screen I've been chucked a game just to show the performance differences between 1080p and 4k csgo is a game that runs quite well at 1080p regardless of settings or hardware but even with this game in 4k the frame rates drop significantly and it's not running that well in this particular test in this example the game was tested on the same laptop just with the resolutions changed so literally the only thing changing is the resolution it is worth noting though that as a stock error 15x it's running single channel memory so we could see some nice improvements with dual channel depending on the game 4k gaming may be possible it is definitely not recommended you can always run games at 1080p on the 4k display though they'll look fine as the resolution scales down perfectly but you'll still be limited to the 60 Hertz refresh rate for most games you need a high-end PC to stand a chance for 4k gaming so I don't think it's something you should consider in a laptop even with the nice specs we've got here and I'd argue there is less to gain with 4k gaming with a 15-inch monitor anyway in terms of color gamut though gigabyte note that the 4k display has 100% of srgb a fair bit higher than the 1080p model straight out of the box I did notice the color difference with the 4k panel it just looked like the colors were more saturated and vibrant I also asked my partner to do a blind test and she instantly picked out the 4k panel was looking better the differences can be seen in there is that I got with the spider fiber the 4k panel was definitely better a bit ahead in terms of srgb but then well in front in terms of both NTSC and Adobe RGB color gamut but wait there's more the 4k panel is also better in terms of brightness and contrast ratio as the 1080p panel has a 300 NIT brightness while the 4k one is 400 nits so it's better in all measured aspects both the 1080p and 4k models come color calibrated out of the box but this trend of the 4k panel having better color gamut is something I've seen with other laptops too so worth checking if you're purely after content creation that's not to say 4k panels are always guaranteed to be better than the 1080p options just that I've noticed they tend to be better so make sure you check more pixels also require more battery power as there are more individual pixels that need to be controlled in displaying different colors so in theory I'm expecting worse battery life with the 4k laptop as both laptops were identical in terms of 94 word alla' battery and hardware components with the only difference being the screen I've run a couple of battery tests on each I did the battery tests with my 1080p error before my recent upgrades in the gaming test I've tested The Witcher 3 cap to 30fps so same workload but the 4k laptop was running the game with a 4k resolution so in theory more work for the GPU to do which results in the battery not lasting quite as long at 1080p the battery lasted for 36 percent longer the second test involved just leaving both laptops completely idle with the screen brightness maxed out at 100% on the windows desktop the idea of this test was that it would show the differences between a 1080p screen and 4k screen in terms of power draw which is why the 1080p laptop was only 10% better this time both still lasted for over 7 hours in this test there's less work for the GPU compared to playing a game at 4k which is why there's less of a difference however it's worth noting I did leave the 1080p laptop at 144 Hertz so it's possible that we could have saved some more power running both at 60 Hertz and both laptops were using the Intel graphics during this test there aren't that many use cases I can personally see for 4k laptops like this for most games with laptop hardware gaming at 4k isn't really practical and as we've seen on battery power uses more GPU power to run I can only think that it may be useful for things like photo editing and maybe some video editing depending on what you're doing but even then I think more of the games come from the higher color accuracy brightness and contrast panel rather than the resolution differences the 4k one just happens to be better in other ways as well but it is of course personal preference personally I'm perfectly fine editing with a 1080p laptop screen Adobe Premiere is perfectly fine to use I transcode all my video footage to 720p proxies anyways so that I can edit much easier because it's less strain on the system I never actually need to view the 4k footage at any point during the editing process but that's just my workflow you of course may be different I export the video watch it back at 4k then upload it but realistically I don't need the full 4k resolution to get any of this done editing photos on the other hand may be more beneficial as you may want to get in close to the pixel level so sing more could be useful it's also worth remembering that while at home or in the office you can always just plug in a larger higher quality monitor to so realistically you'd only be making use of the better 4k screen while traveling technically you can fit more in the screen if you lower the scaling in Windows for example with the scaling set to 200% with a 4k resolution this is what premiere looks like and this is the same as 100 percent on the 1080p laptop here's what 150 % scaling looks like with 4k so you can see we are able to fit more things in the same space and now here's what 100% on 4k looks like I don't know about you but at this stage we're getting too small for it to really be that great to work with and if I'm honest I personally found 200% at 4k nice for me which is the same as running my 1080p laptop at 100% anyway so I don't really gain anything here unless I want to squint so with all of that in mind how much extra does the 4k arrow 15x cost compared to the 1080p version prices will change over time you can check up-to-date pricing using the links in the description at the time of recall here in Australia there seems to be a 400 Australian dollar difference or around 250 US dollars so is this worth it considering it increases the total cost by over 10 percent I think it really depends what you're doing if you're using it for content creation especially professionally then yeah I think it's worthwhile but you can still definitely get by without it for other tasks like gaming I don't think it's worth a third as in most games you won't get great performance and at 15 inches I feel like 4k overall just doesn't help that much unless you're sitting quite close to it that said if I had the choice to pick between 1080p and 4k today for a video editing laptop I'd go with the 4k or a 15 X and just run it with 200% scaling as it does look nicer has better color gamut brightness and contrast so none of the benefits I'd get actually come from the resolution difference let me know which you'd pick in your laptop down in the comments 1080p or 4k and why everyone has different requirements I'd be interested to hear and of course if you're new to the channel don't forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this one\n"