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Comment by yndoendo | Hacker News Reader

Any laptop that is still 16:9 resolution is a never purchase for me. That resolution needs to go the way of the dinosaur.

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*aspect ratio

Sorry, had to say it. Has the world really moved on from 16:9? I only buy used thinkpads and am t420 and t470s deep into the 16:9 era.

Most of the bigger laptop manufacturers are now on 16:10 (Lenovo, Dell, ASUS) or even 5:4 or 3:2 (HP Dragonfly, MS Surface, Framework 13). Apple has been 16:10 since the early 2000s, only having made one 16:9 model (11” MBA). 16:9 is mainly hanging on in small/niche/budget models/manufacturers.

The t400 I have is 16:10

Yep, a lot of laptops were 16:10 up through the mid-late 2000s, especially workstation and business laptops. By 2010 or so that’d given way to the HD marketing craze that plagued laptops with those terrible 1366x768 panels that doggedly persisted until just a 3-4 years ago. In the case of the ThinkPad T-series, that happened when the T420 came out in early 2011.

Developers and many other content creators have. I held onto a 4:3 aspect ratio laptop as long as I could when 16:9 was becoming a thing. I'm typing this on a 16:10 (2560 x 1600) ThinkBook. 3:2 (2256 x 1504) is also common for smaller laptops like the Framework 13.

It might not seem like much but the additional vertical space make development easier.

The only time I'll accept something wider than 16:10 is an ultrawide external monitor that ends up functioning as two side by side monitors.

For primarly gaming or media consumption devices I'm still fine with 16:9.

Still waiting for 4:3 to come back, as vertical real estate is precious when you're coding. Not holding my breath though. The market has spoken, and the market appears to want screens optimized for watching videos rather than screens optimized for writing text.

A little vertical space is nice for videos too, cause often there's the video controls or some kind of bar above/below a video.

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