this is a repost of a post i did previously on cohost, and thus doesn't have post music
yeah, this is a kayfabe-breaking post. it's a rant.
My main laptop is a ThinkPad P51-- a monster of a laptop for its time 6 years ago but also a laptop with a 15-inch display. I have a P51 now, a P50s before that, and before that a 15-inch Ideapad piece of kit that was fine until it wasn't. I am a big screen laptop user, and anything smaller than 15 inches is too small.
That's what she said.
Anyway, this is all exposition to say that I'm a big screen champion. So, why are big screens so expensive, especially compared to their smaller screen counterparts? There are some answers to this question, but only a couple of them are worth deep diving. So let's explore them, along with some examples of each.
But things are changing
While I was looking for examples, I found it rather difficult because we're in a bit of a transition period right now, after Apple introduced their new MacBooks Pros a couple years ago, so the conversation has started moving from 13 vs 15 and towards 14 vs 16, so much so that finding new for sale 13-inch laptops is very brutal. Even then though, the difference between 14 and 15 inches shouldn't be that large, but it tends to be. You will see.
No.1: Big screens are for high-resolution screens
wtf no they're not.
The common justification for the big laptop price is that the screens are not only bigger, but higher resolution as well. I'm in the camp that anything larger than 1080p isn't worth it, especially as a member of 100% scaling gang.
There are examples of this, though. The LG Gram is already a very expensive laptop. The Gram 14 has an i3 for a grand. Louder for the people in the back:
The LG Gram 14 has an i3 CPU in its base model for $1000 USD DOLLARS.
Anyway, it's got a 1200p display, which is just 1080p in the 16:10 aspect ratio. But, the Gram 16 has a 2560x1600 display, or QHD with extra steps, and its MSRP is $1,299.
But you know what? The 14-inch HP Envy is $850 MSRP (though it's on sale on HP's website apparently), and it ships with the optimal 1080p display. So does the 15 at $950. So does the 17, and its MSRP is $1,290. They all ship base with 1080p displays; the 17-inch Envy has an option for a 4K display, but it is not standard. So why is the 17 so much more expensive than the 14 and 15? Well,
No.2: The big models have better specs than the small models
This is probably the only remotely valid point of anything I've come up with. Manufacturers of laptop computers do tend to put higher-specification components in the bigger laptop than the smaller laptop. One could see an i5 being in the small laptop, while the big laptop gets an i7. Or the big laptop gets a dedicated GPU while the small laptop is stuck with integrated graphics.
The base model Dell XPS 13 is $799 MSRP, while the XPS 15 is-- jesus christ-- $1,499! But, the XPS 15's base model has an i7, and a dedicated Intel Arc GPU, and double the storage and double the RAM. And just to make sure I wasn't completely insane, I tried to spec out the 13 to match spec-for-spec. You can't do that. The XPS 13 cannot at all have dedicated graphics.
But, even if the specs were the same, would the price be the same? The base model XPS 17 is $2,199. It comes with an i7 as well and even steps up the GPU to a mobile RTX 4050. And this, I can match up with with the XPS 15. The spec-matched XPS 15 is $1,899. It is three hundred dollars more to step up the screen size while keeping the rest of the specs identical. Is it really that--
No.3: The big models are just not as popular as the small models
That's some bullshit. If the big models weren't as popular as the small models, Apple wouldn't have made a 15-inch MacBook Air. Which, by the way, is selling hella. And the 15-inch Air is only $200 more than the 13-inch Air, which is what I would say is the upper limit on how much a "screen premium" should be.
You know who also does the "screen premium" right? Lenovo. Their flagship business offering, the T14, starts at $1,199. The T16, which has a spec-for-spec base model even, is a little more than $1,325. That's about a $125 screen premium, which is among the most acceptable in the entire market, perhaps besides the Envy I mentioned above.
But, laptop manufacturers assume that people who want the big laptop also want big specs to go with it. No, I just want the bigger screen. What specs I want with it is irrelevant.
Framework-- oh yeah, not even they are safe-- is making a fairly big mistake by offering the FW 16 for such a gaudy premium over the FW 13. They could continue making a killing by offering a bigger version of the 13, but instead they turned the 16 into a mobile workstation contender and reaffirming the idea that big laptop means big specs.
God... I can't believe the best big laptop money can buy now is the big MacBook Air.