Stefan Mileschin

We visited with Acer at this CES, and they didn't specifically have anything that we were told we could discuss, but after seeing another publication with pictures of Acer's pre-release 2880x1620 IPS display laptop it appears that's fair game. So, let me tell you what we know.

The panel as noted is 2880x1620, with a diagonal of around 15.6" (give or take 0.1" I'd guess). This is basically the non-Apple version of the QWXGA+ display, only in 16:9 attire rather than 16:10. The display is clearly IPS or some other wide viewing angle design, and when we walked into Acer's suite to look at the laptops and tablets, from an oblique angle it stood out as far and away the best display of the bunch. I also took some time to show the same image (wallpaper) on the 2880 panel alongside adjacent 1366x768 and 1080p panels (both TN), and the difference in color was astounding.

My best guess for when we'll see this LCD show up in an Acer laptop (and potentially in laptops from other vendors) is around late Q2 2013, when the Haswell launch occurs. That should give the OEMs plenty of time to figure out how they're going to deal with an ultra-high-DPI panel in Windows, and that's where Apple's control over both the hardware and the OS is going to be difficult to beat. Hopefully when the display shows up, manufacturers will also remember to spend the extra time and money to pre-calibrate for accurate colors, and it sounds like that's at least in the cards.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6663/a...880x1620-panel