What's the most practical laptop screen size for AC?

[Borshchyk]

Hi there.

I am choosing a laptop for work. I have read the system requirements on the Graphisoft website: https://Graphisoft.com/resources-and-support/system-requirements , but I am wondering about the screen size. Sometimes I will work on this laptop in Archicad. Should I buy 16 inch or even 17.3 inch, or is it enough to have 15.6 inch and take better system characteristics for these money? What laptop screen size do you use for Archicad? All opinions and suggestions welcome.

[Lee Hankins]

I use a 15” MacBook Pro but I also have a 27” external display in the office and a 24” external display at home. I use all three at different times. I have used the 15” on it’s own in the past too. I found working off a 15” was fine. 

[Lingwisyer]

Depends on how mobile you need it to be, how often you will be at a set location and what kind of workloads you will be doing.

On the go: a small screen will generally mean a improved battery life and a lighter load so if you are needing to be highly mobile and your workloads are relatively light this would be preferable.

Static: on the other hand, if you will be spending the majority of your time in a single location, or maybe two such as work and home, you can save money on a smaller screen and get an external monitor / setup. This would be more ergonomic and means you are not limited to laptop screen sizes and their quality.  Form factor is also less important in this situation so you can spend more on components and less on convenience.

Fluid: the third would be if you will be needing to use your laptop frequently in a few different locations, in which case the bigger screen would be more suitable as you are working in too many different locations to do an external setup, but you hopefully have an abundance of power points that you can access when required. A lack of power points might be able to be bridged by getting a laptop powerbank, though compatibility will depend of your laptop.

Ling.

[Borshchyk]

What about resolution? Should it be 1920 X 1080 full HD or it can be 2560 X 1600 WQXGA ?

[Barry Kelly]

For a laptop screen I would say 1920 x 1080 is the max resolution you would want to use.

On smaller screens you may find even this to be too small, but you really need it to see all of the Archicad tools set out properly, otherwise lots of scrolling.

Higher resolution on a small screen (even a 17") will make everything extremely small.

Fine though when you can plug in a second larger monitor.

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

As Barry mentioned, I would stick with a 1080p screen. At the size of your typical laptop screen, the gains of higher resolution are less noticeable and since you are needing to push a high pixel count, that will cut into your battery life due to the increased performance requirements. Also, AC has historically had scaling issues... Unsure if that has actually been resolved. Your best bet would be to have a look at laptops with different resolutions and see which resolution you are most comfortable with without any scaling.

Ling.

[Borshchyk]

Thank you all for your answers and suggestions.