Good screen or laptop for outdoor use

[taylormadearmy]

Does anyone know of a screen or laptop that has a screen that works well in direct sunlight?

I fancy making the most of the 2 weeks of England's summer!

Thanks!
T

[gplasky]

You're looking for a laptop with this type of screen:

2. Transflective LCDs

Transflective construction starts with a transmissive LCD and adds a partially reflective mirror layer between the LCD and the backlight. Depending on the LCD manufacturer, the mirror layer can be either a half-silvered mirror or a full mirror with tiny holes punched in it. When a transflective LCD is used indoors, it is illuminated by the backlight just like a transmissive LCD, except that the mirror layer blocks some of the light. When a transflective LCD is used outdoors, ambient light reflects off the mirror layer and illuminates the LCD. Note that outdoors, light has to go through the LCD twice, once on the way in and once on the way out. This tends to makes the outdoor performance of a transflective LCD not as good as the indoor performance, where the light only has to go through the LCD once.

The balance between outdoor and indoor performance can be adjusted during manufacture of the LCD by varying the reflectivity of the mirror layer. For example, the mirror layer might be set to reflect 60% and transmit 40% of the light.

This means that if the normal indoor brightness of the LCD is 130 nits, only 52 nits (40% of 130) is transmitted from the backlight through the mirror layer and the LCD. Outdoors, 60% of the light hitting the mirror layer is reflected, but since the light has to go through the LCD twice, the user actually sees less. A transflective LCD is therefore by definition a compromise. It can never be as bright as a transmissive LCD indoors, and it can never be as bright as a reflective LCD outdoors.

I know the Panasonic Toughbooks have this on some of their models but Toughbooks aren't cheap. Here's one example:
Toughbook 74

Gerry

[matt91]

The "$100 laptop", the XO, was partially designed to work well in direct sunlight. I think some are available on ebay.

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by matt91

The "$100 laptop", the XO, was partially designed to work well in direct sunlight. I think some are available on ebay.

Thanks - is it grunty enough for Placeshifter - has anyone here tried it?

T

[doc]

Originally Posted by taylormadearmy

Does anyone know of a screen or laptop that has a screen that works well in direct sunlight?

I fancy making the most of the 2 weeks of England's summer!

Thanks!
T

I'm afraid I can't help out on your question, but I think you'll find you've missed the English summer, it was in 1976!

[matt91]

Originally Posted by taylormadearmy

Thanks - is it grunty enough for Placeshifter - has anyone here tried it?

T

Good question. I haven't tried it, but have been meaning to. There is another guy who has an XO here, and he had said that he wanted to try it too.

There is a new OS release that I've been meaning to install, so maybe I'll do that and try to install the linux placeshifter as well and see what happens.

Matt