3:2 (Premium)

While there’s some debate about the benefits of 3:2 displays on portable PCs, there shouldn’t be. This type of display isn’t just optimal. It should be a given.

In fact, we as an industry should be collectively moving to 3:3 displays right now. And on desktop PCs, too.

The rationale behind this need is simple: We should optimize for the most common, everyday usage scenarios and not for the occasional. The problem is that we, as people, have a hard time making this kind of decision correctly.

So let me use two related examples to explain my way of thinking.

As I’ve mentioned probably too many times already, my wife and watch a lot of House Hunters-type TV shows. They’re infuriating: Two idiots who apparently (but not really) want completely different things argue over a house purchase for 22 minutes and then arrive, predictably, at the perfect home for them. These shows are beyond formulaic, are, in fact, completely fake. But there are little gems of human psychology in there, too. Among them is a very common trait of not optimizing for the everyday.

Bob and Mary, we’re told, are moving to Amsterdam because of a new job there. He wants to be in the middle of the action, because they’ve never lived in Europe and they want to experience everything that the city has to offer. But doing so will incur a 45-minute commute to work.

What they should do is optimize for the everyday: You are going to go work five days and week. You will only be out and about in Amsterdam on some days. But oftentimes these two boobs will pick the (more expensive) city apartment instead. And the poor sap will fight with other commuters on the tram/bus/whatever everyday when he goes to and from work.

The even more common example is when a young couple with no money buys/rents more house than they need—and this could be international or right here in the U.S.—expressly because friends and family will be visiting them and it is obviously their responsibility to make that easier and less expensive. So they spend more money than they need to, to accommodate the occasional house guest. They pay for an extra bedroom for 365 days of the year, and it will get used maybe 10 to 20 days in that year.

It would be cheaper in many cases to simply pay for the guests’ hotel room for those days, not that anyone ever does this, let alone even considers it. Or just let the guests sleep on your couch. You really don’t want house guests getting too comfortable, after all. Again, optimize for the everyday. Not for the occasional.

OK, back to PCs and the need for 3:2 displays.

PCs used to have square 4:3 displays. That was true of both desktop displays and portable PCs. Over time, these display types gave way to widescreen form factors—first 16:10 and then 16:9—because HDTV happened and we were all taken with the cinematic aspect ratio. More to the point, the PCs of that era were still do-it-all personal computing devices. We didn’t just work on them, we watched digital movies and TV shows on them too. There was a brief moment where we actually thought using PCs in the living room made sense.

None of that stuff makes sense today. Thanks to the rise of mobile, PCs have returned to being the workhorses that they should be. Today, most people, and even more people as a percentage moving forward, no longer use PCs for entertainment. We use other displays, in our living rooms at home and on mobile devices on the go.

So why the frick are we still stuck with non-optimal widescreen PC displays? We are optimizing for the occasional (content consumption) and not for the everyday (content creation/productivity). It’s not right.

Now, someone out there is going to opine that 16:9 widescreen displays are perfect for multitasking because you can place two windows side-by-side, and that additional horizontal real estate has some kind of payoff.

That is ludicrous.

3:2 (or even 4:3) is more optimal for creation/productivity of all kinds. It is ideal for those times when you need to be full-screen, such as video editing, Excel, and similar. And it is optimal for side-by-side productivity work, such as when you might have Word (or another editor) on one half of the screen and a web browser (or whatever) on the right. And the reason that’s true is that the content we’re viewing and writing is vertically oriented. Additional horizontal space isn’t just unnecessary, it’s non-optimal. It’s hard to read or write text when the width is too large.

Convinced that 3:2 is the ideal aspect ratio for PC displays, I’ve begun haranguing PC makers in private about this. Their respective reactions are, I think, instructive. Let me provide two opposing examples.

HP has told me that 3:2 is ideal for tablets and 2-in-1s because they look good when rotated into portrait mode. There is something goofy about a rotated widescreen display where it just looks super-tall in portrait mode. Too tall and thin. I agree with that, and I have often noted this as well.

But its customers like 16:9 displays otherwise, I was told, and they’re just responding to that need. My response to this is simple: Customers have no idea what they want, and catering to an occasional need—especially when it compromises the everyday experience—isn’t just a mistake, it’s a flaw in judgment. This is a where you need to lead, not just follow every customer whim, even the wrong-headed ones.

But Lenovo’s ThinkPad team, to my delight, confirmed my opinion about 3:2 displays. I was told that they held on to 4:3 for as long as they could, but that their suppliers were inexorably moving to widescreen as part of that industry-wide move about 15 years ago. They went to 16:10 first, begrudgingly, and then to 16:9 when forced to. They would like to move to 3:2 right now but are having trouble finding suppliers that can meet their needs from a volume perspective. See? Lenovo gets it.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that 3:2 displays is one area where Microsoft, of all companies, has actually led the industry. In 2014, it moved from the tiny 16:9 displays in the first two Surface RT/Surface Pro generations to the larger and 3:2 display in the Surface Pro 3.

Here’s what I wrote about this change at that time.

“Surface Pro 3 exceeds expectations … in several ways, with the 12-inch unit offering a ‘pixel-free’ resolution of 2160 x 1440 and a 3:2 aspect ratio … All but the original Surface RT were full HD displays, with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. This type of screen makes sense for a consumption-oriented tablet that will be used exclusively or nearly so in landscape orientation. But it’s less optimal for productivity work and is oddly awful in portrait mode, where the vertical height of the screen and device appear oddly pronounced.”

And with regards to 3:2 specifically, I noted the following.

“Surface Pro 3 has a nearly square 3:2 aspect ratio, something that is more akin to the iPad, say, than your typical PC laptop or Ultrabook. If you’re used to looking at a modern portable computer, the screen will seem ‘tall’ when used in the normal landscape mode. It’s optimized for productivity work—and even Visual Studio for you developer-types—instead of watching videos. Which, when you think about it, makes all kinds of sense.”

Yes. Yes, it does.

“The 3:2 aspect ratio is an absolute surprise and a delight, something I never expected to see,” I concluded.

Today, about four years later, I am even happier and more confident about the need for this type of display. Think about the number of times I’ve expressed that special something that makes PCs like Surface Book 2 and Surface Laptop so preferable, despite weird technical limitations like limited expansion and the lack of modern technologies like Thunderbolt 3. Why do people who use these PCs, including both Brad and myself, prefer them so strongly? It’s not entirely because of the 3:2 displays, I guess. But that is absolutely a major contributor.

I’m writing this now because I’ve been writing my review of the latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon after using it last week on my Colorado trip. It is a stellar PC, and it will still be highly recommended. But like other modern PCs, including many HPs, I look at the pointless expanse of bezel below the display and think to myself that that space could—no, should—be filled with a display. They could very easily use a 3:2 display in the same form factor and put the whole thing over the top for users. You know, if they could just get the parts.

Going forward, I will now ding any portable PC that does not include a 3:2 display. This is a failure of both imagination and meeting customer needs.

To be clear, 3:2 isn’t just a personal preference, it’s the optimal, correct choice for PCs here in 2018. We should be dealing with unused space while watching the occasional video, not when using the PC for work. It’s a PC, for crying out loud, not a video player. And it is time for a change.