Why no love for 17" laptops?

[John13]

So I am seeing this trend industry wide and I am getting really sad…
16" laptops seem to fill more and more of each company’s upcoming “new laptop” spot slots and I don’t get it…

like ~7 years back (and all the years before that as far as screen size goes) I purchased an acer predator helios 300 17.2 or something inches.

it also had a full fledged numpad and still space for speakers (which it didnt have ont the top part of the chassis but they could have built them there , there was no space constrain is what I am getting at)

a couple of years back I bought a lenovo legion as an upgrade 16" it had better screen (as in picture quality and resolution ) better cpu better gpu better everything even the chasis was metalic while my acer’s plastic but I cant even remember the exact model name of that laptop because I seldomly use it and it collects dust …

Why? because of the screen!!! the Acer one has an inferior screen (although decent enough quality wise) but 17 is the sweet spot man!

Like for having your laptop top you know… on your lap and watch movies or videos fullscreen or even productivity have half the screen or a third of it with an AI agent open the rest on what you working on, in general every real estate arrangement is more “pleasing” to me and I can really use it for hours as with the lenovo legion I really tried to love this laptop but squinting with my eyes or needing to squeeze stuff to fit into screen more than usual etc simply was depressing me…

Believe it or not I pick up my old acer 99% of the time instead of my new laptop if I am to watch something or work on something, only if my old acer’s gpu isnt fast enough I change to the new one (but before that I try my best to make it playable on the acer with things like lossless scaling etc this is how much 17+ inches mesmerize me size DOES matter in some things )

And I really dont understand that industry shift towards 16" I mean other than “we make more money by selling less screen” argument.

Because practically a 17 inch laptop (e.g my acer which is a little bit bigger than 17" ) isnt that much heavier than a 16" I mean ok maybe on paper if you weigh them but I cant really tell the difference in my hands just holding them.

and it can fit a bigger battery it can fit a full fledged numpad (an other saddening industry shift as if its easier to work with the number row on cheat engine or entering your numerical windows pin or using excel… like every sorts of people can take advantage of a numpad jeez)

it can fit upwards facing speakers and the screen is just better for consumption from youtube videos( + bigger text on comments) to movies (and caption size as well as relation between caption size and actor face size and screen real estate in general because you can increase the caption size but if the rest of the picture doesnt increase it still feels weird and out of place to the point you just dont want to have captions even if your 1st language isnt english and most movies are in english.. )

I saw on an ltt video that you made your last revision of your 16" screen custom… which means that you had the opportunity to make it 17+" and you missed it…

So I implore you for your next custom screen please consider to revisit the classical sizes of 17-18" I mean watching a laptop screen doesnt have to feel like a chore squinting to read or having to have it very close on your face etc… and I would really like my next laptop to be an upgradable frame work one (also look up if you can find a middle ground with the free software community so that we dont have to run ancient thinkpads but that’s just a P.S mainly focus on screen size please )

[MJ1]

Man, I don’t want to know what you think about the Framework 12!

I’m with you in essence tho. I was tempted to try a smaller screen than what I’m used to for my last laptop, and I could do it! The thought of less screen…

This

@John13

[Enzo_Choi]

due to the modularity, fw has a harder time fitting equal cooling performance into small packaging. no issue for the fw 13 so far on cooling, but the fw 16 is bigger and heavier with the dgpu than other computers in its class because of the cooling system implementation. doesn’t fit a lot of 16" cases. a 17" with the dgpu would be a touch bigger than normal 17"s if they kept the cooling layout, which is a downside that gets harder to stomach on the already large format. the 16" category also sells better it seems. more backpacks fit it.

[John13]

I don’t mind the 12, not my cup of tea, but I UNDERSTAND its reason for existing, some people need something small for mobility reasons etc
Or plan to connect it to a desktop monitor keyboard and mouse most of the time and want to save some $ (because I think they are cheaper if the rest of the specs is the same) or they do again mostly use it as desktop and like the idea once in a while, e.g flying towards somewhere to have something easy to carry and small on their lap, no issue there.
But you cant tell me that industry shifted from 17ish inches to 16 for mobility issues… there is 0 PRACTICAL benefit in mobility you just get the downsides of a smaller screen.

[John13]

The backpack argument is hard for me to accept both because 17inch was the norm for a good decade (So there should exist more backpacks made since then with 17inch in mind) + 16" is big enough to not fit in the small ones so the big ones probably can receive 17inch ones unless they are specially made for a model or whatnot.
Last but not least buy your laptop depending on the color /or brand /or shape of a backpack is like buying a car depending on color of car covers you can find xD

[nadb]

@John13

he backpack argument is hard for me to accept both because 17inch was the norm for a good decade

I don’t know where you are but 17" was never the norm. 14" and 15.6" were. 17"+ has always been an outlier. At that point you get a desktop 16" was simply the sweet spot where you could still make a laptop not a desktop replacement. Laptop = mobile. Mobility is literally its only purpose for existing, if it ain’t mobile a desktop is always preferable.

[Weldie]

I’m personally a big fan of larger size laptops, but I assume the FW team has focus groups that drop by feedback with regards to market sentiment and market needs. I’d assume that’s a big part of the reason.

[John13]

I don’t know where you get that but I remember since at least 2007ish the main categories being 15.6" (or 15ish") for small and 17.3" (or 17ish" ) for large then there were the nettops/ultra portables that varied but those were mostly niche anyway or at least most companies offered a lot less of them in their product line

Same with the extra large screens e.g 18 and above, they existed but again not that many if any on every laptops main product line

the 16" laptops started (slowly ) to become a thing around 2021-2022 and then slowly the other brands and now they are like the majority of laptops with 17+"being a rare occasion.

case and point here is a waybackmachine arhived screenshot from a very big pricecomparison website/database in europe (geizhals.eu) from 2021

As you can see there are 2646 15ish" laptop SKUs and only 381 16ish" offerings while there were 933 17ish" offerings from 15" (which includes everything above 15" so 16" and 17"<-- supergroup) which were 3960 and to find the ones that were only 15" we have to deduct the ones that were not 15" so 16" and 17" so we gonna use the number listed for “from 16”) because that has the 16" AND the 17") so 3960-1314= 2464 same logic with the rest.

(using the filters ab xx" which means from and bis which means “up to” ) so eg. there is from 15.4

if we go to e,g 2018 there are 0 offerings for 16" laptops there isnt even an option to filter them…

and now there is only a few hundred 17" offerings while more than 2000 16" offerings.. and the numbers seem to get lower for 17" each year…

P.S notice how crammed my tab section is (usually its half that size but still when half that size I can read the tabs on the 17.3" acer) on my 16" lenovo a good chunk of those would disappear/hide because there would be no space to have it, and even if I had about half the tabs I still wouldnt be able to read their labels…

16" is just a quality of life loss for the consumer so that the manufacturer can make a few extra bucks per screen…

[Enzo_Choi]

I wouldn’t say its all greed. a lot of 15-16" keyboards (with numpads) go right to the edge, so it’s around the minimum form factor for a numpad inclusive keyboard, where 17+ laptops often have a good bit of spacing between the numpad and keyboard or the edges of the keys and the edge. I don’t actually use my numpad but can see the appeal of a computer just big enough to cram it for occasional use.

[John13]

@Enzo_Choi

I wouldn’t say its all greed. a lot of 15-16" keyboards

See there is the mistake

you are putting together 15.4" and 16" laptops.

There already were 15.4" there already were 17.3"

There was a difference (mostly financial imho but I guess if you valued more portability you would go for the 15.4 although again meh you wouldnt really notice the difference usually one bought the 15.4" version of a laptop line, especially in gaming e.g predator line, to save some money).

now companies almost stopped making 17.3" (and the ones they do make are some budget offerings or at least not part of their top tier product line, e.g its really hard to find a top tier amd cpu laptop , especially with the flagship AI chips, that comes also with a decent GPU at 17.3" yet you can find at 16" and 15.4")

so they kill 17.3+" to introduce 16" which you already had as a choice (in the form 15.4" because let us not kid ourselves the size is the same nobody with a 15.4" laptop said “I wish I could have 0.6 more inches” lol maybe he whised to have 2 more inches or even more yea that’s more like it! )

so they just made the “Expensive” option less valuable but you still pay premium price for it (the yesteryear 17.3" flagship model pricetag).

[Matty]

why not 18 inch

[ValiantCM]

18.4" or 19.4" at 16:9 please

[ashimashi]

I used to be a fan of true large desktop replacement laptops but sadly 17" and 18" flagships are a dying breed these days…

[John13]

Well maybe it has to do with aspect ratios or production cost(most likely), there used to be (and still are) some 18" or bigger laptops but usually those are like the “ridiculous” ones e.g having all bells and wistles and some are up to the point you cant categorize them as laptops because they essentially have desktop parts in them although I think that’s not the case anymore but it used to be that companies like Asus would throw some behemoths like that google it, I am too bored to look for model names xD

The standard for “big screen” latops (as in every laptop manufacturer main line of products in main categories, e.g Predator line, Legion line and so on and so forth) was 17.3" and almost all offerings on that product line had same spec hardware and the choice to either 15.4" or 17.3"

recent years that has been changed and you can get mostly 15.4 and 16" and you need to search hard to find a mainline (let alone a flagship of that mainline) model from a manufacturer with 17.3"

But the 17.3" pricetg (actually they are a lot ore expensive because we live in a cursed timeline and msrp isnt even taken as a suggestion anymore but lets say price difference that 17.4 had vs the same model/spec with 15.4") for the mainline models has been transferred to the 16" offerings which is 0.6" inches bigger than the 15.4" lol

[Alan_Pearce]

@John13

There already were 15.4" there already were 17.3"

Yeah, there were 17" screens, but then look at the pixel ratings of them. You used a 17" to get the number of pixels people wanted on their screen, now technology has moved on and you get more pixels on a 16" screen, but the cost constraints don’t make it worth doing a 17", if you want a larger screen you get a 4k monitor and use it externally.