Do thousands of colors make a difference?
The Creative Zen Vision:M portable media player, which won Best of Show and Best Portable Audio & Video Device awards at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (see this Wikipedia article), has a 2.5 inch backlit TFT LCD Screen with 18-bit color depth (262,144 colors). The Apple iPod fifth-generation update, aka iPod Video 5.5 Gen, also has a 2.5 inch backlit LCD Screen. However, it only has a color depth of 16-bit (65,536 colors). Both devices have a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels. I’ve had the opportunity to watch video on both devices at different times. Unfortunately I never actually compared them side by side to see if the additional 196,608 colors were actually noticeable. What I did notice though was that videos looked better on the iPod, simply because the screen was brighter.

Does screen resolution make a difference?
Two iPaq handhelds, the HP iPaq 110 Classic and the HP iPaq 210 Enterprise PDA may seem easier to compare. Both have 16-bit (65,536 colors) screens, although the HP iPaq 210 was initially wrongly advertised as having an 18-bit screen (on the HP site it has been partially corrected and reads 65,536 colors (18-bit), which of course makes no sense). The iPaq 210 has a 4 inch 640 by 480 pixel, that is, VGA resolution screen. The iPaq 110 (also referred to as the HP iPaq 111 Classic) has a 3.5-inch 240 by 320 pixel screen. Frankly the iPaq 110 is a great little light handheld, with the same processor as the iPaq 210. The iPaq 210 is larger and heavier (6.8 oz compared with 3.7 oz), but for those who have previously owned a handheld with a VGA resolution screen (like the Dell Axim X51v), a lower resolution screen may be too much of a step down.

Posted on April 19th, 2008 by mervyn