Are there any laptops from the 1990's that have good screens?
"Good" meaning good color reproduction, not resolution.
I've bought some 1990's laptops and the screens all have yellowish or beige-colored whites.
One of them has a big magenta cloud covering the lower right side of the screen.
Are there any old laptops that are known for good screens?
luck of the draw, LCD panels can age too and they weren't particularly great in that era anyways, but if you want any decent quality avoid STN displays.
It's hard to predict the quality of whites because it depends on the ageing of fluorescent lamp. But all laptops with TFT screens ("active matrix") are superior to everything else. STN screens are a joke and are totally useless for games or multimedia. But they could be even $1000 cheaper (originally) than TFT screens.
Look for laptops which are "active matrix" models, they can be also identified by having only the brightness slider and no contrast regulation. I have experience with these:
Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000M (active matrix color version): 640x480, 10.4 or 9.4 inch, 486DX75/100, Sound blaster compatible, SCSI port, CD-rom docking station
Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4ND, PCD5ND: 10.2 inch TFT screen version, 640x480, 486 or P1, sound blaster compatible
Toshiba T3200SXC (1990): world's first? laptop with active color TFT screen. 386SX. Unfortunately probably all of these screens failed after years and display only pale white image. But it worked just fine with a replacement industrial screen after rewiring connectors.
Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg
Maybe there are good ones compared to what the competition was offering, but colour reproduction was an issue with LCDs until at least 2010.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-08-29, 23:45:Maybe there are good ones compared to what the competition was offering, but colour reproduction was an issue with LCDs until at least 2010.
Well, that's true. But difference between DSTN screens like this one:
and any TFT screen is huge.
Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg
The whites look pretty good on my Panasonic CF-41 MK-III laptop, with its 10.4" VGA screen.
IF you're seeing dark or reddish patches on the screen, that's a failing CCFL tube. Replacing it might help, but you could potentially upgrade the CCFL tube with an LED strip, which would definitely give you somewhat more accurate whites.
Generally though, the original 'Active-Matrix TFT' technology displays are technically TN (twisted nematic) displays, which are not known for great colour renditions in general. IPS displays only became a thing in the early 2000s as far as I'm aware and there's been no effort so far to retrofit displays for these old laptops yet, that I'm aware of.
My choice from slowest to fastest:
Nec Versa V/50C
Toshiba T4850CT
Samsung Sens 800 (a little yellowish, but for me is fine with 640x480)
Texas Instruments 4000M
Nec Versa 4000C
Nec Versa 4050C
TwinHead SlimNote P79TE
Toshiba Portege 3110CT
Sony Vaio PCG-C1X
Toshiba Libretto FF1100
Fujitsu FMVNE243L3
Sony Vaio PCG-SR5K
Toshiba Pro 4280XDVD
Sony Vaio PCG-SR9/K
Sony PCG-F480
Toshiba Tecra 8100
Sony Vaio PCG-SR9C/K
Sony Vaio PCG-XG38
Toshiba 2805-S202
Doom is what you want (c) MAZter
