Laptop: 95% NTSC TN vs 60% NTSC IPS for my use?

for IPS displays, what are the highest gamuts (also 8 bit vs. 10 bit) available in laptops

Most laptop displays in the market right now are 6-bit, with or without HiFRC (achieves 8-bit via dithering). True 8-bit (16.7 million colours) and 10-bit (10 billion colours) will cost you a LOT, besides I don't know of any laptop that come with display panels with such high bit depths. This was why I shied away from opting for the high gamut display on my Sager.

Here follows a rather lengthy explanation, feel free to skip this paragraph. The visible spectrum of the human eye has a much wider gamut than what any display technology, at least for commercial usage, can reproduce right now. The next widest gamut you can work in is the ProPhoto, then comes adobeRGB, and last is sRGB. The standard panels that we get nowadays generally cover 95-105% of sRGB. Now let's consider these color spaces as triangles, the visible spectrum to the human eye being the largest (refer photo: in this the visible spectrum is a horseshoe shape instead of a triangle (which is how it should be)). The three corners of the triangle are the colours red, green and blue. The ProPhoto is a smaller triangle, adobeRGB inside that, and sRGB the smallest triangle fits inside the adobeRGB space. So, for example, the most saturated green in the adobeRGB space is greener than the most saturated green in the sRGB space. So, you can say that a higher gamut will have a higher colour contrast.

Note: in the image the "wide gamut RGB" is actually ProPhoto RGB.

This is where the display bit depth kicks in. A higher bit depth will be able to show more number of colours on the screen. 8-bit means it can show 2^8 = 256 colours per channel. That gives you 256^3 =  16,777,216 (16.7 million) colours as a combination of the RGB channels. 6-bit, on the other hand, can only show 2^6 = 64 colours per channel, or 64^3 = 262,144 colours as a combination of RGB channels. So if you buy a high gamut display with, let's say, a 6-bit colour depth, then you will see banding very clearly since a higher range (of the high colour gamut) is represented by a fewer number of colours. Gradients will look like bands, sort of like cell shading.

A high gamut display (in my humble opinion) would only be useful if the display can reproduce a 10-bit colour depth. Then, the higher range will still be divided such that banding won't be discernible by the naked eye in normal circumstances. So if I need a high gamut display I'd look for a dedicated monitor for the same (and make sure your laptop has a display port connection for video output, that is the only port which outputs 10-bit colour).

An analogy can be established with the display size and the screen resolution. The display size (in inches) is analogous to the colour gamut, and the screen resolution (in pixels) is analogous to the display bit depth. If you buy a 40" screen with 800x600px resolution, you will be able to see pixels on the screen very clearly. If, on the other hand, you buy a small screen (let's say a smartphone) with FHD, then there is no way you would be able to distinguish between individual pixels. There is a sweet spot in the PPIbeyond which you can't distinguish between individual pixels, I think this is 300PPI. This gets me thinking, if a similar sweet spot exists for the colour gamut and bit depth as well. =)

how do we decipher which mfr's are using which displays, given their proprietary terminology in their marketing info

Well if you have the laptop with you, you can use a system info software and look under the display in hardware info. If you don't have the laptop, then I guess Google is your best friend. You might not be able to find out the display panel for some laptops, you might have to crawl forum posts, and you must know which forums to look at. For gaming laptops you have NotebookReview. Notebookcheck.net lists the display model generally IF they review a laptop - but they generally do so for gaming laptops and ultrabooks, I'm not sure about workstations.

Who should I be looking at MSI, Dell, Sony, HP ???

MSI makes gaming laptops. All the gaming laptops use the same screens (most of the time), from what I found out from two months of painstaking research. The 17" default is a ChiMei, the 15" and all high gamut displays are AU Optronics. I don't know about 14 inchers though. If you want a good display, don't look at gaming rigs.

I've personally had a bad experience with HP myself. But it might have been a one-off case. They do generally have battery / heating / power brick failure problems.

I've never owned a Dell or Sony so can't comment on them from first hand experience, but from what I've learned from friends, Sony is good but expensive. If I were you and these were the only four companies I had to choose from, I'd go with a Dell. Although I would've also had a look at Lenovos and taken that for the durability - you already own one and you know how rugged they are. I'd rather have an okay display with a tough rugged body which would last, than a good display (since awesome displays don't exist for laptops) which might not last as long. As for Sager, I've heard they're tough as well. I haven't yet seen one though (my Sager will be delivered to my brother in the USA who will bring it along to India in December), so I can't compare them to a Thinkpad.

Your priorities might of course be different though, so make up your own mind. =)

Hope this helps you out in making an informed choice.

Best,

Payod