Ok, that makes sense.. It's unfortunate that you cant truly tell the quality of the brightness/sharpness without literally seeing the laptops side by side. There should be a lumens # in the specs or something... Like you said, I obviously just want the same HD quality as I would get w a new HD tv. So if what you say is accurate, you can have 2 laptops w the same screen size, resolution, processor, graphics card, brightness/power settings, operating system, etc. and still be different due to the different brand? Thanks.