What is SVA Display of Laptop

SVA is a type of VA (vertical Alignment) panel, which is used to get a better viewing angel in laptop screens and it stands for super vertical alignments. So have you seen the acronym SVA when looking for a laptop?

This is one of the technologies that can be seen in the specifications of laptop screens, especially in HP brands. Below this post is all about what SVA display of laptop is, and uses of Standard Viewing Angle in the current laptops.

Main Types of Laptop Panels

In a laptop, the type of panel used by the screen is one of its most fundamental characteristics, since it will have a lot to do with image quality and screen resolution. Currently, the most common is to find TN or IPS screens.

See Also: What is the Resolution of a Computer Screen

TN (Twisted Nematic) screens are the most basic and cheapest, and generally have performance in terms of color quality and viewing angles much worse than normal.

While it is possible to get good TN panels, cheap laptops use the worst that can be found in that type of panel. Therefore, they assume to have the worst possible screen quality in a laptop.

On the other hand, all IPS panels enjoy a fairly interesting quality, which makes them a very satisfactory option in laptops.

Their viewing angles are excellent and, although they have problems such as so-called light leaks, they perform great in color reproduction.

Fortunately, more and more laptops use IPS screens, and we even find new technologies such as OLED laptops, which include a great range of advantages such as their pure black colors. But, where do technologies like SVA stand?

What is SVA Display of Screens

The main thing to understand about SVA laptop screen is to identify what is behind those acronyms. SVA stand for super vertical alignments, which is used to get better viewing angels in laptop screens.

Here above, we talked about IPS and TN panels, but we ignored VA (Vertical Alignment), because it is not a type of panel used in laptops, at least not frequently.

But one of its characteristics is also that they have a worse viewing angle than IPS, so it could be thought that SVA is equivalent to VA on a laptop.

SVA (Super Vertical Alignment): Does Laptops come with VA Screens

In the market, there is a variant of VA panels that is also called SVA, but in this case the acronym is Super Vertical Alignment, and it is nothing more than a variant created by Samsung to improve the viewing angles of the original VA.

Thanks to a change in the way in which the liquid crystals of the screen are placed. But, on SVA laptops it has nothing to do with Super Vertical Alignment. Let’s see what it really is.

The reality of SVA Laptops

The reality is that Standard Viewing Angle is a marketing term, without more or less, created to ‘mask’ what is simply a TN panel.

Come on, neither VA nor anything like that, as much as some websites says it, it is not like at all. They are simple TN panels.

In fact, a good way to prove it is to go to a NotebookCheck review of an HP EliteBook 840 G4, a laptop that has several of its variants with one of these screens, with an SVA panel.

Well, the NotebookCheck analysis shows that it is a TN by showing the panel uses in AU Optronics AUO123D, which is clearly specified as TN on all specification websites.  SVA has absolutely nothing to do with VA, at least when the term is used in laptops.

It is very important to give this demonstration, because we know that the term SVA will always lead to confusion. As we said, there are many media outlets that have collected the erroneous information.

We do not blame them, because the manufacturers are not very transparent about it and the information available is limited

But there are already plenty of testimonials and tests like the ones we showed before that makes it very clear that they are TN panels.

We are in a situation where Full HD resolution (1920 × 1080) and IPS panel should be required at least in any laptop we buy, no matter how cheap it may be.

If the SVA had been a variant of VA it would not have been bad, but since it is not then we must avoid it at all costs.

Why are there no VA Laptops Currently?

There is no reference to VA panels being used in any laptop, at least not in the last decade. The question here is why, if they are seen very frequently on televisions and computer monitors.

The truth is that all the development that has taken place in the field of laptop and mobile screens totally omits VA-type panels, and this could be due to technical factors in relation to IPS.

It probably has to do with the fact that the latter are more interesting for mobile phones and laptops, because of the factors, such as viewing angles that are much more demanding.

It is also true that there are laptops on the market with filters to limit viewing angles to a minimum (designed for business people, for example), but they limit them much more than using an AV would.

See Also: How to Make Laptop Screen Brighter than Max

Actually, there is hardly any information on this matter, so we are speculating about the possible reasons.

In laptops a VA would hardly be attractive, even though it was much cheaper to produce than an IPS, but the latter have already become much cheaper and it is increasingly difficult to find TN panels.

Conclusion

In laptops, especially those from HP, a mysterious type of display called SVA has emerged in recent years.

Many people confused this term with Super Vertical Alignment, which is a variant of the VA panel, whose performance is much better than the TN.  Therefore, more recommendations of these laptops began to be seen.

However, in laptops, the reality is that SVA stands for Standard Viewing Angle, and as we have shown, this is nothing more than a synonym for TN.

Neither more nor less, they are the same old TN panels, which as we know have a pretty bad performance, but renamed in a marketing term that leads to deception.

This creating new term to confuse or mask a technology that is worse than it seems is nothing new in the world of hardware.

Sometimes it’s done simply to give a special name to something that all manufacturers do, but it’s also done to hide what’s wrong with a product.

So if you ever see an SVA panel on a laptop’s spec sheet again, know that it’s no more and no less than a TN.

In fact, neither the VA panel nor any of its variants is used in notebooks, so there is no room for doubt or interpretation. Buy an IPS laptop whenever you can.