MicroEdge, Borderless Laptop Screens
Do you remember those first flat screen TV's with the thick plastic frame around them? Have you noticed that flat screen TV's have been getting thinner and thinner frames around them every year?
These days the border around the TV screen is so thin you can hardly notice it.
The same thing has been happening with Laptop Screens, as manufacturers of screens have been striving to make the display area larger and larger, and the frame around the screen thinner.
One of the ways this has been achieved is by removing the mounting tabs from the corners of the screen.
This is a 15.6" FULL HD IPS laptop screen from 2016, note that in each corner of the display there are mounting brackets to screw the display into the lid of the laptop.
Here is the same screen from 2019, you can see the tabs have been removed from the corners of the screen. This allows the laptop lid to become smaller and therefore the frame size around the screen to reduce quite a bit at the top and bottom. The downside is that usually these displays have to be adhered with double sided tape.
Here is the same screen again, from 2021. Here you can see that the electronics under the screen with the connector have been removed and placed onto the back of the display. This allows even more of the screen frame to be removed from the bottom of the laptop's lid.
The screens are made of layered glass, with a metal frame around them. These metal frames have also been shrinking every couple of years which means that the laptop makers can use a thinner and thinner bezel (plastic frame) around the screen, increasing the screen to body ratio of the laptop.
Looking at the front of the display, you can see the black border around the screen, this is the frame. These have been shrinking dramatically in the past decade. Some ASUS laptops boast a screen to body ratio of over 90%
Every laptop manufacturer coins their own term for a Narrow Bezel screen, here's some of the common names given by laptop manufacturers for these types of borderless display.
- ASUS NanoEdge Screen
- Acer Borderless Screen
- HP MicroEdge Screen
- Lenovo Infinity Borderless Screen
- DELL Narrow Border Screen
