Can You Tell the Difference Between 720p and 1080p?

About five years ago, the term “1080p” was almost an unknown. Only the highest-end television sets supported it, and virtually no commercial media did. But today, that’s completely changed, with even budget TV’s and computer monitors offering support for the high resolution. But here’s a good question. When comparing 1080p to something like 720p, can most people even notice a difference?

On paper, the difference between 720p and 1080p seem minimal, but when taking a look at the real resolutions behind those monikers, it’s easier to realize there’s a difference. For 720p, the resolution is 1280×720, which amounts to 921,600 pixels. Believe it or not, that’s barely many more pixels than 1024×768. For 1080p, the resolution is 1920×1080, or 2,073,600 pixels. So pixel-wise, 1080p has a bit more than double to work with.

From that standpoint, it’s easy to understand that 1080p would offer the crisper image, but that doesn’t necessarily mean most people would notice the difference on an equal-sized TV set. Well, an editor at PC Magazine happened to have the perfect opportunity to test this question, as he had two near-identical LG televisions, one 720p, and the other, 1080p. The results are a tad surprising.

You’d expect that everyone would immediately pick the 1080p TV due to its sharpness, but believe it or not, 25% of the 64 people tested said they preferred the 720p set. 59% chose the 1080p set, and the other 16% were indifferent. That’s rather surprising, but it does show that most people will prefer 1080p. I’d be interested in knowing why such a handful preferred 720p though. It could be that they didn’t really notice a difference at all, but it’s truly hard to say. Some people dislike higher resolutions, but with movies, the picture will remain the same size… it will just be crisper.

Could you tell the difference between 720p and 1080p?

Of those who preferred the 1080p set, the average distance at which they said they could tell the difference was 10.7 feet, although this was limited by the maximum difference of 17 feet in the room. Of those who preferred the 720p set, the average distance at which they said they could tell the difference was 11.4 feet. (Theoretically, if you sit back further than this distance in the room with the TV, you won’t notice the difference.)