Apple: 15.4-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD with a 2880×1800 pixel for­mat good for a res­o­lu­tion of 220 ppi. Man.

Update 2012.06.12: Anand Lai Shimpi, AnandTech: LCD black lev­els on the retina dis­play MacBook Pro was 0.38 nits, which is still bested by the Razer Blade. White lev­els came in around the mid­dle of the pack at 339 nits. With so many pix­els packed into the 15.4-inch LCD it is sur­pris­ing the white lev­els on the retina dis­play didn’t come closer to the bot­tom. Contrast at 892:1 came in ahead of the Razer Blade (806:1) but lower than the ASUS Zenbook Prime UX21A (939:1). The 220-ppi 15.4-inch IPS retina LCD is an impres­sive accom­plish­ment espe­cially in light of up to a 7-hour bat­tery life.

Update 2012.06.13: John Gruber:

I have a review unit from Apple, and after just 15 min­utes or so try­ing it out, it’s damn impres­sive. Much like with the iPhone and iPad, it’s not so much that the retina dis­play looks good as that, after you’ve used it for even just a few min­utes, non-retina dis­play MacBooks look bad. It’s not just pixel size, either — color, bright­ness, view­ing angles — every­thing about it is amaz­ing. Best dis­play I’ve ever seen, period.

Probably meant to say the best note­book display.

Update 2012.06.19: via Seth Weintraub, 9to5Mac. So who makes this fan­tas­tic dis­play? “LG Philips” says Miro at iFixit. LG Philips? LG.Philips LCD was renamed LG Display with the exit of Philips from the joint ven­ture in late 2008. And then there’s 9to5Mac reader john­nielse who harshly points out it is not LG Philips and declares the right name to be LG.Display. Note: The cor­rect name is LG Display, with­out the dot.

Update 2012.06.23: Anand Lai Shimpi, AnandTech:

It’s the com­bi­na­tion of these two ele­ments, the removal of the cover glass and the insanely high pixel den­sity that makes every­thing from text to UI ele­ments just look painted on the new Retina Display. And the effect is gor­geous. I’ve never seen a pret­tier panel and it’s actu­ally ruined me for pretty much all other dis­plays, note­book and desktop.

I’m so glad Apple did away with the cover glass. It made the entire dis­play assem­bly thicker, heav­ier, and made it pos­si­ble for dust to get trapped in between it and the LCD. There was reflectance, too.

I can safely say the next iPhone and iPad will have a sim­i­lar dis­play design where the top glass is cus­tomized with an inte­grated bezel the shape of the device. It will have the same impact on the iPhone and iPad: thin­ner, lighter, less reflectance, and more brilliant.

Update 2012.07.23: Chris Foresman, Ars Technica:

Though Windows 7 doesn’t quite have the same expe­ri­ence when it comes to res­o­lu­tion and scal­ing con­trol as OS X does—it can be a bit of a chore to get it just the way you like it—it’s still quite use­able on the Retina MacBook Pro’s 15″ 2880 x 1800 pixel screen. I rec­om­mend run­ning Windows at full res­o­lu­tion with the 150 per­cent scal­ing setting—that seemed to give the best over­all usability.

Windows 7 on the retina MacBook Pro, bet­ter than on any other hard­ware, so far.

Update 2012.07.31: TFT Central: The panel is from LG Display with model num­ber LP154WT1 (SJ) (A1) GD. Folks still think its LG Philips. LG.Philips LCD changed its name to LG Display, a very long time ago.

Update 2012.08.25: Aaron Pressman:

The pro­gram in the upper left cor­ner is Microsoft Word. Look at the jag­gies in that 12 point type. Ugly. Now look over to the top right. That’s Apple’s own Pages pro­gram with the same words in the same font also at 12 points. Yummy. Likewise, in mid-screen is Apple’s TextEdit pro­gram. Smooth as a baby’s bot­tom. And in the lower fore­ground, Adobe’s Dreamweaver with text that looks like, well, like ass as Gruber might say.

Apple con­tin­ues march­ing for­ward with the lat­est and great­est; the retina dis­play on the MacBook Pro is a good exam­ple. Most Apple advance­ments make some things bet­ter right now, like the tran­si­tion from PowerPC to Intel, and the retina dis­play makes some things a lot bet­ter right now, but it also makes some things a lot worse too.

Update 2012.08.26: Marco Arment:

I thought, hav­ing pre­vi­ously used Retina screens on my iPhone and iPad, that I had a pretty good idea of how good a Retina screen would be on a laptop.

I was wrong. It’s far nicer than I expected. And after five days of only see­ing Retina screens, the 30” HP ZR30w on my desk really looks like garbage. Huge, spa­cious garbage.

Try not to go to the Apple Store and spoil your eyes by look­ing into a 15.4-inch retina MacBook Pro because if want to pump 2880×1800 pix­els unto a larger exter­nal dis­play there is cur­rently no way.