Question 4K vs 2K vs 1080 ?

[truckinboots]

Hey Folks,

Maybe folks can wager weigh in on a debate that I'm having with a bud. I don't see much point in spending extra money on 4K or 2K external monitors for regular everyday work apps. There is no gaming happening. He's got a MacBook M1. It can output 4K just fine, however; he sets resolution to 1920x1080 to make it readable. So if he's outputting 1080, doesn't that make a monitor with native 4K or even 2K kinda redundant?

What are your thoughts?

 

[bill001g]

That is kinda dumb to run everything at lower resolutions to change the text size. There are options in windows that allow you scale the text.

It might not be any different it depends on how the conversion between the image happens. When you do it with the monitor it is a simple duplicating of pixels. It might be bigger but now you can see the blurriness.

Windows tends to be somewhat smart and uses different textures for the text or at least uses a smarter upscaler that smooths the text out.

In general it is hard to say if spending extra for 2k and 4k monitors matters. There is not a huge difference in the cost on lower end ones that have low frame rates. You generally don't need fast frame rates either for work apps.

If all you do it write say computer code or text documents it likely is not worth the costs. If you edit photos then you might need the higher resolution but still do not need high frame rates.

Partially this question depends on how large the physical screen is. There are a number of phones that claim 4k or even higher resolutions. You have to use the phone so close to your face to be able to see the resolution you can't actually type on the phone when you are watching it.

The size of the monitor the resolution you run it at and distance you sit from the monitor all matter.

 

[Gururu]

It would look best to run at the maximum resolution and scale up the text, items, etc.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

The advantage to the larger external monitor capable of 2k or 4k is that it can display more information, multiple applications side by side etc.

If a 2k/4k monitor is chosen and set such that displays icons etc. at a size similar to 1080 on his laptop screen then the benefit is measurable.

Consider an application showing a graph with the current state of sensors or the current state of control switches against showing a graph with the current state of sensors and the current state of control switches. Or dragging and dropping from excel to word with no extra key presses.

It’s not that lines are less jaggy, it’s convenience in workflow or data being presented at a glance.

The question then comes down to price and the perceived value to you and your bud.

 

[LordVile]

Hey Folks,

Maybe folks can wager weigh in on a debate that I'm having with a bud. I don't see much point in spending extra money on 4K or 2K external monitors for regular everyday work apps. There is no gaming happening. He's got a MacBook M1. It can output 4K just fine, however; he sets resolution to 1920x1080 to make it readable. So if he's outputting 1080, doesn't that make a monitor with native 4K or even 2K kinda redundant?

What are your thoughts?

No because you can display more info on the larger resolution display and it still be readable. If you output 480 on the 1080p display you’ll see how much larger everything gets and it has to stay larger to be read.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I don't see much point in spending extra money on 4K or 2K external monitors for regular everyday work apps.
So if he's outputting 1080, doesn't that make a monitor with native 4K or even 2K kinda redundant?

He's decreasing resolution just because screen is only 13" (extremely small) on macbook M1.
If external monitor has screen large enough, then you do not need to decrease resolution.
For 2k resolution- I'd suggest choosing at least 32" or 34" screen.

 

[i6pwr]

For text, I wouldn't wase any money on a display higher than 1080P when viewed at arms length. When the screen size increases at the same resolution, the pixel size increases, thus lowering PQ. However, with the screen right in front of you, it's splitting hairs.

We have a small 17" 1080P monitor and a 27" 2K. The 2K is a much cleaner picture but thats also considering graphics. For text only, not much difference....our 34" ultrawide is also 2K and looks fantastic, doesn't need to be 4K.

I wouldn't stress 4K especially on a desktop, maybe a large 40" diaplay or larger viewed from a couch.

The only thing 4K does is stress the GPU, especially at arms length. Just not worth it IMO.

HTH.

 

[BFG-9000]

macOS scales fonts way better than Windows.

With Windows, not everything gets scaled properly or sometimes the edges of text gets clipped off if you make the fonts too large. With macOS you should have no problem setting the text size to something legible at even ridiculous pixel densities, which is why they sell 6k Retina displays and there is no reason not to use the native resolution for the desktop.

For games it is perfectly reasonable to run 1080p on a 4k screen if you don't have the hardware needed to run them well at 4k. It's a perfect pixel doubling on each axis so there are no scaling artifacts.