8 ms·

The author lost me at "For programming I didn’t care about having a high pixel density..I wanted more text characters, not slightly smoother looking ones." I g

The author lost me at "For programming I didn’t care about having a high pixel density..I wanted more text characters, not slightly smoother looking ones." I guess it's just a personal preference, but my retina MBP's screen is so much easier on my eyes for long sessions than anything else I've ever used, and staring at a huge backlight like what he recommends seems like it'd be incredibly painful. I get all the "more text characters" I want out of a vertical monitor.

lultimouomo 8y ago
This. 4k matters much less for games and movies than for programming; it's hard to tell the difference when looking at moving images but the higher resolution changes everything when reading text. A high DPI screen puts much less strain on your eyes!
- polskibus 8y ago
  When you're doing web dev, it's important that devs test on devices similar to users'. FullHD seems most popular, how do you address that?
  - sinstein 8y ago
    You can always downscale resolution to test for Full HD with a 4K panel but you cannot do the other way round.
    - dzek69 8y ago
      You can fake it by setting low zoom level. Far from perfect, you won't have pixel perfect results, but you'll get general overview how layout gonna work.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      If it's UHD (3840x2160) it's going to be exact. If it's actual 4K (4096 × 2160) then it won't be sharp at Full HD resolution (1920x1080) because the pixels don't align. But many monitors have Marketing 4K which is UHD.
      - 0-_-0 8y ago
        4K most commonly refers to 3840x2160. Which is of course not exactly 4000 pixels, but neither is 4096 :)
        carlmr 8y ago
        The original 4K standard is 4096
  - matthewmacleod 8y ago
    Use the tools explicitly available for that purpose. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all have built-in responsive design modes with common resolutions available. Or you can just resize the browser window :)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - coldtea 8y ago
    You don't have to test on your working setup. After all if you did mobile webpages, you wouldn't program on a smartphone! If you did test there, you'd just tested one configuration (even if it's the most popular). There are services that allow you to test your web work in dozens of different configurations. There are also Chrome tools etc to help you test different aspect rations and sizes. And you can always change the display to a non-native resolution.
    - polskibus 8y ago
      4k users often use font scaling which makes things harder to compare to a standard full HD setup (different people use different font scaling options etc). When developers setup makes dogfooding more accurate (in terms of similarity to end hsers'), then more UI bugs are found sooner. Another thing is contrast and hue - many users use low quality screens (think office users) and they perceive the UI differently than a person on a high end monitor. Many subtleties are not visible at all.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - nailer 8y ago
    > When you're doing web dev, it's important that devs test on devices similar to users'. FullHD seems most popular, how do you address that? More users are now on mobile, with high res displays.
  - flyingpenguin 8y ago
    A good tiling window manager should let you easily make your windows 1/4th the size of your monitor in some corner.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > higher resolution changes everything when reading text. A high DPI screen puts much less strain on your eyes! This may not be for everybody. I actually prefer low-resolution displays, and use beautiful bitmapped fonts (without need for "antialiasing"). It looks much cleaner to me.
  - ahje 8y ago
    Ditto. I stuck to 1650 x 900 for as long as I could, but alas, It's hard to get those monitors nowadays. I've since switched to full HD-screens, zooming everything to 150%-200%. It's readable in most cases, but considerably less pretty than bitmapped fonts on a lower-res screen.
- nvarsj 8y ago
  Is this really high DPI though? I think it has to do with font sharpness. What I've noticed is that Windows and Mac OS X both have poor font smoothing at normal DPIs - blurry fonts are the norm. When I swap to a modern Linux desktop however, the fonts look very good at regular DPI. The difference is apparent. You can also prove the sharpness effect to yourself by using bitmap fonts - they will look great on regular DPI monitors on any OS.
  - lultimouomo 8y ago
    I work on a weekly base on Linux, Windows and MacOS; mostly Linux. HiDPI does make a huge difference for me, and I'd say even more so on Linux, where without HiDPI I suffer Firefox font rendering a lot (Chromium is a bit better). Sure some smoothing algorithm might work better for you and ease the problem; same with bitmap fonts. But try printing some text at 96dpi and at 300dpi and compare it side by side. 96dpi is not enough for comfort, and for years we've been pretending it is since there was no viable alternative. There is now. Hurray!
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      I'm all for higher DPI screens, but you need to take into account that typical reading distance for screens is larger than for text on paper. It is not really DPI that counts but dots per angular distance as seen from the eye.
    - guiambros 8y ago
      > I work on a weekly base on Linux, Windows and MacOS; mostly Linux. HiDPI does make a huge difference for me... How good is Linux support for HiDPI these days? I've been delaying making the upgrade for a few years, waiting for better native support. Also, any idea if you can mix HiDPI screens with regular ones?
      - lultimouomo 8y ago
        Recent Gnome works very well with all-HiDPI; I had to leave XFCE when I switched to HiDPI because it hadn't good support. Recent is key here; I have been using Gnome in HiDPI mode for a couple of years but I had to do some tweaks to have it working well; now it seems to work more or less out of the box. Same holds for Qt based applications. Mixed DPI screens kind of works, but there are hitches; I definitely suggest going all in.
sinstein 8y ago
I got a 2K monitor (4K was too expensive) for this very reason. Standard 1080p monitors seem so bad with text, and once you plop them next to an MBP Retina screen the difference is extremely pronounced,
- jacquesm 8y ago
  I can't look into your wallet but the price difference between 4K and 2K is now so small that for our new office I bought 4K screens for everybody. Skimping on tools that you use every day for 8 hours is tough on the system in the longer run.
  - dzek69 8y ago
    It depends a lot on where are you from and how experienced you are (which translates to how much money do you earn). A tip from country where the price difference matters: Look for a TV, not PC monitor. They're often cheaper while having the same ports to connect it to a computer. But beware - some of them have always-on overscan which means you will get blurry effect and cropped picture. Make sure you can disable that (look for overscan, PC mode or something like that) before buying. Testing it on laptop before buying seems to be a good idea too - my mother's TV has option to disable overscan, but only on old VGA input. On HDMI it is always on anyway.
    - ansible 8y ago
      I'm not angry at you, but at the TV manufacturers... Why the hell do we need overscan for anything that isn't an actual analog TV signal?
      - yellowapple 8y ago
        IIRC even digital streams sometimes include extra stuff on the edges for various technical reasons, with the assumption that the TV will hide it.
        8y ago
mhd 8y ago
I don't agree with the author, but I have to say that I don't get a big advantage from "retina"-grade displays for coding. For web browsing, reading PDFs etc, the increased density is useful (kinda), but for code itself, I don't get a huge benefit. I don't get a lot more lines on the screen, so most of what the displays do for me is sharper font rendering. And that is a lot better with my current iMacs 5K display, but I got by fine with bitmapped, non-antialiased fonts on 24" displays. They were sharp in a different manner, and I personally don't mind the pixelation, as far as I can tell (I don't feel more tired more quickly f. ex.). Having said that, I used a 24" display in portrait mode for a while, and ditched that as it required too much eye and neck movement. Now a 43" display is higher in landscape mode than former portrait display, so I would have the same issues (and pushed farther back would decrease the whole point, never mind that the back of the desk would be quickly reached). My mom still has my original Dell 24" 1920x1200 display I bought way back when, and I'd have no trouble using that right now. Heck, I probably wouldn't fare too bad with an old IBM 1600x1200 monitor, or two of them.
readingnews 8y ago
I agree with you. Had to work in another office without my main rig and the monitors had low pixel density, a bad pair of bad monitors or something. It was not as sharp as my others. After a few hours it started to get to me. It felt like my eyes were not focusing when in fact it was the monitors. That is a bad feeling.
nailer 8y ago
There's also: > I wanted more text characters I often use a small, high res display (on a Surface Go, it's about 400 grams, and supr helpful when I need to fix production when out). Even if resolution isn't important to you, the ability to fit more things on screen is definitely a bonus of high res displays.
GuB-42 8y ago
In fact his display is at about 100 ppi, which is not bad at all. Using the "Is this retina?" page, OPs monitor becomes "retina" at 86cm. And looking at his setup, that's probably how far he sits. His screen is way back, beyond the edge of the desk. The MBP screen has 220 ppi but it is designed to be viewed from much closer. As for the backlight, then again, it is relative. In a well lit environment like in a typical office, it simply matches the ambiant light. In a dark room, you'll probably want a dark theme anyways.
- agopaul 8y ago
  I believe 5K iMacs also have 220 PPI https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
  - GuB-42 8y ago
    Normally I would say it is overkill. However, if I remember correctly, these 5k displays are explicitly made for video editing. So that you can show a 1:1 4k frame with space around it for all the controls and toolbars. I think it is a special case where that high resolution is definitely justified.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  > In fact his display is at about 100 ppi, which is not bad at all. It's only slightly better than the rather abysmal 91 ppi of 1080p at 24", which many people will be familiar with. It's really not good and a long shot from proper high ppi displays.
rbanffy 8y ago
I tried to use a 30" 4K screen at nominal resolution, but the type is too small for me at normal distances. I find that the sweet spot is a 40" 4K TV. If it's curved, it's slightly better.
- agopaul 8y ago
  The thing is, you should pick a monitor also by its PPI (Pixel-per-Inch). In order to work with HIDPI on macOS, you should stay around 220 PPI: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ In theory, you should pick a 5K display, but there only a bunch of models to pick from and they cost a lot (some are not even manufactured anymore)
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    I can use it with bigger fonts, but then it's less actual real estate.
    - thirdsun 8y ago
      You don't buy high PPI displays for additional screen real estate. You buy them for the same screen real estate with much sharper, crisper text rendering. You should always assume that you'll be scaling your image at 2x when using high ppi displays. Take the iMac 5K for example - it offers the same screen real estate as a 2560x1440 display, just twice as sharp at 220 PPI.

lultimouomo 8y ago

This. 4k matters much less for games and movies than for programming; it's hard to tell the difference when looking at moving images but the higher resolution changes everything when reading text. A high DPI screen puts much less strain on your eyes!

polskibus 8y ago
When you're doing web dev, it's important that devs test on devices similar to users'. FullHD seems most popular, how do you address that?
- sinstein 8y ago
  You can always downscale resolution to test for Full HD with a 4K panel but you cannot do the other way round.
  - dzek69 8y ago
    You can fake it by setting low zoom level. Far from perfect, you won't have pixel perfect results, but you'll get general overview how layout gonna work.
  - carlmr 8y ago
    If it's UHD (3840x2160) it's going to be exact. If it's actual 4K (4096 × 2160) then it won't be sharp at Full HD resolution (1920x1080) because the pixels don't align. But many monitors have Marketing 4K which is UHD.
    - 0-_-0 8y ago
      4K most commonly refers to 3840x2160. Which is of course not exactly 4000 pixels, but neither is 4096 :)
      - carlmr 8y ago
        The original 4K standard is 4096
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  Use the tools explicitly available for that purpose. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all have built-in responsive design modes with common resolutions available. Or you can just resize the browser window :)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 8y ago
  You don't have to test on your working setup. After all if you did mobile webpages, you wouldn't program on a smartphone! If you did test there, you'd just tested one configuration (even if it's the most popular). There are services that allow you to test your web work in dozens of different configurations. There are also Chrome tools etc to help you test different aspect rations and sizes. And you can always change the display to a non-native resolution.
  - polskibus 8y ago
    4k users often use font scaling which makes things harder to compare to a standard full HD setup (different people use different font scaling options etc). When developers setup makes dogfooding more accurate (in terms of similarity to end hsers'), then more UI bugs are found sooner. Another thing is contrast and hue - many users use low quality screens (think office users) and they perceive the UI differently than a person on a high end monitor. Many subtleties are not visible at all.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- nailer 8y ago
  > When you're doing web dev, it's important that devs test on devices similar to users'. FullHD seems most popular, how do you address that? More users are now on mobile, with high res displays.
- flyingpenguin 8y ago
  A good tiling window manager should let you easily make your windows 1/4th the size of your monitor in some corner.
enriquto 8y ago
> higher resolution changes everything when reading text. A high DPI screen puts much less strain on your eyes! This may not be for everybody. I actually prefer low-resolution displays, and use beautiful bitmapped fonts (without need for "antialiasing"). It looks much cleaner to me.
- ahje 8y ago
  Ditto. I stuck to 1650 x 900 for as long as I could, but alas, It's hard to get those monitors nowadays. I've since switched to full HD-screens, zooming everything to 150%-200%. It's readable in most cases, but considerably less pretty than bitmapped fonts on a lower-res screen.
nvarsj 8y ago
Is this really high DPI though? I think it has to do with font sharpness. What I've noticed is that Windows and Mac OS X both have poor font smoothing at normal DPIs - blurry fonts are the norm. When I swap to a modern Linux desktop however, the fonts look very good at regular DPI. The difference is apparent. You can also prove the sharpness effect to yourself by using bitmap fonts - they will look great on regular DPI monitors on any OS.
- lultimouomo 8y ago
  I work on a weekly base on Linux, Windows and MacOS; mostly Linux. HiDPI does make a huge difference for me, and I'd say even more so on Linux, where without HiDPI I suffer Firefox font rendering a lot (Chromium is a bit better). Sure some smoothing algorithm might work better for you and ease the problem; same with bitmap fonts. But try printing some text at 96dpi and at 300dpi and compare it side by side. 96dpi is not enough for comfort, and for years we've been pretending it is since there was no viable alternative. There is now. Hurray!
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    I'm all for higher DPI screens, but you need to take into account that typical reading distance for screens is larger than for text on paper. It is not really DPI that counts but dots per angular distance as seen from the eye.
  - guiambros 8y ago
    > I work on a weekly base on Linux, Windows and MacOS; mostly Linux. HiDPI does make a huge difference for me... How good is Linux support for HiDPI these days? I've been delaying making the upgrade for a few years, waiting for better native support. Also, any idea if you can mix HiDPI screens with regular ones?
    - lultimouomo 8y ago
      Recent Gnome works very well with all-HiDPI; I had to leave XFCE when I switched to HiDPI because it hadn't good support. Recent is key here; I have been using Gnome in HiDPI mode for a couple of years but I had to do some tweaks to have it working well; now it seems to work more or less out of the box. Same holds for Qt based applications. Mixed DPI screens kind of works, but there are hitches; I definitely suggest going all in.

sinstein 8y ago

I got a 2K monitor (4K was too expensive) for this very reason. Standard 1080p monitors seem so bad with text, and once you plop them next to an MBP Retina screen the difference is extremely pronounced,

jacquesm 8y ago
I can't look into your wallet but the price difference between 4K and 2K is now so small that for our new office I bought 4K screens for everybody. Skimping on tools that you use every day for 8 hours is tough on the system in the longer run.
- dzek69 8y ago
  It depends a lot on where are you from and how experienced you are (which translates to how much money do you earn). A tip from country where the price difference matters: Look for a TV, not PC monitor. They're often cheaper while having the same ports to connect it to a computer. But beware - some of them have always-on overscan which means you will get blurry effect and cropped picture. Make sure you can disable that (look for overscan, PC mode or something like that) before buying. Testing it on laptop before buying seems to be a good idea too - my mother's TV has option to disable overscan, but only on old VGA input. On HDMI it is always on anyway.
  - ansible 8y ago
    I'm not angry at you, but at the TV manufacturers... Why the hell do we need overscan for anything that isn't an actual analog TV signal?
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      IIRC even digital streams sometimes include extra stuff on the edges for various technical reasons, with the assumption that the TV will hide it.
      - 8y ago

mhd 8y ago

I don't agree with the author, but I have to say that I don't get a big advantage from "retina"-grade displays for coding. For web browsing, reading PDFs etc, the increased density is useful (kinda), but for code itself, I don't get a huge benefit. I don't get a lot more lines on the screen, so most of what the displays do for me is sharper font rendering. And that is a lot better with my current iMacs 5K display, but I got by fine with bitmapped, non-antialiased fonts on 24" displays. They were sharp in a different manner, and I personally don't mind the pixelation, as far as I can tell (I don't feel more tired more quickly f. ex.). Having said that, I used a 24" display in portrait mode for a while, and ditched that as it required too much eye and neck movement. Now a 43" display is higher in landscape mode than former portrait display, so I would have the same issues (and pushed farther back would decrease the whole point, never mind that the back of the desk would be quickly reached). My mom still has my original Dell 24" 1920x1200 display I bought way back when, and I'd have no trouble using that right now. Heck, I probably wouldn't fare too bad with an old IBM 1600x1200 monitor, or two of them.

readingnews 8y ago

I agree with you. Had to work in another office without my main rig and the monitors had low pixel density, a bad pair of bad monitors or something. It was not as sharp as my others. After a few hours it started to get to me. It felt like my eyes were not focusing when in fact it was the monitors. That is a bad feeling.

nailer 8y ago

There's also: > I wanted more text characters I often use a small, high res display (on a Surface Go, it's about 400 grams, and supr helpful when I need to fix production when out). Even if resolution isn't important to you, the ability to fit more things on screen is definitely a bonus of high res displays.

GuB-42 8y ago

In fact his display is at about 100 ppi, which is not bad at all. Using the "Is this retina?" page, OPs monitor becomes "retina" at 86cm. And looking at his setup, that's probably how far he sits. His screen is way back, beyond the edge of the desk. The MBP screen has 220 ppi but it is designed to be viewed from much closer. As for the backlight, then again, it is relative. In a well lit environment like in a typical office, it simply matches the ambiant light. In a dark room, you'll probably want a dark theme anyways.

agopaul 8y ago
I believe 5K iMacs also have 220 PPI https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
- GuB-42 8y ago
  Normally I would say it is overkill. However, if I remember correctly, these 5k displays are explicitly made for video editing. So that you can show a 1:1 4k frame with space around it for all the controls and toolbars. I think it is a special case where that high resolution is definitely justified.
thirdsun 8y ago
> In fact his display is at about 100 ppi, which is not bad at all. It's only slightly better than the rather abysmal 91 ppi of 1080p at 24", which many people will be familiar with. It's really not good and a long shot from proper high ppi displays.

rbanffy 8y ago

I tried to use a 30" 4K screen at nominal resolution, but the type is too small for me at normal distances. I find that the sweet spot is a 40" 4K TV. If it's curved, it's slightly better.

agopaul 8y ago
The thing is, you should pick a monitor also by its PPI (Pixel-per-Inch). In order to work with HIDPI on macOS, you should stay around 220 PPI: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/ In theory, you should pick a 5K display, but there only a bunch of models to pick from and they cost a lot (some are not even manufactured anymore)
- rbanffy 8y ago
  I can use it with bigger fonts, but then it's less actual real estate.
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    You don't buy high PPI displays for additional screen real estate. You buy them for the same screen real estate with much sharper, crisper text rendering. You should always assume that you'll be scaling your image at 2x when using high ppi displays. Take the iMac 5K for example - it offers the same screen real estate as a 2560x1440 display, just twice as sharp at 220 PPI.