This is going to sound like I want to eat the cake and still have it, but I wish there was some sort of balance between real estate, sharpness, and affordabilit

This is going to sound like I want to eat the cake and still have it, but I wish there was some sort of balance between real estate, sharpness, and affordability. A 24in 4K monitor without scaling makes text too small, but at 200%, it's no different from a 1080p monitor real estate-wise (even though text is much crisper). My current monitor, a 1440p 24in screen at 100%, serves all of my real estate needs, but leaves something to be desired in terms of sharpness, so a 5K screen at 200% and similar physical size would be perfect; alas, there aren't any general-purpose 5K monitors at an affordable price. 8K screens at 300% would offer similar, albeit slightly lower, real estate at even better text sharpness, but there's just one such monitor from Dell and it's ridiculously expensive. I hope 5K monitors become as cheap as 4K monitors over the next few years.