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I agree. I'd rather hi-dpi 32"+ monitors first though. Hidpi displays are becoming standard on top-end laptops but on desktop you're almost out of luck. It's w

I agree. I'd rather hi-dpi 32"+ monitors first though. Hidpi displays are becoming standard on top-end laptops but on desktop you're almost out of luck. It's wild that the only hidpi 32" monitor is ~$5000, and it was released a few years ago now. My eyeballs need that sweet crisp text.

kllrnohj 6y ago
What are you calling "hi-dpi"? There's a ton of 4k monitors in the 27" to 32" range, which are definitely higher DPI than typical. And for a lot less than $5000.
- ezluckyfree 6y ago
  I'm typing this on a 4k, 32" monitor, which is 137.68 DPI, but I also have a Dell XPS 15, which is 4K and 15", 293.72 DPI, and the difference in sharpness is astounding. The other problem with hidpi scaling (200%) at 4k 32", is that everything is huge, and you lose a lot of screen real estate. Honestly I think 8k 36" is the sweet spot.
  - turtlebits 6y ago
    I have the same displays as you- Dell 4k @ 15" and currently using a 32" 4k (I sit 2ft away from it). I also have a Macbook Pro 16 (3072×1920). I honestly don't see a substantial difference between any of them, and I'm generally pretty picky about resolution.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      Right but if you scale the 32" so you get the hidpi sharpness (and put it far away), you lose the real-estate that you could have on a 32" screen.
  - patrickthebold 6y ago
    Why scale it if you think that makes me everything huge? I don't do the scaling and enjoy the extra real estate.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      I don't scale it, but then I lose the text sharpness. I would like both.
      - buran77 6y ago
        To keep the same pixel density you'd need an 8K at 30" or 10K at 36". I'm sure we'll get there but not anytime soon, at least not at prices almost anyone would be willing to pay, or not without sacrificing other specs that you surely want.
        ezluckyfree 6y ago
        Yeah, I know. I'd be happy with like 8k at 34" or so.
      - opan 6y ago
        You could use bitmap fonts to get truly sharp text. I'm a big fan of terminus at 9pt. It makes non-bitmap fonts look blurry and awful by comparison. A real shame that Pango broke bitmap support and your choice of terminal emulator and other stuff is limited now.
        swiley 6y ago
        IMO this is a huge and underrated advantage of bitmapped fonts. The problem is that you need a font at exactly the right scale to realize this advantage. The right scale is often different for every user/monitor pair and changing the scale means redrawing the font which is a ton of work.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Because then you lose the sharpness, and the extra real estate is too much, so everything is both less sharp AND tiny.
  - oblio 6y ago
    You shouldn't be as close to the laptop screen as to the big monitor. And at larger distances the pixel densities can be lower.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      This is the argument that HiDPI displays are pointless if you're not very close to the monitor, and if you've used a retina display, you know that there is absolutely a difference.
      - oblio 6y ago
        You probably hold your phone about 30-40cm from your face. You probably look at your laptop screen at 50-60. You should be at least 75cm it not 90 or 100cm away from a big monitor. I'm not convinced the difference is obvious.
    - LukeShu 6y ago
      Did you say that backwards? On my lap, the screen of my laptop is 17"-20" from my face. At a desk, the monitor is usually about 28" from my face.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Yeah, I might have :-) You should be farther from your monitor than you are from your laptop.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    There's settings other than 100% and 200%. Set it to 125%. Or 150%.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      That is not the same. Non-integer scaling results in worse sharpness because of the way it needs to be implemented. See eg: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
      - kllrnohj 6y ago
        That's not true at all. Fonts & other vector-based graphics scale to any resolution just fine. The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism because their UI toolkit is pixel-based. That's a flaw in their toolkit, not an inherent technical constraint. Combined with then Apple scaling it yet again after it's rendered. Other platforms are not nearly as badly designed.
        LukeShu 6y ago
        > The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism And a GTK-ism.
        coldtea 6y ago
        >The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism because their UI toolkit is pixel-based. That's a flaw in their toolkit, not an inherent technical constraint. Combined with then Apple scaling it yet again after it's rendered. Apple-ism? Please. Most plarforms and GUI libs are pixel based, and we always have photos to see and other such bitmap assets.
        kllrnohj 6y ago
        Your photos rarely if ever match the size they are displayed at anyway. What Apple does is the worst possible thing for your photos, which typically end up double resized (once to the app's internal size, then once again for the display scaling). The largest platform, Android, is not pixel based. The largest desktop platform, Windows, also went through the effort to try and do things properly here, letting the app handle DPI instead and then providing updated toolkits to do that automatically.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    I use 4K 32" with scaling at 100% and it seems totally fine. Lots of real 15-17" laptop screen at 4K makes no sense to me as I can't use 100% as the text size becomes too small.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      Right, the whole idea is that you use 200% and get that really crisp text.
      - FpUser 6y ago
        What I have already feels crisp enough and since I do a lot of programming I'd rather see more lines of code than increase scaling for no real benefits. As a matter of fact one of the 2 4K monitors on my desk is in portrait mode just for that.
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    DPIs don't mean anything unless you factor in viewing distance. In fact, it is common to recommend a vertical viewing angle of 30 degrees. Not more as it tends to increase eye fatigue and neck pain. If you follow that recommendation, what matters is the definition (the number of pixels), not the resolution in DPI. So, let's run a few calculations. The "retina" resolution is based on a pixel size of 1 arc-minute, that's 20/20 vision, at 30 degrees, that's 1800 pixels. 4k is 2160 vertical, so that's about the limit of human vision. So, basically, 4k is what you want at any size. 8k is not useless but you are pushing the boundaries here. In order to notice it, you need perfect, over 20/20 vision, high luminosity and high contrast. Beyond 8k, you enter superhuman territory, with an exception: you can notice discontinuities at a much higher resolution (vernier resolution), but it only matters if you don't have anti-aliasing. And of course, high contrast, luminosity and perfect vision. There are exception. For example there is a limit on how close a screen can be, so having 4k on a tiny smartphone screen is mostly useless. The other end of the spectrum would be VR, with fields of view over 100 degrees, 8k per eye is considered a minimum for an immersive experience.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      >So, let's run a few calculations. The "retina" resolution is based on a pixel size of 1 arc-minute, that's 20/20 vision, at 30 degrees, that's 1800 pixels. 4k is 2160 vertical, so that's about the limit of human vision. So, basically, 4k is what you want at any size. No, because I don't want to move my 32" monitor further away to get that 30 degree viewing angle. The reason I have a 32" monitor for work is to have more screen real estate. A 30 degree viewing angle works for watching movies and stuff, but when I use it for coding, I essentially have multiple 30 degree viewing (on-screen) windows. You might say "ok well just get two or three monitors", but that isn't the same either. Besides the space between the monitors, with one large monitor I can subdivide my screen space in any way depending on what I'm doing, where each window has a 10-30 degree viewing angle or whatever. >you can notice discontinuities at a much higher resolution (vernier resolution), but it only matters if you don't have anti-aliasing. That's just not true though. It does matter even with antialiasing, the difference is clear. In particular, the dell xps 15 2019 has a ~290 dpi OLED, which has high contrast.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  It's that you have to go to such a larger screen size. I just upgraded my monitor from a 1080p. I really wanted a 24" @ 4k for higher dpi and crispness. Practically impossible to find, despite being common on laptops with much smaller screens. I had to go up to 27" instead, which is still crisp, though not as much, and larger than I wanted for the space it's in.
- fomine3 6y ago
  I need both 4K and 120/144Hz on 32inch but it's not available now. Maybe soon.
johnwalkr 6y ago
There was some really dark times around 2002 to 2012 where good CRTs became unavailable and almost every LCD screen was "HD" meaning 1080p. Still at the tail end of these times, I guess.
- selestify 6y ago
  I suppose my lack of age here is obvious, but what made the CRTs better? Presumably they weren’t outputting any more pixels than LCDs were?
  - johnwalkr 6y ago
    They were. Most tech people I knew had a 19 or 20 inch monitor, at 1600x1200 in the late 90s/early 2000s. 2048x1536 was available too. Early LCDs were usually 1280x1024 and by around 2005, larger sizes and 1080p LCDs were available. It was hard to find anything approaching the pixel density of an old, common CRT until around 2010 if I recall correctly.

kllrnohj 6y ago

What are you calling "hi-dpi"? There's a ton of 4k monitors in the 27" to 32" range, which are definitely higher DPI than typical. And for a lot less than $5000.

ezluckyfree 6y ago
I'm typing this on a 4k, 32" monitor, which is 137.68 DPI, but I also have a Dell XPS 15, which is 4K and 15", 293.72 DPI, and the difference in sharpness is astounding. The other problem with hidpi scaling (200%) at 4k 32", is that everything is huge, and you lose a lot of screen real estate. Honestly I think 8k 36" is the sweet spot.
- turtlebits 6y ago
  I have the same displays as you- Dell 4k @ 15" and currently using a 32" 4k (I sit 2ft away from it). I also have a Macbook Pro 16 (3072×1920). I honestly don't see a substantial difference between any of them, and I'm generally pretty picky about resolution.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    Right but if you scale the 32" so you get the hidpi sharpness (and put it far away), you lose the real-estate that you could have on a 32" screen.
- patrickthebold 6y ago
  Why scale it if you think that makes me everything huge? I don't do the scaling and enjoy the extra real estate.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    I don't scale it, but then I lose the text sharpness. I would like both.
    - buran77 6y ago
      To keep the same pixel density you'd need an 8K at 30" or 10K at 36". I'm sure we'll get there but not anytime soon, at least not at prices almost anyone would be willing to pay, or not without sacrificing other specs that you surely want.
      - ezluckyfree 6y ago
        Yeah, I know. I'd be happy with like 8k at 34" or so.
    - opan 6y ago
      You could use bitmap fonts to get truly sharp text. I'm a big fan of terminus at 9pt. It makes non-bitmap fonts look blurry and awful by comparison. A real shame that Pango broke bitmap support and your choice of terminal emulator and other stuff is limited now.
      - swiley 6y ago
        IMO this is a huge and underrated advantage of bitmapped fonts. The problem is that you need a font at exactly the right scale to realize this advantage. The right scale is often different for every user/monitor pair and changing the scale means redrawing the font which is a ton of work.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Because then you lose the sharpness, and the extra real estate is too much, so everything is both less sharp AND tiny.
- oblio 6y ago
  You shouldn't be as close to the laptop screen as to the big monitor. And at larger distances the pixel densities can be lower.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    This is the argument that HiDPI displays are pointless if you're not very close to the monitor, and if you've used a retina display, you know that there is absolutely a difference.
    - oblio 6y ago
      You probably hold your phone about 30-40cm from your face. You probably look at your laptop screen at 50-60. You should be at least 75cm it not 90 or 100cm away from a big monitor. I'm not convinced the difference is obvious.
  - LukeShu 6y ago
    Did you say that backwards? On my lap, the screen of my laptop is 17"-20" from my face. At a desk, the monitor is usually about 28" from my face.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Yeah, I might have :-) You should be farther from your monitor than you are from your laptop.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  There's settings other than 100% and 200%. Set it to 125%. Or 150%.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    That is not the same. Non-integer scaling results in worse sharpness because of the way it needs to be implemented. See eg: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      That's not true at all. Fonts & other vector-based graphics scale to any resolution just fine. The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism because their UI toolkit is pixel-based. That's a flaw in their toolkit, not an inherent technical constraint. Combined with then Apple scaling it yet again after it's rendered. Other platforms are not nearly as badly designed.
      - LukeShu 6y ago
        > The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism And a GTK-ism.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >The myth of 1x, 2x, and 3x being "preferred" is just an Apple-ism because their UI toolkit is pixel-based. That's a flaw in their toolkit, not an inherent technical constraint. Combined with then Apple scaling it yet again after it's rendered. Apple-ism? Please. Most plarforms and GUI libs are pixel based, and we always have photos to see and other such bitmap assets.
        kllrnohj 6y ago
        Your photos rarely if ever match the size they are displayed at anyway. What Apple does is the worst possible thing for your photos, which typically end up double resized (once to the app's internal size, then once again for the display scaling). The largest platform, Android, is not pixel based. The largest desktop platform, Windows, also went through the effort to try and do things properly here, letting the app handle DPI instead and then providing updated toolkits to do that automatically.
- FpUser 6y ago
  I use 4K 32" with scaling at 100% and it seems totally fine. Lots of real 15-17" laptop screen at 4K makes no sense to me as I can't use 100% as the text size becomes too small.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    Right, the whole idea is that you use 200% and get that really crisp text.
    - FpUser 6y ago
      What I have already feels crisp enough and since I do a lot of programming I'd rather see more lines of code than increase scaling for no real benefits. As a matter of fact one of the 2 4K monitors on my desk is in portrait mode just for that.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  DPIs don't mean anything unless you factor in viewing distance. In fact, it is common to recommend a vertical viewing angle of 30 degrees. Not more as it tends to increase eye fatigue and neck pain. If you follow that recommendation, what matters is the definition (the number of pixels), not the resolution in DPI. So, let's run a few calculations. The "retina" resolution is based on a pixel size of 1 arc-minute, that's 20/20 vision, at 30 degrees, that's 1800 pixels. 4k is 2160 vertical, so that's about the limit of human vision. So, basically, 4k is what you want at any size. 8k is not useless but you are pushing the boundaries here. In order to notice it, you need perfect, over 20/20 vision, high luminosity and high contrast. Beyond 8k, you enter superhuman territory, with an exception: you can notice discontinuities at a much higher resolution (vernier resolution), but it only matters if you don't have anti-aliasing. And of course, high contrast, luminosity and perfect vision. There are exception. For example there is a limit on how close a screen can be, so having 4k on a tiny smartphone screen is mostly useless. The other end of the spectrum would be VR, with fields of view over 100 degrees, 8k per eye is considered a minimum for an immersive experience.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    >So, let's run a few calculations. The "retina" resolution is based on a pixel size of 1 arc-minute, that's 20/20 vision, at 30 degrees, that's 1800 pixels. 4k is 2160 vertical, so that's about the limit of human vision. So, basically, 4k is what you want at any size. No, because I don't want to move my 32" monitor further away to get that 30 degree viewing angle. The reason I have a 32" monitor for work is to have more screen real estate. A 30 degree viewing angle works for watching movies and stuff, but when I use it for coding, I essentially have multiple 30 degree viewing (on-screen) windows. You might say "ok well just get two or three monitors", but that isn't the same either. Besides the space between the monitors, with one large monitor I can subdivide my screen space in any way depending on what I'm doing, where each window has a 10-30 degree viewing angle or whatever. >you can notice discontinuities at a much higher resolution (vernier resolution), but it only matters if you don't have anti-aliasing. That's just not true though. It does matter even with antialiasing, the difference is clear. In particular, the dell xps 15 2019 has a ~290 dpi OLED, which has high contrast.
ineedasername 6y ago
It's that you have to go to such a larger screen size. I just upgraded my monitor from a 1080p. I really wanted a 24" @ 4k for higher dpi and crispness. Practically impossible to find, despite being common on laptops with much smaller screens. I had to go up to 27" instead, which is still crisp, though not as much, and larger than I wanted for the space it's in.
fomine3 6y ago
I need both 4K and 120/144Hz on 32inch but it's not available now. Maybe soon.

johnwalkr 6y ago

There was some really dark times around 2002 to 2012 where good CRTs became unavailable and almost every LCD screen was "HD" meaning 1080p. Still at the tail end of these times, I guess.

selestify 6y ago
I suppose my lack of age here is obvious, but what made the CRTs better? Presumably they weren’t outputting any more pixels than LCDs were?
- johnwalkr 6y ago
  They were. Most tech people I knew had a 19 or 20 inch monitor, at 1600x1200 in the late 90s/early 2000s. 2048x1536 was available too. Early LCDs were usually 1280x1024 and by around 2005, larger sizes and 1080p LCDs were available. It was hard to find anything approaching the pixel density of an old, common CRT until around 2010 if I recall correctly.