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I would have thought the same several years ago. At age 40+, 1080p on a laptop is still good. Even at 1080p, I have to go into accessibility settings to enlarge
by jm4 5y ago
I would have thought the same several years ago. At age 40+, 1080p on a laptop is still good. Even at 1080p, I have to go into accessibility settings to enlarge text. I'm pretty much out of the market for 4k screens on laptops these days. Also had to switch to a big phone and crank up the text size.
- slantyyz 5y ago50+ with bad eyes, and I think the difference between 4K and 1080p is still very noticeable on a 15.6" laptop, in terms of sharpness. Having said that, most people probably set the text magnification on a 4K screen to be the same as a 1080p screen, so any real estate gains tend to be a wash. Since getting presbyopia several years ago, I had single vision glasses prescribed for using a computer. So when I am using a computer, as long as the screens are around 21" to 27" away from my eyes, everything is sharp. It sucks having an extra pair of glasses (and remembering to swap them when not using a computer), but I would go nuts if I didn't have them.
- ayushnix 5y ago> Having said that, most people probably set the text magnification on a 4K screen to be the same as a 1080p screen, so any real estate gains tend to be a wash. If someone's buying a laptop with a 4K display for real estate, he's probably misinformed. You buy a 4K display on a laptop for the pristine ~293 PPI vs a mediocre ~146 PPI on a 1080p display which would look even worse considering it would need fractional scaling while the 4K display would work with integer scaling.
- slantyyz 5y ago> 1080p display which would look even worse considering it would need fractional scaling That depends on the OS though, right? I don't know about Linux or Mac, but I'm pretty sure that if you scale on Windows, you're still running at the native resolution, but the UI elements get scaled. Nothing should look weird. At least that has been my experience on Windows... outside of apps that don't follow Microsoft's scaling guidelines.
- ayushnix 5y agoYes, that might be the case, but I don't want to be dependent on the implementation differences of different operating systems. I like Apple's approach in this case. Enforce the usage of HiDPI displays by default with at least ~200 PPI which needs integer scaling. Instead of trying to work around the issue, they simply bypass it, which is what I'll do in the future.
- slantyyz 5y agoFair enough. I prefer the flexibility that Windows' Hidpi implementation offers over being constrained to Apple's method, but different strokes for different folks.
- driverdan 5y agoI'm 40 and the difference is very obvious to me. I have no interest in any low DPI screens.
- numpad0 5y ago4K on laptops should be a bless, not pain, with recent enough Windows - you shouldn’t need to try enlarging text by lowering output resolution. That was a Windows quirk that everything assumes 96dpi regardless of dpi.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Even at 1080p, I have to go into accessibility settings to enlarge text. 1080p is about the resolution of the screen, not the size of anything rendered on the screen.
- pessimizer 5y agoA resolution far higher than the resolution of the eyes of someone with bad eyesight, at a normal distance.