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That might be correct when talking about _video_, but is factually incorrect when talking about _text_. To understand why, just print an identical piece of tex

by Aeolos 5y ago

That might be correct when talking about _video_, but is factually incorrect when talking about _text_. To understand why, just print an identical piece of text on 600, 300, 150 and 75 dpi on your printer and look at the printouts side by side. There is a significant downgrade in quality between each step, and anything below 300 dpi looks quite bad. 15.6" at 1080p is ~141 ppi[1] which is in the "not good" range. Your OS attempts to salvage the situation by applying font hinting (i.e. distorting your fonts to fit the pixel grid) and antialiasing (subpixel on linux, grayscale on the latest versions of windows & macos) - both of which are imperfect workarounds for the lack of resolution. The MacBook Pro is ~217 ppi (1800p at 15.6"), which is better but still not perfect. A 4K 15.6" screen works out at ~282 ppi, which is starting to be good enough to finally turn off font hinting and view fonts as intended by their designer rather than squished by subpar display technology. [1] https://www.sven.de/dpi/ https://www.sven.de/dpi/

bscphil 5y ago
> both of which are imperfect workarounds for the lack of resolution Imperfect, certainly, but they are pretty good workarounds that usually generate perfectly readable text. In my experience, when text looks bad at 1080p, it is more often because hinting has been done badly, heavily distorting the letter forms, rather than the inherent limitations of the resolution. To be clear, I certainly prefer reading text at higher DPIs, but at should be seen as one particular tradeoff to be weighed against the heavier battery and graphics demands of higher pixel count screens.
kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
I understand what you're saying, but antialiasing, despite its being a flawed workaround, seems to work well enough for me that even when reading text on a 4K display it's not a huge difference that I can notice it so much that it bothers me (I used a 4K monitor for a couple of years). Sure, 4K for text might be better, but it doesn't mean that I notice a difference.

by Aeolos 5y ago

bscphil 5y ago

> both of which are imperfect workarounds for the lack of resolution Imperfect, certainly, but they are pretty good workarounds that usually generate perfectly readable text. In my experience, when text looks bad at 1080p, it is more often because hinting has been done badly, heavily distorting the letter forms, rather than the inherent limitations of the resolution. To be clear, I certainly prefer reading text at higher DPIs, but at should be seen as one particular tradeoff to be weighed against the heavier battery and graphics demands of higher pixel count screens.

kaladin-jasnah 5y ago

I understand what you're saying, but antialiasing, despite its being a flawed workaround, seems to work well enough for me that even when reading text on a 4K display it's not a huge difference that I can notice it so much that it bothers me (I used a 4K monitor for a couple of years). Sure, 4K for text might be better, but it doesn't mean that I notice a difference.