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Comment by msbarnett | Hacker News Reader

> Maybe it'll be better on linux, chrome, and surely it was solved problem on OSX, but I still don't see the point.

Most of my use of a laptop is for programming, which means a lot of time starring at text. The far crisper text display on Retina/UltraHD/4k/whatevermarketingterm monitor feels much nicer to read for hours on end, for my money. It's a lot more like reading print.

I feel like I'm squinting when reading jagged lower rez text on my 1920x1080 external monitor, in contrast

Diclaimer: I use OS X, so I don't run into the scaling downsides you see in other OSes, and those are significant and would probably turn me off of 4k displays.

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Other operating systems tend to snap fonts to the pixel grid where as OS X does not do that. So OS X suffers more from low-res displays in general.

Most programs are pretty horrible in 4k with win10 too.

Really? All of my dev tools support scaling.

I agree, I have had no problems (except for Eclipse, but I vowed to use Eclipse as little as possible well before I upgraded to win10+4k).

Intellij, Cygwin, Ubuntu VMs (DPI scaling worked well in vmware at least), VS Code, VS proper, sublime, idle, cmd, cmder, IDA, Tableau. I can't think of a single application (except for Eclipse) which I noticed not scaling well.

And probably none of these is Qt-based. (I'm not blaming Qt specifically, it's a great framework, simply showing why you didn't have the problems). And of course there are solutions, but I wish things worked a bit more smoothly:

RStudio on Windows (fixed now, and some workarounds) - https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/2065421...

I don't use my windows install for development so I can't comment for that. However, I'm seeing issues with Photoshop and a lot of other programs that end up very small, blurry or with their images all stretched up.

It's funny, though, now that Retina is a thing, how much superior OS X font rendering algorithm is. This was not very clear when fuzzy low res displays were the norm. Back then, I vastly preferred Microsoft 's ClearType approach. Now, it's not even a contest -- Windows does not represent fonts truthfully.

Its pretty clear that OS X has existed for what 15 years most of that time without retina screens it didn't retroactively become better because screen resolutions improved to make what was presumably an inferior algorithm in the prior context work better in the modern context.

But it did. OS X (and Mac OS before it) were optimized for fidelity with higher resolution laser prints. This necessarily caused more anti-aliasing artifacts then with pixel snapped text. It was actually less of a problem with CRT monitors where individual pixels blended better with each other.

This is not a shallow concern, pixel snapping can cause major issues like line breaks differing between print and display.

Interesting I would never have considered print publishing. That said.

Was this configurable and what percentage of users were concerned with producing print copy? In what eras?

I would but that these individuals were always a minority and the arrangement appears to be inferior for the majority of users for the majority of the time it was a factor.

This was a Steve Jobs obsession from his first calligraphy class at Reed College. Proper proportional fonts were built in with the original Macintosh - this wasn't something he was going to do a market analysis on to decide for him.

However historically this was less problematic because screens were fuzzier anyways. It was only with LCDs that the anti aliasing became obvious.

The Macintosh may have had a very small market in the 90's but one market that it did dominate was print.

So Chrome & OSX probably solve this somehow, but all my chromebooks have crouton, and yes Windows'10 support for 4K displays is not there yet. Most of the apps work, but then there are some that don't (Electronic Arts's Origin client, which is written in Qt was not scaling properly, same for Minecraft Launcher, there are other examples too). Also in the "4K" mode I would often see screen tearing in some games (if they can't stick to 30 or 60fps), but that's more due to the 4x pixels that needs to be drawn. For that I've hard switched my son's laptop back to 1920x1080 - so it still looks kind of crispy, and things look well.

I think you're missing parent's point. The benefits of staring at text all day with >30yo eyes also applies to Linux. I use Arch and Fedora on high-dpi displays and I'd sooner give up programming than ever return to ~72dpi.

Parent isn't talking about most apps, they are referring to terminals and IDEs, for which use case high-dpi is absolutely critical, and outweighs the occasional inconvenience of poor scaling outside those apps.

But that's where I disagree, especially when comes to terminals. I'm so used to seeing the pixels, that it doesn't bother me, but even then hinted anti-aliasing helped quite a lot to solve this. What I'm really missing (and hence my heavily opinionated answer) is that there are lot of people that might just started coding on higher DPI monitors/devices, and to them going back would be terrible.

I started on Apple ][ :)

I'd hate to go back to the eye-strain inducing fuzzy low-res CRTs we had to tolerate back in the day. I can look at my rMBP screen all day without getting a headache.

> What I'm really missing (and hence my heavily opinionated answer) is that there are lot of people that might just started coding on higher DPI monitors/devices, and to them going back would be terrible.

It has nothing to do with that. I learned to program on a 72DPI sony trinitron screen in the 90s. UltraHD is strictly a less eye-straining experience, "what I grew up on" be damned.

I haven't seen anything approaching 72dpi since 1024x768 stopped being common, most modern displays are north of 100dpi. It's still far too low though. We've been held back far too long by the OS and app makers inability to adjust to a reasonable resolution.

I had noticed the one app that displays terribly on my Surface Pro 4 is the Quassel IRC Client. Also, written in Qt.

If you're seeing screen tearing, specifically when you see horizontal movement, then odds are it's the graphics card and drivers... If you're using a beefier graphics chipset, it works better.

I usually set it to 1440p scaling mode, or 2x... tbh, I have terrible vision anyhow, so I find the ultra-high resolution displays on phones don't help me much.

But even then i would get a 4K external monitor and save the GPU/CPU cycles and battery life on the laptop. Being hunched over a laptop all day is probably a lot worse than having a lower res display in the end, so if we are talking ergonomics, better get a external 4K screen.

People probably generally have both. When you are in the office, use the big screen but lots of us do a considerable amount of work from client sites, on airplanes, etc...

> Being hunched over a laptop all day is probably a lot worse than having a lower res display in the end, so if we are talking ergonomics, better get a external 4K screen.

Weird dichotomy. I use both simultaneously. No reason to confine yourself to one screen when 2 will do. And sometimes I code on the go, too.

The hand-wringing over battery life/GPU cycles with a 4K display seems misguided -- I get ~10 hours of battery life on my Retina MacBook Pro. That's no worse than my previous non-Retina version, and the damn thing got thinner, not bulkier.

It doesn't even switch over from the cheapo integrated GPU to the Radeon unless it has to drive more than one 4K display simultaneously. The battery impact of driving the integrated display seems negligible and totally dominated by the backlight.

I think the issue is Windows laptops with those displays get much worse battery life than standard HD displays. Apple does a great job of optimizing their software for their hardware. That way you do not see those battery life issues on Macbooks compared to Windows laptops usually. Have you even run Windows on you Mac? Talk about a battery drain.

I've done the Windows-on-Mac thing, but I assume half the problem there is Apple's Windows drivers aren't particular good (do the fans still just run full blast all the time?).

I'd hope that a dedicated Windows machine would have better drivers, but that's probably putting too much faith in the vast majority of manufacturers.

I ran Windows 7 on a 13" MBP, and then the 13" MBA when it originally came out. Never experienced full-speed fans unless I was playing videos games on it, doing something computationally expensive for an extended amount of time, or sitting with it in my lap, on top of a blanket, depriving it of ambient airflow.

The crisp display is truly great.

What sucks is that a dual-monitor setup of a low-res monitor and my hiDPI laptop monitor is not that great. I have to upscale my monitor a bit, which makes the monitor look even worse than it already is (1920x1080). The monitor has a lot of room, but I naturally want to leave most windows on the small hiDPI laptop screen.

HiDPI monitors cost waaaay too much for me to get one. So for now, I just have to wait until the price starts going down.

You can get a QNIX QX2710 IPS 1440p for ~$200 on eBay. Do pay attention to connectors - presumably with a laptop you want one of the versions with HDMI or DisplayPort inputs, not the DVI-only variants. It has a PWM backlight, other versions have DC backlights (Check out the Crossover 2795QHD) but you are stepping up closer to $300 at which point you are competing with options like a refurbished Acer XB270HU or XG270HU 144hz/gsync monitor.

28" TN 4K monitors are regularly going for ~$300 nowadays. Again, Crossover makes a few here, the 288K and 289K. If you want IPS, keep an eye on the Dell Outlet for a P2715Q. They tend to run a lot of 35-40% off coupons for monitors, you can get one for under $350 if the timing works out. You will need DP 1.2 to drive 4K@60hz - HDMI 2.0 doesn't have any significant market penetration yet.

The Koreans basically make all the panels that go into monitors, and they take the ones that failed QC for whatever reasons and sell them cheaply though channels like eBay. You may have to put up with a few dead pixels but you can get a great IPS 27" monitor for the price of an average whatever. Don't bother getting the "pixel perfect" warranty unless you are OK paying to mail it back to Korea for replacement.

Wow, this is great information. Thanks.

I've purchased several of these 1440p Crossover monitors and they're pretty good. It is worth paying the ~$20 more for the variants listed as "pixel perfect" (If you're buying from one of the handful of reputable sellers).

I also have a Yamakasi M280PU which is a 27", 4K panel.

I wouldn't really recommend the 1440p versions. I had one shortly, but I did not really found it comfortable to look at. If scaling is disabled text is too tiny, and scaling (probably 125-150%) does not work as good as with higher resolutions. I now have a 28" 4k screen for which a higher scaling factor can be applied and that looks much better (although still worse than a MBP with retina screen). I guess 24" or 27" with 4k would be also good.

I agree, I can't use 1920x1080 or lower. Plugging my MacBook into a TV is horrible for anything but watching TV from a distance.

I think 2560x1440 is probably the ideal resolution for the time being, looks good enough, no need for a graphics card, cheap monitors, etc.

Since I don't have retina experience beyond cellphones, my 22" 1920x1080 is tolerable - on Windows. On Linux, oh boy..

27" 1440p is 108 ppi, which is the current sweet-spot IMO.

24" 1080p is 92 ppi, 22" 1080p is 100 ppi. So you're a bit behind the curve in terms of ppi, but it's probably not that noticeable. The big thing you're missing is just that 22" isn't that big a screen.

For reference 27" 4K is 163 ppi, and many people find that's too much and need to use some scaling.

I use/recommend a ASUS PB278Q 27" at 2560x1440. It works quite well for coding.

I wouldn't make a judgement from a TV though. I go from a 1080p monitor to the TV and i can't read the text at all on the TV while i can on the monitor just fine. Even with the TV in 'PC mode' it still does unnecessary post-processing.

To piggy back on this comment, I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds high density displays less fatiguing. That in itself is worth even more than the performance trade offs.

Well for one Eclipse!!! doesn't scale and is unusable on 4K displays. Tons of other applications don't... things get goofy and it makes the whole system seem kinda amateurish... And I don't really see the difference with text... maybe you have very small fonts?

For the longest time I refused to wear glasses and learned to read 13x7 bitmap blurs. Even with glasses, I can't read any other font nearly as well, so I'm stuck with my low res screens.

What I really want is a low res screen as bright as the retina.

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