I guess it's just a personal preference, but my retina MBP's screen is so much easier on my eyes for long sessions than anything else I've ever used, and staring at a huge backlight like what he recommends seems like it'd be incredibly painful. I get all the "more text characters" I want out of a vertical monitor.
You can also prove the sharpness effect to yourself by using bitmap fonts - they will look great on regular DPI monitors on any OS.
Sure some smoothing algorithm might work better for you and ease the problem; same with bitmap fonts. But try printing some text at 96dpi and at 300dpi and compare it side by side. 96dpi is not enough for comfort, and for years we've been pretending it is since there was no viable alternative. There is now. Hurray!
How good is Linux support for HiDPI these days? I've been delaying making the upgrade for a few years, waiting for better native support. Also, any idea if you can mix HiDPI screens with regular ones?
Recent is key here; I have been using Gnome in HiDPI mode for a couple of years but I had to do some tweaks to have it working well; now it seems to work more or less out of the box. Same holds for Qt based applications.
Mixed DPI screens kind of works, but there are hitches; I definitely suggest going all in.
This may not be for everybody. I actually prefer low-resolution displays, and use beautiful bitmapped fonts (without need for "antialiasing"). It looks much cleaner to me.
I've since switched to full HD-screens, zooming everything to 150%-200%. It's readable in most cases, but considerably less pretty than bitmapped fonts on a lower-res screen.
If you did test there, you'd just tested one configuration (even if it's the most popular). There are services that allow you to test your web work in dozens of different configurations.
There are also Chrome tools etc to help you test different aspect rations and sizes. And you can always change the display to a non-native resolution.
Or you can just resize the browser window :)
But many monitors have Marketing 4K which is UHD.
More users are now on mobile, with high res displays.
Using the "Is this retina?" page, OPs monitor becomes "retina" at 86cm. And looking at his setup, that's probably how far he sits. His screen is way back, beyond the edge of the desk.
The MBP screen has 220 ppi but it is designed to be viewed from much closer.
As for the backlight, then again, it is relative. In a well lit environment like in a typical office, it simply matches the ambiant light. In a dark room, you'll probably want a dark theme anyways.
However, if I remember correctly, these 5k displays are explicitly made for video editing. So that you can show a 1:1 4k frame with space around it for all the controls and toolbars. I think it is a special case where that high resolution is definitely justified.
It's only slightly better than the rather abysmal 91 ppi of 1080p at 24", which many people will be familiar with. It's really not good and a long shot from proper high ppi displays.
I don't get a lot more lines on the screen, so most of what the displays do for me is sharper font rendering. And that is a lot better with my current iMacs 5K display, but I got by fine with bitmapped, non-antialiased fonts on 24" displays. They were sharp in a different manner, and I personally don't mind the pixelation, as far as I can tell (I don't feel more tired more quickly f. ex.).
Having said that, I used a 24" display in portrait mode for a while, and ditched that as it required too much eye and neck movement. Now a 43" display is higher in landscape mode than former portrait display, so I would have the same issues (and pushed farther back would decrease the whole point, never mind that the back of the desk would be quickly reached).
My mom still has my original Dell 24" 1920x1200 display I bought way back when, and I'd have no trouble using that right now. Heck, I probably wouldn't fare too bad with an old IBM 1600x1200 monitor, or two of them.
Standard 1080p monitors seem so bad with text, and once you plop them next to an MBP Retina screen the difference is extremely pronounced,
A tip from country where the price difference matters: Look for a TV, not PC monitor. They're often cheaper while having the same ports to connect it to a computer. But beware - some of them have always-on overscan which means you will get blurry effect and cropped picture. Make sure you can disable that (look for overscan, PC mode or something like that) before buying. Testing it on laptop before buying seems to be a good idea too - my mother's TV has option to disable overscan, but only on old VGA input. On HDMI it is always on anyway.
My browser always occupies the lower left quadrant, and event at 1/4 of the total screen it's still 1080p, or maybe a little more since I eyeballed it and didn't dock it there. It's easy enough to make any terminal larger and then I'm essentially gaining the same benefit of high pixel density.
I wanted to make sure the TV I got supported 60Hz at 4k, and had low input lag (for when I play games occasionally), so I found rtings.com[1] to be invaluable. Using a TV as a monitor has it's quirks (I turn it on separately with the remote on the desk because it's easiest), but at just over $400 when I bought it on sale ($500 now[2]) for a 40" 4k monitor that has 13ms input lag, I'm not sure how I could have done better.
Edit: Had the amazon price wrong, was looking at the 1080p one.
1: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/d-series-4k-2016
2: https://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-D40-D1-Class-Array-Smart/dp/B01...
Why the hell do we need overscan for anything that isn't an actual analog TV signal?
edit: typo
1440p seems like a good sweet spot between the two. But yes, 2K is a silly name for it.
For displays, <value>i and <value>p are used to indicate vertical resolution. For displays, <value>k is used to indicate approximate horizontal resolution. I've not seen any other usage.
For projectors, especially theater projectors, I have seen 2K used to refer to 2048 horizontal resolution, and 4K used to indicate 4096 horizontal resolution. Projectors do not have the same aspect ratio as monitors, however. DCI 2K is 2048x1080, while "2K" Full HD is 1920x1080. DCI 4K is 4096x2160, while UHD 4K is 3840x2160.
You can't really have a 2K film whose resolution is larger than 2048x1080 if you're following the DCI spec, and AFAIK the DCI spec is the only spec that actually uses the name "2K" as the official name for the resolution. That's the only point I'm making.
Attaching terms like "2K" to a computer screen invokes legacy compatibility horror feelings for me.
> I wanted more text characters
I often use a small, high res display (on a Surface Go, it's about 400 grams, and supr helpful when I need to fix production when out). Even if resolution isn't important to you, the ability to fit more things on screen is definitely a bonus of high res displays.
In theory, you should pick a 5K display, but there only a bunch of models to pick from and they cost a lot (some are not even manufactured anymore)
You should always assume that you'll be scaling your image at 2x when using high ppi displays. Take the iMac 5K for example - it offers the same screen real estate as a 2560x1440 display, just twice as sharp at 220 PPI.