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my favourite thing about 5K is that you can do 2x scaling and still have plenty of space on your screen to display multiple windows (effectively 2560x1440)

but with a 4K screen, you have three options: 1. no scaling and tiny fonts (ugh), 2. fractional scaling (ugh), or 3. 2x scaling and settle for 1080p real estate (ugh)

IMO 5K > 1440p > 4K > 1080p

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Can someone explain why scaling a 4K screen by 200% is better than a monitor with 1080p native resolution? Or in general why is it better to use a scaled-up high res screen instead of a natively lower res screen? Doesn't the scaling get rid of any gains of being higher res? I just can't find an answer to this simple question online.

Assuming your entire software stack supports it, the advantage is that stuff can get displayed with twice the resolution but at the same physical size. Your operating system probably already does this with fonts and vector graphics. It can also be done with faster images too if they are provided at 2x resolution.

With 2x scaling, fonts are really crisp. Regular 1080p gets there most of the way, but with 2x scaling on a super high res display, the difference is noticeable and it's hard to go back.

Have you ever switched from a high refresh rate screens to a 60 Hz screen and noticed a difference? I find this to be similar.

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