Time to Upgrade Your Monitor (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Time to Upgrade Your Monitor (2020)

tonsky.me

69 pointsbehnamoh43 comments

The author's argument for high dpi is unconvincing. I mean, if you magnify something by 24x of course it's going to look blurry. That doesn't mean that you actually need/want that high pixel density. You can use the same argument technique to argue for 8k/16k displays. It's also strange how the author mentions that cleartype is a thing, but for the conclusion comparison he ignores it entirely. If anything, by taking cleartype rendered text and magnifying it (thereby making subpixel rendering pointless), he's making low-DPI look artificially worse.

He also makes the baffling suggestion to use 2x scaling for 4k. That means that your 4K monitor has the same amount of screen real estate as a 1080p monitor, a reduction in surface area of 43% compared to a sane low-dpi monitor @ 1440p. While I agree that it would likely result in better looking scaling, I can't imagine how slightly better looking text/scaling can make up for the loss in surface area.

Personally I've regularly used 4k 27" and 1440p 27" monitors, and while the 4K monitor is clearer, it's not something that I'd fork over a few hundred dollars for.

I see it as a working device and I often look at screens a lot of time per day, week, mo the, year and decade.

I don't buy often new displays but spending 1k is in my opinion a no brainer for a good display.

My last display in broke due to an incident with a tent pole. So normally my displays don't really break

I cannot and will not take monitor advice from someone who uses a bright yellow background to display text over. It's inhuman.

Maybe your monitor isn't high res enough to appreciate it.

This made my day!

It's a good color for a hot dog stand.

I've been using two 28" 4k 144hz monitors for a few months. Windows, Cleartype, at 150% scaling. It's only the rare old program that looks terrible (blurry text). I don't know why on earth one would use 200% scaling with a 4k desktop monitor; you're effectively making it a 1080p monitor and losing many advantages of better resolution.

As the author says, that 150% is not that good for the quality of text fonts showed on screen. I've been using a Dell UP2715K (27", 5K) for a few years and I've always used it at 200% scaling as the piece suggests. The texts are crystal clear, it's almost like seeing not a screen, but a sticker: everything is so well defined and precise.

Maybe that's because my eyesight is not that good lately. Even considering that, I really can perceive a 150% scaling on a 4K monitor when I see it. It isn't that bad and sure you can work with that, but man, do try 5K at 200% and then tell me about it.

It's a real tragedy there are not more 5K displays. The Apple Studio Display is expensive and a little absurd with that webcam and the A13 chip, but at least you can enjoy that resolution. I wonder if display makers will consider this someday and stop selling so much gaming models and so little 'work' models.

Speaking only for myself: bad vision. Even though I'm capable of reading small text with my glasses, small text still makes me feel as if I have to squint which leads to headaches. I permanently switched to larger fonts / larger zoom levels 5-6 years ago and never looked back.

28" 4k has ~158 dpi, so it makes sense to use 150% scaling for it, considering that canonical dpi is 96. But it is important to consider disadvantages of 150% scaling in general. While text and vector graphics could be rendered properly, there are plenty of non-photo bitmap graphics, which has to be scaled. And scaling it by 2 keeps it sharp, while scaling it by 1.5 makes it blurry.

Therefore it makes sense to buy either low-dpi monitors (with dpi ~100) or high-dpi monitors (with dpi ~200, and run it with scale 2), but 28" 4k is just in uncanny valley of dpi, that is too high for scale 1, too low for scale 2 and matching scale 1.5 is blurry.

Or i could just use a font with good hinting, enable proper grid-fitting (or even bitmap font) and have crisp fonts even on low-dpi screen. So i can have 43" 4k monitor and plenty of space on screen.

Using aliased/bitmapped fonts has been my go to, retina or not: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ati_9x16 I can’t hit the ground running unless the font is crisp and jagged.

[2020]. While a lot of the information may be evergreen, I certainly hope the monitors available has changed. Does anyone have an up-to-date list of good 4K monitors available?

> From what I can find, right now there are only four (yes, four!) 4k 120+ Hz displays on the market

My eve spectrum does 4k @ 144hz.

I presume it's a gaming monitor, TN panel type? Each to their own.

Personally I much prefer the colours and viewing angles of an IPS monitor.

Unfortunately that means I can only get 60Hz. Thankfully I haven't experienced a high refresh rate so I don't know what I’m missing out on!

Nope, it's IPS: "Nano IPS Oxide TFT LCD"

Fantastic! I had no idea that was possible. Thanks for elaborating.

Meh, maybe if you have really good eyesight (I'm mid-20s and have 20/20 vision with glasses), this matters more.

Personally, I thought the section where the author compared windows with subpixel hinting off to the same UI retyped on MacOS was a joke because the images looked exactly the same... needless to say I'm happy running two 1080p external monitors and a 2k laptop screen in 1366x768 mode for better app compatibility. I use the laptop in native resolution when it's undocked and don't really notice a difference, so I'm skeptical of the "you don't know what you're missing!" argument this article goes for -- if it's bothering you definitely upgrade, but I don't think every programmer needs to.

Wow, I can’t believe anyone would look at the clear type off screenshot and think it looks fine. It looks like hot garbage to me.

I'm 39 with not very good eyesight. Upgrading to 4k monitor has been a a significant quality of life improvement for me.

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30237205

I have both a 4k laptop screen and standard 1080p laptop screen.

Can't see a real difference to be honest. I'd probably have to do a proper test to notice one.

Is this push towards 4k 120Hz comparable to audiophiles advocating for expensive audio gear where most folks wouldn't hear a difference?

Are there any eye health implications using non 4k screens?

The jump from 1080p to 4k is extremely noticeable to most people. At standard scaling you also get way more screen real estate, which is definitely a plus. I also think most people would easily pass a blind test and recognise which monitor has 120 vs 60Hz.

At the size of a laptop screen the difference is not that great between 4K and 1080 but go up to a 24”, 27”, or 32” desktop display and it really jumps out if you are looking at text. If you are mainly looking at games, video, or images then resolution is less significant. Clear and readable text is all about resolution and higher ppi.

Yes - that makes sense. I'm not using those monitor sizes.

Thanks for that perspective.

This guy's long winding explanation just seems to fall completely flat. It feels like if you have to go into such detail as to why I'm not actually fine with the text I'm looking at, then I probably actually am fine with it

That and who uses a yellow background when discussing readability?

Anyone know any good tools for uniformly setting aliasing, hinting etc... for fonts on Linux?

Text looks distinctly different between KDE and i3 and aren't as out-of-the-box ready.

Are there tools used by everyone here that aren't as well known to smooth out these issues?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/font_configuration

I just use the settings in the DE (kde or gnome).

For WM only setups these settings are missing ("bloat" is useful sometimes), so I would try borrowing the settings gui from lxde or xfce. IIRC it might also be useful to have an xsettings daemon run in that case.

Dude seems to ignore bitmap fonts, you don't need a high resolution monitor, you need a font that's made for your monitors native resolution.

Excellent article that helped me decide to use the overpriced Studio Display over any other displays.

Also: those blog posts without the date in the url :-(

Just adjusted my 2014 MacBook Pro using the recommended Fontsmoothingadjuster app - makes a big difference!

I am shocked people today has to pay so much, do so much in order to get a non-blurry font. And even then you still can not get a consistent result.

In fact all you need to do is to have a good bitmap font. You can get a non blurry font even on 48ppi.

What a wonderful world we live in.

Your annual reminder that the best monitors for programming are made by Eizo.

FlexScan in particular - https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan

That will be all.

Question: how much are your monitors?

Please contact the EIZO group company or distributor in your country or territory with any inquiries about purchasing or technical support.

By contacting us you agree that we may store any personal data you provide. This data will only be used to respond to your inquiry. Please consult EIZO’s “Privacy Policy” for further information.

Full disclosure: am looking to purchase three monitors.

My vision is kind of crappy, so for me...

#1 is more monitors #2 is larger monitors #3 is higher resolution #4 is refresh rate and color gamut

Or use bitmap fonts.

a good bitmap font looks amazing.

Does a 14px text at the 200% scaling look worse than a 28px text at 100% scaling?

This site's dark mode is kinda interesting. Definitely impractical though.

Now this is wonderful article, the only question staying is, how can I get a laptop that supports 2x 4k display and still has versability and durability of old thinkpad? (I have x230 at the moment)

https://bmdiethelmv.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/thinkpad-x2100-...

This is a popular "hacker"-y mod.

Do you consider the 14" Macbook Pro to have that versatility and durability? Because it can drive 2x 6K external displays or 3x 4K external displays

TIL 2X fractional scaling is better than 1.5X. I always thought 1.5X was sharper than 2X.. Edit actually I'm confused as to which one prefer

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