I ended up seeing a post here for Berkeley Mono, a paid font, and I noticed in particular that it was incredibly readable compared to other mono fonts I was using, so much so that I've zoomed out one level on VS Code and iTerm and have similar readability as before.
It was the first font I paid for, and I was quite happy with it.
Berkeley’s sharpness and legibility has been unmatched for me and I think that’s what draws me to it so much. I know others will say it’s not sharp or legible, and it’s a totally personal thing. We get good at reading on different screens with different characters, and we’re gradually trained to see in different ways. For me, Berkeley absolutely nails it.
That said, I've been using it for a couple weeks now, and have stopped noticing that.
My main issue with it now is that some italic glyphs get cut off in my terminal, but I'm not sure if that's the font's fault or my terminal's fault.
It seems like the "r" is actually the main culprit. The spacing before and after "r" tends to feel too big to my eye.
EDIT: Ok, I feel like this demonstrates the issue pretty well. The 'r' is a problem for sure, but notice how off balance the rest of the word looks? Evidently, there is no kerning (as I've learned) with monospace fonts, but then why does the spacing between these letters appear to variable to my eyes? The spacing between the 'om' looks weird too. This is just a screen shot from Font Book.
For example, Andale Mono: https://i.imgur.com/PeLZrj4.png
Fira Code and others do an ugly thing with 'r' that is a huge point of contention. There is a thread on Github that describes the frustration well: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/601
This is a fundamental trade off between aesthetics of the char itself vs. the aesthetics of spacing between chars. It comes down to personal preference and fits the "boring" description from Berkeley Mono marketing page.
Perhaps there should be an option for two types of 'r', one with a base and one without. That'd be great!
But in Berkeley Mono it'd be easily fixable: when the lowercase r's upperbar is a straight horizontal line (as it is in Berkeley but not in Andale Mono), you can simply make that horizontal bar a little tiny bit wider, which shall give the illusion things are more balanced.
I did create my own font with a 'r' like that (but I cannot share it as I stole inspiration from commercial fonts).
[1] https://cdn.berkeleygraphics.com/static/public-affairs/bulle...