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Comment by pttrn | Hacker News Reader

Just started a new remote contracting gig and did a one-week on-site “getting to know each other” thing. I was shocked that everyone in the office had dual 27” 1080p monitors. Didn’t know they even made 1080p monitors that big!

Anyway after a week of staring at that blurry mess I was having eye focusing issues every night trying to read a book. Those monitors should be treated as ergonomic hazard. Total disgrace.

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There was a time when these were considered super sharp high-resolution monitors. Fonts tended to be more optimized for (sub)pixel-level hinting in the past, though, while newer fonts and font rendering are more blurry on low-res monitors than things used to be. Vector icons are worse as well in that respect than the pixel-art icons of the past. I’ve also observed actual pixel quality (contrast/graininess) becoming worse with newer low-res monitor models, particularly on VA panels.

> There was a time when these were considered super sharp high-resolution monitors.

I think that time corresponded to when monitors were smaller than 27 inches though. A "good" CRT monitor used to be 15" and at that size 1080p is certainly great.

It was before everything became widescreen. 1280x1024 at 19” was pretty common I think, which is 86 PPI and would correspond to FHD at 25.5”. I still have a 27” 1920x1200 from 2007 at roughly the same PPI, which was considered a high-end monitor at the time (only few monitors like Apple’s Cinema HD Display with 2560x1600 at 30”, 100 PPI, surpassed it). 27” FHD is only slightly worse at 82 PPI. Just move it an inch or so farther away.

It shouldnt be blurry unless its a 1440p screen running at 1080..

I had to temporarily use a 1080p monitor, and forcing a higher resolution was the only way to get enough info on screen to do what I needed to do productively despite the blur.

What was the task?

I guess they meant "blurry" in the sense of "jagged", from using fonts that are 6 pixels wide at a reasonable point size on a 27-inch monitor.

No, just normal font sizes, macOS. 14pt looks huge, had to lower it to 12pt to look physically about the same as 14pt on a 4K/5K 27”, but at that physical size it’s a blurry mess due to low ppi.

Edit: Oh I misread your comment as 6 pixels large, not 6 pixels wide. Yes, you’re correct.

macOS looks pretty awful on non-high DPI screens because of the way fonts are antialiased. (Actually, same with modern windows at this point)

Yeah I’m on macOS.

This wouldn't happen to be in San Diego County, would it? I interviewed at a place a while back where every desk had friggen 1080p televisions on it. Classic case of the owner having some genius idea to save money.

I did not accept the job.

No this was in the UK.

You just have to set the font size to 16-18pt, as I saw many people do.

(Brought my own 4K monitor to work, like I did the last few times.)

16pt is huge on this monitor, fits too few code lines on screen. 18 is almost headline sized.

But anyway doing these acrobatics is not what a professional should be doing in 2026.

What? This is a very common screen size and resolution, so much so that it's literally recommended for esports players.

Low resolution displays are good for video and video games. So perfectly fine for television and probably gives some performance boost for esport players.

But for work, high resolution displays are always better. And they've been around for 10 years now.

Yes, but my point was that I find it incredulous that the parent was "shocked" that those monitors were even made when it's a very common format.

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