1080p IS awful on 27" whatever is connected to it.
Everything is too big.
27" should be 2560x1440 (if not 4k).
My previous 24" monitors are 1920x1200, and the change to 27" was really nice.
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A warning: Do not buy a Mac Mini unless you have a high resolution (4K+) display.
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Everything is too big.
27" should be 2560x1440 (if not 4k).
My previous 24" monitors are 1920x1200, and the change to 27" was really nice.
No doubt. The text was just a bit more readable on windows because of the ClearType or whatever its called.
Mark claimed:
"27" should be 2560x1440 (if not 4k)."
How old are you? How's your eyesight?
(Serious questions)
"27" should be 2560x1440 (if not 4k)."
How old are you? How's your eyesight?
(Serious questions)
Old enough to not care about everything being in 'retina' mode.....
Most people with a 5k 27" display have it at 2560x1440, so nothing is any bigger anyway.....🤪
If I need to give myself perspective, I fire up my Atari ST with it's 320x200 resolution.
Long live the pixels...👾
QHD at 25 inches is decent. I recommended 27 inch QHD to a couple of friends and they are very happy with them. I personally prefer 4k or 5k on 27 inches - depends on your eyesight and what you're looking for. 1080 on 27 is too big. I sometimes use it to make videos to make them easier to see without people having to use a lot of bandwidth to see them clearly but that's more of a production thing than the actual hardware that I'm using.
I use an inexpensive 24" QHD Lenovo monitor with my M1 Mini at its native resolution and everything looks fine to me (some of the OS elements appear tiny, but my eyesight is still good enough that it doesn't bother me any). I'm pleased to see you recommend 27" QHD monitors because I'm considering a slight size upgrade and staying with QHD but was wondering if adding the 3" would make a huge difference.
Mark wrote in #229 above:
"Old enough to not care about everything being in 'retina' mode."
You completely evaded my question. But then, I reckoned that you would do exactly that.
For people with "older eyes" (like me), or whose vision isn't what it once was (also like me), lower-resolution displays can be essential.
Sometimes, it's not "the clarity" of text, but simply the size that makes a difference between readability and having to use a magnifying glass against the display (which I've done a few times with my retina MacBook Pro).
A 27" 4k display running at Apple's own "default" of "looks like 1080p" looks easily readable to me.
Change that to 27" and looks like 5k, and things start to get too small to comfortably read.
For the younger folks, it's fine.
But wait until you're past 70 and heading for 80...
"Old enough to not care about everything being in 'retina' mode."
You completely evaded my question. But then, I reckoned that you would do exactly that.
For people with "older eyes" (like me), or whose vision isn't what it once was (also like me), lower-resolution displays can be essential.
Sometimes, it's not "the clarity" of text, but simply the size that makes a difference between readability and having to use a magnifying glass against the display (which I've done a few times with my retina MacBook Pro).
A 27" 4k display running at Apple's own "default" of "looks like 1080p" looks easily readable to me.
Change that to 27" and looks like 5k, and things start to get too small to comfortably read.
For the younger folks, it's fine.
But wait until you're past 70 and heading for 80...
I have 2009 and 2010 27 inch iMacs and they are both QHD and they are fine for office stuff. I typically prefer higher resolutions so that I can display more on each monitor. If Apple thought that QHD at 27 inches was a good idea from 2009 to 2013, then who am I to doubt it? I typically do shrink window element sizes at the application level when I'm using that resolution/monitor size.
Update:
I bought a 4K iMac and I’m happy with it.
Still cracks me up seeing people in this thread swearing up and down that text isn’t blurry on their 1080p display.
Such a strange thing to lie about, considering pretty much everyone who has ever used a computer has seen text on a low-resolution display.
I bought a 4K iMac and I’m happy with it.
Still cracks me up seeing people in this thread swearing up and down that text isn’t blurry on their 1080p display.
Such a strange thing to lie about, considering pretty much everyone who has ever used a computer has seen text on a low-resolution display.
Apple baked sub pixel antialiasing into their OS back in 2013. That is no longer the case.
I suggest learn the difference between blurry and not as sharp as.
is my Mac on the dell 3008wfp 2560x1600 on Mac Studio (so definitely outside of retina) as good as the screen on my iPad Pro. No however it is not blurry just not as sharp as on my iPad Pro. There is still a defined edge to the text and perfectly readable.
I certainly have seen text on low res screens and my studio output nothing like it. When i say low I mean the original PC with monochrome monitors. Compared to that then is pin sharp, however the studio output is not as sharp as would be if bought a studio display, however I don’t want the smaller screen (27 vs 30) and effective 2560 x 1440 which is what the effective output is when scaling so using 4 pixels to make 1 equiv on my 3008wfp on the 5k screen.
I also cannot see personally how anyone could happily use a 4K iMac as the screen so small and effectively 1080p useable as using 4 pixels rather then 1 if was a native 1080p screen. However if you are happy with a smaller screen then good for you. Certainly not going to say you a liar If you tell me 21.5” is large enough for you which is the size of the 4K iMacs.
at work when head into the office then have to work with 2 x 24” monitors and at home have dual 27 so I find the the 24” screens too small personally, more scrolling to do. However others find them no problem at all and they simply have a different opinion to me. They certainly are not lieing about the monitors and I don’t claim them to be unusable for them. I find 24 difficult to work with now for PC / Mac work so no idea how you can handle 21.5” and scrolling all the time.
you just come across as being intolerant of other peoples opinions as if differs from yours then you say that they are lieing.
I have an M1 mini
At the start i had a 24' 1080p monitor, which i happily ran on windows for years
On Mac, I couldn't run it at native because text looks too small for me (poor eyesight). On windows, it's not a problem since you can just scale up text and UI elements by arbitrary amount to your exact level of comfort. Mac OS doesn't do scaling like that. What's more, unlike, say, iOS, Mac OS doesn't have a concept of base line text size that you can increase / decrease
On Mac, to get bigger text / menu bar etc you have to essentially run a lower resolution scaled up. You have very limited options, too, which is why tools like better display exist. As i understand it, Mac does raster scaling, which is dumb because vector fonts exist so they can be scaled arbitrarily without loss of quality. Yes icons etc are mostly bitmap, but some loss of quality there isn't as noticeable or important as text
Running 1080p scaled did not look good. Text looked bad. If with my eyes i can see text looks bad it must look bad to people with good eyes. I tried using apple font anti aliasb via the terminal command and it made the text too bold when on and too thin when off (Despite what many web pages claim, i saw no difference between level 1, 2, or 3. It was either 0 or non zero)
I wasn't going to splurge on a 5k display. Fortunately i got a 27" 4k ( 2160p ) from work, I'm using better display to run it at some funky res like 1188p or something (on mobile right now, can't check). Text still looks too thin in day mode, but thank goodness Mac has pretty good support for night mode and most apps support it. For web pages, i use a browser extension to force dark mode. Text looks much better in night mode to my eyes
Ironically when i run windows 11 in parallels text looks better there, even though I'm running this funky scaled mode. The font aliasing and display scaling situation on Mac isn't good but I'm guessing it'll never change because apple's solution is "buy our 5k monitor" while Apple users insist "everything's fine i don't know what your problem is."
At the start i had a 24' 1080p monitor, which i happily ran on windows for years
On Mac, I couldn't run it at native because text looks too small for me (poor eyesight). On windows, it's not a problem since you can just scale up text and UI elements by arbitrary amount to your exact level of comfort. Mac OS doesn't do scaling like that. What's more, unlike, say, iOS, Mac OS doesn't have a concept of base line text size that you can increase / decrease
On Mac, to get bigger text / menu bar etc you have to essentially run a lower resolution scaled up. You have very limited options, too, which is why tools like better display exist. As i understand it, Mac does raster scaling, which is dumb because vector fonts exist so they can be scaled arbitrarily without loss of quality. Yes icons etc are mostly bitmap, but some loss of quality there isn't as noticeable or important as text
Running 1080p scaled did not look good. Text looked bad. If with my eyes i can see text looks bad it must look bad to people with good eyes. I tried using apple font anti aliasb via the terminal command and it made the text too bold when on and too thin when off (Despite what many web pages claim, i saw no difference between level 1, 2, or 3. It was either 0 or non zero)
I wasn't going to splurge on a 5k display. Fortunately i got a 27" 4k ( 2160p ) from work, I'm using better display to run it at some funky res like 1188p or something (on mobile right now, can't check). Text still looks too thin in day mode, but thank goodness Mac has pretty good support for night mode and most apps support it. For web pages, i use a browser extension to force dark mode. Text looks much better in night mode to my eyes
Ironically when i run windows 11 in parallels text looks better there, even though I'm running this funky scaled mode. The font aliasing and display scaling situation on Mac isn't good but I'm guessing it'll never change because apple's solution is "buy our 5k monitor" while Apple users insist "everything's fine i don't know what your problem is."
It’s blurry. It just is. Low resolution displays simply don’t have the pixels necessary to display sharp clear text.
It’s really got nothing to do with opinion. It’s a matter of fact that 4k positively blows the doors clean off 1080p for text legibility.
Now if you want to tell me you don’t mind fuzzy text, then cool. That is an opinion. But claiming text isn’t fuzzy and blurry on these displays is not an opinion - it’s a lie.
There’s nothing here to debate or disagree on. Like I said, it just is what it is.
I genuinely don’t understand the insistence on pretending fuzzy and blurry text is clear. We all know it isn’t.
You can put the 2 screen side by side. One will have blurry pixelated text and the other won’t.
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Like I said learn the difference between blurry/fuzzy and not as sharp as. Until you know the difference between those two things you will continue to fail to grasp what people are telling you.
what I am telling you is that the text is not blurry/fuzzy it is just not as sharp as a retina screen. No one is saying that 1080p is not as sharp as 4K on a 24" screen which is the sweet spot for 4K / 1080p monitors. We are simply saying that it is not blurry/fuzzy. If you had never made the leap to retina you wouldn't find non-retina to be like you do. 27" screens and becomes 1440p / 5K is the sweet spot which is why the Studio Display is 5K.
Stop drinking the Apple Koolaid and reading the marketing material
I will try a non techy example.
during summer a few years ago and was 22 degree temp then my dad was complaining he was cold and walking around in thick trousers and jumper when visited them for weekend. I on the other hand was walking around in tshirt and shorts saying is 22 degrees, that is not cold.
what I had not taken into account is they had a holiday to the med (that not told me going on) and had a week of 30+ temp, and so dad used to 30 degrees and so coming back to 22 was colder then he had become used too. As such I was sweating in a T-shirt and shorts and dad was feeling cold whilst wrapped up. Not because it was cold but because it was not a hot as he had become used too. Ask any Brit and 22 is not cold in Britain. Noel coward would not be singing about only find mad dogs and Englishman out in the midday sun today. We have had a govt alert as temp may hit 30 this weekend.
we didn’t argue because we both understand the difference between cold and not as hot as.
I found the 22 too hot as used to around 15-18 a the time, dad used to 30+ found it cold.
This is the problem that you are having is that you are insisting that I would be cold at 22 and lieing about been hot because you are used to 30+ temps.
Like I said you are used to retina level screen and now find anything that not retina uncomfortable and refusing/unwilling to understand that other people who continued with non-retina so for them non-retina is still is sharp enough and not blurry/fuzzy as they are not exclusively on the pin sharpness that get from retina so they are used to having non-retina.
people that have a mixture of retina and non-retina like me, can tell the difference but the non-retina still clear and is not fuzzy/blurry, it simply is not as sharp as what your eyes used too. by getting too close I can make my iPad pro screen blurred and unreadable but I don’t go around saying retina on iPad is pointless because of it.
like i repeatedly said go away and learn the difference between blurry/fuzzy and not as sharp as. Clearly at the moment you don’t understand the difference. However I fear that you will persist and try and tell me that 22 degrees is actually cold in Britain.
You say happy with a 4k iMac which is 21.5”. Me that is completely unusable, I have even tried a 24” iMac which is 4.5k res and again could not use that as main computer every day. It is just way smaller than I can work with because I am used to at least 27" screens. Yet other people is fine. In fact used to get people saying 27” iMac too big which is why had the smaller imac.
note how I say is smaller then I can work with and not that the screen is small.
I remember upgrading from a 14" CRT to 17" CRT and thinking was absolutely massive moving from 800 x 600 to 1280 x 1024 and you call 1080p low res. That is so funny.
However to try and explain to you then I will give you in your language what I would be saying.
you are saying that happy with a 4K iMac. You lie. Put that iMac alongside my 30” screen and tell me that screen is big enough when clearly too small. It just is. I don’t understand how you can tell me that iMac screen is big enough and persist in telling me you are happy with it when it clearly it is small.
Does this make it easier for you to understand what trying to get through to you. because what I have typed there is based on your responses how you would be explaining it.
You are quite happy with a small screen. As not got used to larger ones. If you had a 5K iMac / Apple Studio Display you would not be happy with a 4k iMac and lack of screen afterwards.
My 30" screen does not make your iMac small yet you are insisting to people that non-retina suddenly became blurry after retina screens available. How did we cope with blurry and fuzzy screens for decades before Apple saved us with retina level displays.
is a table knife blunt, well if used to using steak or fish knives then it is nowhere near as sharp however can still cut yourself on the edge and can still cut food hhich if was actually blunt would struggle to do so.
to go extreme is boiling water hot, well if used to temperature of the surface of the sun then it is freezing cold. However if you try and say boiling water is cold people will say go on then poor it over your hand. You wouldn’t because it would still burn your hand. However by your response then you would be claiming boiling water is cold. Look at the temp of sun and tell me boiling water is hot. Yes this has deliberately taken to the extreme as you seem to need this.
your response again with the people insisting on blurry/fuzzy text is clear when it isn’t show’s that you are not actually reading and then understanding what people are telling you. We are not saying it is retina clear just that is not fuzzy/blurry. We never went Retina exclusively so non retina 1440p is still clear to us as not grown accustomed to the pin sharpness of retina. You are doing the equivalent of saying Boiling Water is Cold because it is not as hot as the temp of the surface of the sun. But it will still burn you if pour boiling water over you.
Do you get what we are telling you.
Go look at that table and will help explain to you.
You are on a retina with a 4K iMac and in the Good for Retina.
27" monitors at non retina 2560 x 1440 are in the good spot. So my Dell 2719D which are 2560 x 1440 are solid non-retina. My Dell 3008WFP is a 101.4 so just makes it into the Good for Non-Retina which is why don't have blurry/fuzzy text on my screen. Not going to try and claim it is as sharp as if replaced with a Studio Display at 5K but it is still seen as good screen res ie doesn't blur / fuzzy stuff.
So I am running less then 4K res but even the person who put together the table recognises that non-retina screens can still be good.
I didn’t read any of that past the first sentence - as I said, none of this is up for debate.
If text wasn’t fuzzy on low resolution displays, there’d be no need for high resolution displays in the first place.
One has clear text, while the other doesn’t. It’s really as simple as that.
Ok will move you from appearing intolerant to actually being intolerant, but hey if you are OK with being recognised as intolerant, then more power to you. You clearly have your opinion which is ALWAYS the correct one even when people try and help you understand. Why do you even bother posting on the Internet when intolerant?
If you bothered to read it you may understand why people not using retina display are saying is not fuzzy.
As I tried to explain but you aren't prepared to engage then we come from too different sides just like the temperature example.
At 22 degrees in Summer then having gotten used to 30 degrees on holiday Dad was saying was cold.
Been used to 17-18 having remained in the UK then for me 22 degrees was hot.
Both of us in the same room, but one of us was hot, one of us was cold yet both the same temp.
So in terms of monitor images
You are used to retina which is sharper then non-retina. As such when you see non-retina you view it as blurry/fuzzy because it is not as sharp as what you used too. So it is your VIEW that you see the text as blurry/fuzzy as it is NOT AS SHARP AS the retina screen that you are used too.
however less sharp is not the same fuzzy/blurry if you understand english language.
non-retina screens are still clear in text (if wasn't clear then would fail workstation ergonomic assessment) just that it is not as sharp as a retina would be. ie it is less sharp.
However there is a reason why you have words in english such as sharp, sharper, sharpest. clear, clearer, clearest.
my 30" monitor has a clear/sharp image
my iPad Pro with Retina has a clearer/sharper image in comparison to my 30" monitor.
1080p, 1440p is LOW resolution. That is so funny, You don't know what low resolution is. 1080p is even defined as FULL HD where the H is High Defintion. So High Definition in your world is actually LOW resolution. 1440P is known as Quad HD
If you were not as intolerant as you are then you might actually learn something.
Retina and High Resolution monitors don't exist because sub 4K monitors are blurry. They exist because manufacturers see that they can charge you more for them
4K 32" monitor from Dell as in the P3223QE is in the £4xx price range, U3223QE is £6xx range. They also sell a UP3218K that is 8K resolution which is £3000. If you are used to an 8K screen then you would be calling 4K screens Blurry/Fuzzy as constantly used to 8K resolution using even more pixels to display.
Keep drinking the koolaid.
However feel free to be seen as intolerant and ignoring other peoples inforamtion at least you are open about it and people will see you as that when you post in future. Braver chap then me.
On a low-pixel-density display (which some 1080p displays are, while others aren't, it doesn't depend on the absolute number of pixels) you can say that, without anti-aliasing as on modern macOS, text is pixelated or jagged. That's the opposite of "blurry".
No it isn’t IF you have screens in the correct DPI range.
Apple aim for specific DPI territory which is why as they use larger screens then the resolution changes to hit the DPI.
so the 21.5” iMac has 4K resolution
24” iMac has a 4.5k to keep the DPI in range.
the 27” iMac / studio has 5k resolution to hit the DPI
the XDR being 32” if has 6k resolution same as the Dell 3224 gone for however appears not that successful to use with Mac and people sending back. Dell monitor that is Not the XDR.
27” 1440p being 2560 x 1440 is half the 5120 x 2880 of 5k and Mac OS on the 27” iMac will default to a looks like 2560 x 1440 and uses 4 pixels to represent what a 1440p 27” 1 pixel can give a sharper image and doesn’t have to use all 4 pixels and so can get nearer a smooth curve as smaller steps.
best way can describe is when look at analogue vs digital and digitial is a series of steps as opposed to a curve.
by using 4 pixels then can make the step smaller and so the edge of text becomes smoother as if go in close may well see the steps on non-retina screens. Effectively compared to non-retina can make a half step on a retina screen.
so if get a large screen then in close you can start to see the step of the pixel if say 1080p on a 32” screen.
as basic75 correctly points out can get a pixelated image which is the opposite of blurry if the DPI in the wrong range.
hence why saying to the OP that it is not blurry/fuzzy but less sharp on the non-retina, where may get a step if look close enough, however as has admitted doesn’t bother to read what people provide, then can continue on in own little world.
I know what the OP is trying to say, is just that not saying in what typing what is trying to say. Don’t know if English is the native language for them which can be an issue.
OP wrote:
"as I said, none of this is up for debate"
And that's why I'm putting this entire thread on "ignore".
So long...
"as I said, none of this is up for debate"
And that's why I'm putting this entire thread on "ignore".
So long...
Hey guys, what about the 27” LED cinema display? Are there also issues with this one? It’s not 4K but it’s from Apple. It’s over 10 years old however (but still excellent imo).
This will be the same as my Dell's 2560x1440, which is perfectly fine.
Some people will argue till the cows come home, but not everything needs to be retina....
Yeah it's nice on my ipp, but so what.
That will be fine. 27" 2560 x 1440 is what the ASD and 5k iMac actually default to as a "looks like" resolution.
It may not look quite as sharp as an ASD using 1/4 of the pixels that does, however you won't have any issues using it in reality