It's also important to consider font sizes vs pixel densities and seating distance.
I have three separate Macs sitting very close to each other in my home office.
1) 2017 27" iMac (5K - 5120x2880 - 218 ppi) with Monterey
2) 2014 Mac mini with 30" Cinema HD Display (2.5K - 2560x1600 - 101 ppi) with Monterey
3) 2010 27" iMac (2.5K - 2560x1440 - 109 ppi) with High Sierra
Up close, the best text clarity is the 27" iMac 5K Retina, not surprisingly.
However, the surprising part is even for text work, I usually prefer to use the Mac mini with 30" non-Retina display, even though I'm running Monterey on it without sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
The 2010 27" iMac non-Retina is my least favourite, despite the fact it has sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
Why?
Text sizing on both the 27" iMacs, Retina and non-Retina, is exactly the same, but it's small enough that it becomes harder to make out at my preferred seating distance. On the non-Retina 27", it's just annoying overall. It's noticeably better on the Retina 27", but the default text size is small enough that it's still an annoyance. To make it feel larger, I need to sit closer, but this is a problem since it becomes harder to focus with my progressive lenses if I sit so close, and I find it tiring over time. A solution to this is to get dedicated computer glasses, but they are not suited for other uses, so I'd have to be swapping glasses all the time, which is even more annoying, and which also makes me nauseated.
OTOH, for the 30" non-Retina display, the default text size is large enough that I can sit at a reasonable distance that makes it less tiring to focus upon.
Thus my holy grail screen would be a Retina screen but with a LOWER pixel density than the 27" 5K iMac or 27" 5K Studio Display. My holy grail screen would be a 5K 5120x2880 29-30" screen, which would provide a pixel density of 196-203 ppi.
However, in the meantime, I will continue to use my 101 ppi 30" Cinema Display. And in fact, when the Mac mini gets updated with M1 Pro or M2, I will buy one to use with that same 30" non-Retina display.
What about a 4K 27" screen? Nah. I don't really like those. The font sizes are even larger but the screen real estate is not wide enough. I want at least 2.5/5K wide, not 2K/4K wide.
