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The state of external retina displays

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Re: The state of external retina displays

#311

Post by nickjj »

mmis1000 wrote: post #259
nickjj wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :) There's always a balance and trade-off here. 2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p. In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p…

> you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p. Is that even a problem? I am not buying better screen to torture my eyes. IMO. A smaller sharper text won't really be easier to see compared to a larger but blurrer text.

I think so, but it's personal opinion.

I wear glasses and 25" at 1440p has very clear text. I feel no strain. Even the grey text on HN is very readable from about 32" (81 cm) away which is my normal viewing distance. It's readable without much strain from 45" (114 cm) but I wouldn't want to use things that far away.

For reference my work issued laptop is a 13" 2020 MBP so I have experienced retina. I would take the 1440p screen real estate at ~120 PPI (24"/25") 10 out of 10 times vs going back to 1080p but with higher PPI. There's also the added benefit of never having to think or worry about poor UI scaling since not all apps handle scaling well, but that's not a deciding factor in my mind, more of a nice to have.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#312

Post by nickjj »

ece wrote: post #288
nickjj wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :) There's always a balance and trade-off here. 2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p. In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p…

> 1.5x also gives you the same real estate as 1440p but with higher PPI but I don't know how crisp that will be given the scaling ratio. 1.5x is nice on a 27 inch 4k with 14+ fonts. HiDPI monitors do seem to have bloom, so slightly bigger fonts with higher DPI are good to have.

For reference I'm at 25" 1440p with a font size of 9 using Consolas. Things look pretty crisp at native scaling and also very comfortable to read with no strain.

In terms of viewing space this fits (4) side by side code windows at 80 characters with a little bit of breathing room.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#313

Post by cehrlich »

ivalm wrote: post #111
xyzzy123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables . Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down. Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways. Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "goo…

I am guessing scissors, esp if they get sharpened 2x/day will not last multiple decades (because sharpening an edge removes material).

High quality scissors, even with constant use, can easily last that long or even longer. Source: I used to work as a tailor. In fact many people in that industry prefer to use older German-made scissors as they are in many ways better than the stuff you can buy now.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#314

Post by tpmx »

minimaul wrote: post #43
flyingchipmann wrote: post #37

I would add LG CX/C1 48 inch. The lowest price has come down to 1000 usd + tax around recent month. It has all the features and packs a top tier oled panel.

I find that bigger than 32" at desktop distances is uncomfortable at best, unfortunately. 27" is definitely the sweet spot for me.

You need a deeper desk.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#315

Post by _ph_ »

Molomby wrote: post #296
____________g wrote: post #18

I have been waiting for good external Retina displays for years . That the situation has not improved after all this time is incredibly frustrating. Why is no display manufacturer [0] interested in setting itself apart by producing and marketing a lineup of reasonably priced external pixel-doubled (~200 ppi) displays? For some reason everything must be 16:9 and 4K with no regards to display size, resulting in some ve…

If you're looking for a 5k display, I've found Wikipedia's list of 5k devices to be valuable reference point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5K_resolution#List_of_devices_... Personally, I'm hanging out for a 5120x2880 display larger than 27". We've had 27" 5120x2880 displays for 6 or 7 years now, you'd think someone would have taken that res to a larger panel by now. But nope, still waiting.

If a 5120x2880 display were larger than 27", then it wouldn't have a good pixel density. In my experience, either slightly above 100 or 200 ppi are the sweet spots for screen resolution, because you get along well with an integer scaling factor.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#316

Post by PragmaticPulp »

bluedino wrote: post #215
jstx1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in. Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely.

Think of it as people who earn 300k being able dictate that they work from home, and it sounds a lot more feasible

In my experience, the companies able to pay $300K salaries are able to dictate where their employees work, not the other way around.

FWIW, I’ve had a remote job in this pay range pre-pandemic, but even I wouldn’t say that it’s easy or common.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#317

Post by floatboth »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #249
floatboth wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a "logical pixel" system (macOS, Wayland, …Android??) the scale is the relationship between logical and physical pixels. In an "app go draw bigger stuff" system like Windows, it's just the factor of how much bigger the UI elements should be. E.g. in Windows settings you can set 150% scale and all UI elements will be 1.5X as large. And the "good" scale depends mostly on PPI of the monitor, as well as user preferenc…

WPF and some other windows APIs support resolution independence, so you don’t have an arbitrary size defined set as 1X. It seems weird that Apple hasn’t been able to do resolution independence yet, and there is some arbitrary 1X that is based on monitor tech that was popular this decade (and definitely not resolutions like 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 resolutions that we used in the 90s). Eventually, we should at least ren…

Directly using physical PPI has basically never taken off anywhere. Everyone is using "arbitrary 1x" because designers and developers have never started using physical dimensions for digital UI elements. Most people speak in "96-dpi-ish logical pixels" because it's much more convenient. Everyone knows what 128px approximately looks like. No one measures UI elements with a physical ruler in millimeters.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#318

Post by _ph_ »

mmis1000 wrote: post #259
nickjj wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :) There's always a balance and trade-off here. 2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p. In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p…

> you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p. Is that even a problem? I am not buying better screen to torture my eyes. IMO. A smaller sharper text won't really be easier to see compared to a larger but blurrer text.

Yes, for developers screen real estate is everything. You want crisp fonts and lots of space. Both for just code editing and of course for testing, where you often run your application side by side with your code window. At work I still use my old 30" 2560x1600 screen (basically the old cinema display) and its just gorgeous. My iMac is way sharper, that is also great for image processing, but already noticeable smaller. You can squeeze a bit more onto the screen due to the higher resolution. My 24" 4k screen works with a scaled resolution (2300 horizontal resolution) but its considerably worse. A hidpi 30" screen would be a dream.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#319

Post by _ph_ »

hamstergene wrote: post #230
yrral wrote: post #19

Why is Dell has a 32 inch 8k display which is ~280 ppi in stock. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-32-8k-m...

I have been using Dell P2415Q (24" 180ppi) for a few years side-by-side with a Retina MacBook, and the difference is visible: I can see pixels on 180ppi text if I lean forward, but not on the 220ppi. Not a deal breaker, of course, but the "retina" marketing pitch isn't lying. BTW, LG 24UD58 mentioned in the article is also only 180ppi.

I am using the same, as I needed an external screen for my MacBook. I use it in scaled resolution for screen estate (2300 horizontal pixels), which works, but isn't as sharp as my iMac.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#320

Post by floatboth »

chrismorgan wrote: post #247
floatboth wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using a 28" 4K (with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS) — used to use 1.5x with downscaling but switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)

> with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS I believe that depends entirely on the desktop environment. Sway does real fractional scaling rather than the idiotic downscaling way.

No, Sway supports downscaling. Augmenting downscaling with exact fractional scales is still in discussion: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i... (And Firefox has a prototype implementation using wp_viewporter but you have to set the scale manually.)

Of course, independent of the desktop environment, you could just tell supporting applications to just manually render bigger UI (exactly how you would on X11 with some TOOLKIT_DPI variable thing per UI toolkit) and keep the monitor scale in the compositor at 1x. That's probably what you've been doing. That doesn't support multiple monitors with varying scale.

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