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Benefits of resolutions beyond 1080p

This is a genuine question, so please don’t do me like Vlad the Impaler. What is your opinion about the benefits of upgrading to displays beyond 1080p?

I have never watched a film or a video at 1080p and thought it needed to look better. When it comes to software, I feel like I would want a proportionally larger monitor to keep the same DPI PPI, otherwise older software might be a pain to use, and that maintained software UI won’t necessarily benefit. However, that line of thinking is probably a niche concern of mine? I don’t play first person shooters, so maybe that’s another thing I don’t get. I have read some people saying that text looks better, which I could buy I suppose?

I wouldn’t say the same for 800x600, but maybe if I were a boomer I would have made that post, too. Is this something I would get over if I start using a modern display?

e: thanks to everyone for great responses! Based on the popular sentiment, I’m thinking I would take to 1440p just fine, presuming I get a screen ratio, DPI PPI, and screen size that suit my preferences. I am really relieved that I’m not super weird for being completely fine with my ancient monitors. :)

fushuan ,

on a similar topic, I recently upgraded my screen from two 24’’ 1080x60 to 24’’ 1080x144 & 27’’ 1080x120. I barely tell the difference but my card sure does, I quickly limited the refresh rate of both to 60 because I it’s pointless and I’ve read too many people saying that once you go 120+ it feels bad watching 60, and I really don’t want to get used to something that just makes me spend more electricity for nothing.

If you enjoy stuff fine in FullHD, don’t bother increasing the resolution. As others have explained, there are other things to upgrade before going for resolution that will have a bigger impact on the image. That said, purchasing a good screen that happens to have 2K or anything higher than 1080 is no big deal, just set your resolution to whatever you want from software and be done with it.

EddoWagt ,

That said, purchasing a good screen that happens to have 2K or anything higher than 1080 is no big deal, just set your resolution to whatever you want from software and be done with it.

That’s awful advise, a 1440p monitor running at 1080p will look like a blurry mess

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I have a 4k TV and don’t get it either. Watched the odd video in 4k and the colors are maybe a bit crisper, but that’s about it. I’d have to compare movies side by side to actually spot the difference.

Not worth it IMHO.

Can’t tell for screens though, I don’t even know whether mine does 4k or not. Was part of the home-office package from my company. I’ll have to check that tomorrow, only returning from a business trip tonight.

ReversalHatchery ,

The benefit of the higher resolution shouldn’t be about the colors, but that with bigger screens the movie does not start to get blurry.

For desktop use on a desktop display, I don’t see the benefit either. Even less on a phone, that is totally unnecessary.

BorgDrone ,

I have a 4k TV and don’t get it either. Watched the odd video in 4k and the colors are maybe a bit crisper, but that’s about it. I’d have to compare movies side by side to actually spot the difference.

The point of 4k is that you can have a TV twice as large as your 1080p TV before it without losing sharpness.

I can definitely tell the difference on my 77” OLED.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Mine is 65" and I really can’t, unless I switch between files rapidly. 720p to 1080p, definitely. But larger, hardly.

BorgDrone ,

What is your viewing distance?

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I’d say about 2.5 meters, maybe 3.

BorgDrone ,

You should see a clear difference at that distance. You may want to get your eyes checked, your eyes get worse as you get older and it can really creep up on you without noticing.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I just did during my annual checkup 2 weeks ago shortly after turning 40, still got 20/20 vision. No idea then…

BorgDrone ,

Strange. I used to have a 65” OLED, I sit farther away than you (about 3.5 meters) and could easily spot the difference even though I’m near sighted and at that time my prescription needed updating. Now, with new glasses and a 77” screen the difference is like night and day.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Maybe my TV is due for an upgrade then. Or the source movies I tried were 4k in name only but just some upscaled older ones… I’ll do some more testing with more recent ones.

BorgDrone , (edited )

Lots of movies sold on 4k bluray are upscales/‘remasters’ of the 2k version. Some are re-scans from the original 35mm film, those can be pretty good, depending on the source material. There is a huge variety in the quality or 4k movies.

If you can get your hands on it, try the LOTR 4k extended editions. If you get them from an ‘alternative source’ make sure you get one with untouched video (e.g. a remux). They are huge, about 100-120GB per movie but they look amazing. Wonder Woman 1984 also looks really good in 4k HDR, especially the opening scene.

4k content on streaming services varies a lot in quality, but is generally not as good as 4k bluray. Amazon Prime Video looks quite bad, terrible compression with lots of artifacts. Out of the streaming services, Apple TV+ has the best 4k video quality by far.

The LOTR 4k bluray is in my opinion on of the best showcases, especially if you compare it to the HD version. The HD bluray looks good, don’t get me wrong, but that’s all it is. Just a good movie with nice pictures. In 4k HDR with Dolby Atmos it’s something completely different. It’s like magic, almost impossible to look away from the screen. You end up starting it up just to see what the quality looks like and before you know it you unintentionally watched the entire extended edition.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I see, thanks a lot! I don’t have any devices that read physical discs, so it’s been streaming and alternatively sourced content exclusively. I don’t actually mind paying for media, but living in China significantly limits my access to unaltered, genuine discs that come with English audio tracks, unfortunately.

I’ll see if I can get my hands on a full sized LOTR copy for testing purposes then. Thanks a lot for the lengthy response, much appreciated!

thelittleblackbird ,

Take a look onto he following image: i0.wp.com/…/tv-size-distance-chart.png?ssl=1

There is always a subjective component in this kind of discussions but this image will help you to see if yiur setup will make sense based in the real perception of the human eye.

AeroLemming ,

I had a 1440p monitor and “downgraded” back to 1080p when it broke because I could barely tell the difference when gaming and I get a significantly higher framerate in most games at 1080p, which does make a big difference for me.

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

You can also run the game at 1080p and use FSR to upscale it to native resolution, that’s what I often do on my 4k monitor.

AeroLemming ,

Yeah, but that doesn’t work well on 1440p because it doesn’t scale perfectly.

Crashumbc ,

Yeah this one of the cases where not upgrading is better.

If you mostly play FPS online and/or fast paced games, it can make a difference.

Moonrise2473 ,

On my 4k 32" usually I run 4 programs at the same time, one at each corner. It’s like having 4 1080p screens (I keep scaling at 100%)

Crashumbc ,

Yeah, this has been huge for productivity for me. Or looking at huge spreadsheets.

Fallenwout ,

Since you are convinced about the higher resolution, you really are going to enjoy it.

But let me urge you to also buy a higher refresh rate. The same discussion applies here.

Even if the human eye can’t count the pixels or the frames, you WILL perceived it as more relaxing on the eye.

eestileib ,

I was a skeptic; “I can’t see all the pixels unless I’m as close to the screen as the screen is wide, why bother?”

Then I went over to my friend’s place and watched some stuff on his 4K OLED. Holy shit. So I can’t see all the pixels, but turns out that only perceiving 2.5-3x the data is still a big improvement.

I’m still not gonna pay for one until they get a lot cheaper.

andrade ,

There’s more to take into account other than just resolution, like

  • color space coverage (100% sRGB is quite affordable nowadays, I wouldn’t go less than this; on the other hand, >95% DCI-P3 or AdobeRGB still on the expensive side in comparison and not as widespread),
  • screen type,
  • brightness, and
  • refresh rate.

And resolution itself should be paired with monitor size for it to be meaningful. For example:

  • 24 inch monitor at 1080p = 92 PPI
  • 24 inch monitor at 2160p = 184 PPI
  • 32 inch monitor at 2160p = 138 PPI
  • 46 inch monitor at 2160p = 96 PPI

In Windows and Linux anything around 92 to 98 PPI gives you easily readable text at 100% scaling. This is a good baseline. There are PPI calculators online: dpi.lv

The 24 inch screen at 2160p (which is 4K) has twice the pixel density of the 24 inch screen at 1080p. That means if you would set your display resolution scaling in the OS to 200% you’d get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling>. However, because the density is much higher, everything looks much clearer.

The benefits are larger when reading text, IMO. You still notice an improvement with movies, of course. Mobile phones and tablets, even the cheaper ones, usually have significantly higher pixel density than computer monitors which is one reason they look better.

Of the three examples above, the 24 inch monitor at 4K will look better than the other three monitors because it has higher PPI. (Assuming all else is equal like screen type, color coverage, brightness, etc.)

I feel like I would want a proportionally larger monitor to keep the same DPI

Let’s say you want a new monitor. I suggest looking at the PPI and not just the resolution or monitor size in isolation. These two units should be paired.

For example, a 32 inch monitor at 4K has 138 PPI. The font will be tiny at 100% scaling but that’s expected. In this case it so happens that 1.5 x 92 PPI = 138 PPI. So by going to the OS display settings and increasing scaling to 150% you get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling> but everything looks clearer.

The 46 inch monitor above is 4K but because the screen is so large this comes out at only 96 PPI. So in terms of quality it would be quite close to the 24 inch monitor at 1080p.

PPI is one of the most important characteristics but don’t disregard the rest. Try at least full sRGB coverage. And for panel type IPS is a good choice if you can afford it. (I’m afraid of OLED because of burn-in issues and I can’t afford to replace monitors like they’re socks. And mini-led is very expensive.)

About the refresh rate, I don’t game and for movies it’s kind of useless. But I do notice a difference moving the mouse and scrolling pages on the browser. (My external monitors are 60 hz and my laptop is >100 hz.)

On a side note, Apple laptop screens tend to look nice because they have high PPI and good color coverage (among other things) whereas PC/Linux laptops for the most part have low spec screens. This doesn’t have to be the case, of course. My work laptop (I’m using Linux) has >200 PPI with near 100% DCI-P3 and fonts look great on it.

087008001234 OP ,

Eeerp. Yep, I meant PPI not DPI. Thanks for the write-up about text scaling, though, I will note that when I end up upgrading. The PPI calc also looks interesting.

andrade ,

They’re usually used interchangeably.

For what I understand, PPI is pixels per inch in a digital image, and DPI are dots per inch on a printed image. So we can use PPI or DPI for the same image depending on whether its on our computer screen (PPI) or printed on a sheet of paper (DPI).

eugenia ,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m using a 32" 4k monitor without scaling, even if my eyesight is not the best. I have no trouble at all with it. It’s the more common 27" 4k monitors that have tiny fonts and need scaling. But 32", 4k it’s fine at 100%!

As for 1080p, it’s enough for most things. You mentioned the dpi comparing it to a 24" 4k monitor, but why would you need 24" for a 1080p monitor? Anything above 20" is a waste for 1080p.

andrade ,

How much someone scales the display is of course subjective. I could use a 32 inch 4K monitor at 100% scale but it would be uncomfortable to read.

The Windows operating system used 96 DPI/PPI as a default (Mac was 72 DPI/PPI) and a 23 inch monitor at 1080p is exactly 96 PPI. So it’s no accident I like PPI at the mid-90s.

The reason I used a 24 inch monitor, instead of a 23 inch monitor, as an example it’s because I have a monitor that size.

billbasher ,

The biggest thing is view distance vs size. Your eyes can only see up to a certain density.

rgb.com/display-size-resolution-and-ideal-viewing…

acosmichippo ,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

also your personal subjective vision. some people legitimately can’t see the differences where others can.

brianorca ,

Some of that may not be subjective, even if it is a personal difference. Some need glasses, some don’t get glasses because they just barely need them, and others have problems glasses can’t fix, especially as we age. Some eyes are just different, and that’s physical differences, not just a difference of preference.

brianorca , (edited )

I do a lot of code. That means I often deal with three or four programs at the same time, and perhaps 10 loaded throughout the day and I want to see them all. So I have two monitors that are each 27" and 4k.

This means I can see a web browser sized to a full 1080 size, next to a database query, and still see the code that I’m working on, and keep an eye on any new emails or text chats. Without needing to Alt-tab to switch windows. It’s like spreading your work over a dining room table, instead of those little desks you got in high school.

Most apps don’t need to be larger than 1080. But some can be taller to see more code (maybe 160 lines, for example) without scrolling too much. And I hardly ever deal with just one window at a time.

toastal ,

2.8k seems about the sweet spot on a laptop to be from your face & see no pixels or even have to think about font hinting & the like. The bigger wins are OLEDs for blacks & picking up something with 100% DCI-P3.

merthyr1831 ,

I moved from a 1080p monitor to a 1440p one for my main display and it’s actually really worthwhile. Not only is your daily computing sharper, but multitasking becomes easier because smaller windows are still legible.

IMO it’s a lot easier on the eyes when things are sharper, too.

1080p is still more than enough, but I think 1440p is worth it for a screen you’re using for hours every day :)

shaytan ,
@shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Reading 100% feels better, seeing tiny icons/logos without it being a pixelated mess is also good, and video looks much crisper, same goes for videogames, and the performance hit from 1080 to 1440 isn’t bad at all.

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Higher resolutions are needed for larger displays (45’+) if you want to look at them closer. Other than that a higher resolution can look slightly better but the performance hit usually isn’t worth it. Idk about professional use cases though. I’m not a designer. Btw I use a 35’ 1366x768 (or something like that) monitor

Max_P ,
@Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me avatar

I can definitely see the improvement, even just between my desktop monitor (27in 1440p) and the same resolution at 16 inch on my laptop. Text is very nice and sharp. I’m definitely looking at 4K or even 5K next monitor upgrade cycke.

But the improvement is far from how much of an upgrade 480p to 1080p and moving away from CRTs to flat screens. 1080p was a huge thing when I was in highschool as CRT TVs were being phased out in favor of those new TVs.

For media I think 1080p is good enough. I’ve never gone “shit, I only downloaded the 1080p version”. I like 4K when I can have it like on YouTube and Netflix, but 1080p is still a quite respectable resolution otherwise. The main reason to go higher resolutions for me is text. I’m happy with FSR to upscale the games from 1080p to 1440p for slightly better FPS.

HDR is interesting and might be what convinces people to upgrade from 1080p. On a good TV it feels like more of an upgrade than 4K does.

glimse ,

4k is kind of shit when you’re streaming it but something like Blu-ray is definitely a noticeable upgrade on a 4k TV. If the movie torrent is only a couple gigs, it’s a low quality rip and no better then 1080p

independantiste ,
@independantiste@sh.itjust.works avatar

1080p is just fine, but it’s not good and definitely not great. If you’ve tried a high DPI display like the ones on MacBooks, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Using a computer at 200% scaling just makes everything so much more pleasing to look at, especially the text. The pixels are gone, so everything looks sharp and smooth. I really cannot wait for 5K 27" monitors with high refresh rates to come out. This will likely be an instant buy from me, except if it’s like 2 grand.

General high DPI with the same relative UI scale as 24" 1080p, but with much sharper visuals:

24" 4k 27" 5k 32" 6k

And the good thing is you can always set your game to use half the resolution and it will look as if it was the lowdpi equivalent, because the pixels are simply grouped using 3 neighbors, no fractional scale BS.

My laptop has a 3072*1920 screen that I use at 200% scale on Linux, and I wouldn’t buy anything that doesn’t work well at 200%. Apple seem like the only ones who understood this with MacOS that is designed to be used at 200% on basically ALL their retina monitors. this is why they have weird definitions, because they need to hit 200%, and based on the size of the display, a standard resolution won’t reach exactly 200% and the UI will be too small or too large.

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