This. Lack of fractional scaling is a big deal. I have 15" Full HD screen on my laptop, and everything is too small without fractional scaling (I prefer to have it set at 1.125/1.25).
I tried that as well with the same results (blurry text). The best approach I found was to install gnome-tweak-tool, and set the font scaling factor to 1.5. Chrome and a lot of other apps scale everything including ui elements by 1.5. The window manager and some other apps don't seem to support this though.