[Shank]

At least in my experience, if you sit far/close enough, you can "overcome" the limitations of each display variant. I can definitely see the difference between 4K running 1440p at 1.5x compared to a proper 2x scale factor, though. I can tolerate 1.5x or variations in between, but I'd vastly prefer 2x. If you play with enough resolutions and look at enough displays, you'll develop a taste which cannot be quenched without an LG 5K display, which is ill-advised.

At least to my eyes, my Dell U2715H with EDID override looks worse at 1440p than my LG 27UL850-W. I'd prefer to have a 2x scale factor, but at 1.5x, I can't see scaling artifacts or I'm used to them for still text. My poor GPU can't handle this though, so all motion and movement is terrible, and thus, I can't distinguish "shimmering" from just regular poor performance.

I'm really bothered that Apple sells an LG 5K display for the price they sell it at. Pro display XDR is joke-tier pricing for a developer. Even the 5K display is too expensive. The Ilyama 5K (XB2779QQS) was sold at the $999 price point, which actually kinda makes sense, but it's gone.

So practically speaking, either shell out $1,200+ for a good display or settle non-ideal retina or 1x.