[clarkdave]

I've tried a lot of different monitor setups for productivity - ranging from three 24" 4k displays to a single 49" ultrawide, and ultimately have found the best setup for me is dual 27" 4ks, each running at a "scaled" 2560x1440.

MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable.

Another option if you're not a fan of 27" displays is a pair of 24/25" 4k screens which can be run at a scaled 2304x1296 resolution. This still provides a decent amount of space without text being too tiny. Alas, 4k monitors <27" are increasingly rare these days.

[lucumo]

> MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable.

MacOS in particular gets amazingly slow when you don't use a 1:1 or 2:1 scaling. I too have have two 27" 4k screens and they made the machine unbearably slow. It got so bad that I now treat them as 1440p screens and let the screens do the scaling. It's not pretty and slightly hazy, but at least the machine is usable.

[BugsJustFindMe]

macOS has secret modes that disable the 8x upscaling dance that happens in this situation. You access them by holding the option key while switching to scaled resolution from native. The text quality is very slightly worse but the performance is very significantly better.

[dijit]

My Mac is unusably slow sometimes. I think this is the reason. I will try using native sizes and see if it improves. Thank you for this tip

[musicale]

There is a strange bug I've seen a couple of times where graphics, even simple things like scrolling a web page, get really slow even though it's supposedly using the GPU. Rebooting or logging out and in again seemed to fix the issue.

Also sometimes the virtual memory subsystem seems to get confused or overcommitted (e.g. after running a bunch of large VMs in VMware) and from that point on everything is just slow, even if you shut down every VM to relieve the memory pressure. It may be related to macOS's use of memory compression.

Then there are various background daemons (mdworker, syspolicyd, photoanalysisd, etc.) that occasionally wake up and decide to eat all of your CPU while simultaneously hammering your file system. The only effective response, short of disabling the offending service (which is much harder than it is on Windows or Linux, due to SIP) seems to be to let them run their course as they decide to scan every file they can find for the 100th time.

And when your laptop heats up, then macOS starts throttling the system via kernel_task processes that appear to be using all of your CPU.

[thebean11]

The new MacBook pros can handle it

[ddek]

Hell, not even the pros.

My work laptop is a 2019 i7 MBP, it struggles with my 4k monitor regardless of scaling. I bought the cheapest mac mini last year to see what the M1 fuss was about, and it has no problem with the 4k screen, even with scaling.

Other OS's? Windows is passable until you start transitioning in and out of full screen. Linux...

[sangnoir]

My Windows games run at higher frame rates at 4k under Linux (Proton) than on Windows natively. I only had to set up the scaling once - just like I had to with Mac OS for the same monitor. Linux display issues are greatly exaggerated, IMO.

[seanw444]

I was gonna say "Linux... what?" I have the least issues with any hardware on Linux compared to other systems. Monitors are no exception. And if something doesn't work out of the box, you have options, rather than just being SOL with other systems.

[runjake]

I think the parent means the new Apple Silicon-based MBPs, not the 2019 models. I may be misreading the way you phrased your comment though.

[pixiemagic]

I think they are saying that even the non-pro M1 machines are significantly better than the previous pro models.

[runjake]

That's what I meant, too. :)

[messe]

I've a 2019 16" MBP that I use for work, and it handles it fine as well; probably due to the discrete GPU kicking in once an external monitor is connected. Likewise, my M1 air sees no issues.

[runjake]

I don’t notice the slightest decrease in speed or any benchmark going from native 1440p to 1440p hidpi at 4K.

If there is a speed decrease, I can’t notice it on an M1.

I’ve seen a lot of people parrot this claim or claim it renders awfully but have yet to experience any evidence. On the contrary, it’s been glorious.

Edit: if you do 1440p scaling on a 4K on macOS make damned sure you select “1440p (Hi-DPI)” other you get a pixelated mess.

[lucumo]

Maybe the M1s are better. I have a 2019 MacBook Pro. And two external screens, maybe that makes a difference. It was especially bad after upgrading to Monterey.

I don't "parrot" the claim. I've experienced the problem. It's day and night. After installing Monterey I couldn't run MS Teams on the external monitors anymore. It more or less locked up and I couldn't move the window back to the laptop screen. This was repeatable.

The whole problem went away when I selected 1440p (the "low resolution" one). It's fugly, but at least I can actually use my other monitors.

[secureleaf]

I also have the 2019 MacBook Pro and it's been a dumpster fire. I'm running 3x 4K monitors and it's completely unusable with the dedicated GPU (the 5500M).

I spent months trying everything I could think of: downgrading to Catalina, turning off transparency/shadows, running as few background services as possible, and not using scaling at all (which was the most effective solution). And this was only with 2x 4K monitors; I added a 3rd more recently.

Nothing worked. Thermal throttling and insufficient sustained power were two problems I was able to identify (the 96W adapter is not sufficient for the system's peak power load, so it uses the battery to get over 96W of draw).

Eventually, I broke down and bought an eGPU (Blackmagic eGPU) which solved the problem. For about ~$700, I'm now able to use my machine without a hiccup. Not a great or affordable solution, but it has made my $3,100 machine usable again.

[runjake]

I have an i9 2019 MBP 16” at work and also don’t notice a slow down when I bring it home. Maybe it’s a GPU bug?

I’m pretty sure my i9 model has the lower end 5300M.

Another question: what are you using to connect the monitor to your laptop? USB-C to DisplayPort, here. I formerly used HDMI off of a USB-C hub but it was a bummer.

[ENGNR]

Myself and my cofounder can reproduce the exact same issue every time with each of our MBP 2019 5500’s. Another team member with a 5400 running the exact same dev environment as me has never had the issue, so there’s something funky on that model.

It’s pretty bad the Apple still denies any issue, not being able to use an external monitor at all through covid suuuuucked

[bobbob1921]

On windows , I have used over 25 different monitors over the years, I have found these two sizes to be the best:

32” at 4k (native res, 1:1)

30” 2560-by-1600 (native res, 1:1) ( few monitors support this physically, but two are my goto: old 30” apple studio displays , and a 30” old dell monitor. Both can be found on eBay at very low cost , but do use 2 to 4x the power draw as modern monitors)

[peteri]

Totally agree with this, I have mine(2x27" 4K) running in the same scaled way and I really miss it when I go back to the office with a crappy three screen 1080p setup.

[Aeolun]

Can’t get the same monitors for the office?

I always try to get the company to pay for me of course, but I have no patience for suboptimal equipment any more, so I’ll buy it myself if I have to.

[peteri]

Last time I asked the answer was no (which is annoying) but that is because IT don't want to support a special setup.

I may try pushing for a monitor refresh again once we go back to the office.

[tzs]

> ranging from three 24" 4k displays

An option that I think might be interesting is 3 displays side by side, but with the center display in portrait mode rather than landscape mode giving overall an inverted T shape to your combined display space.

[daggersandscars]

When I am using 24" displays, I put one in landscape directly in front of me and one in portrait off to one side. Upper/lower half of the portrait monitor works well for terminals / email / chat. Entire portrait for reading documentation. Full-screen landscape for everything else.

I find this works well for the "adjustable height desk" systems one puts on top of a regular desk. They usually aren't wide enough to have two monitors with one directly in front of the user. The portrait monitor, if the cables are long enough, stays on the fixed-height desk.

I'm unable to use two monitors side-by-side anymore. Working for hours with my head always turned to one side gives me headaches.

---

Edited to add note on desk-placed "adjustable height" systems.

[clktmr]

> rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen

How does this work? Will it just upscale or is e.g. text still rendered at 4K? Rendering not at native resolution results always in blurred edges in my experience.

[kemayo]

Very well, in my experience. Apple has been doing what it calls "retina" display for a while now, whereby it keeps the display's actual resolution at a high native level but scales everything it renders so the screen is effectively a lower resolution... but really smooth because of it.

Here's an album with a pair of screenshots from my own 4k display: https://imgur.com/a/7AHZZZv -- the scaled one is how I normally use it.

[raihansaputra]

It's sharp enough but when compared to a native 1x/2x scaling, it still looks blurry, and it's only seen physically for me. Currently I run my M1 MBA at native 2560*1600 (BetterDummy, non hiDpi), and my 27" 4k at native. Set default zoom on chrome to be 125/150%, and VSCode also at "zoomed". I mostly use Chrome and Electron based apps (Spotify), so the increase in text sharpness is worth it. Native apps (Pritunl, etc) UI becomes too small, but again it's worth it for me.

[floatingatoll]

In macOS, the entire display is rendered at 4K no matter what you pick from the resolution box. Most apps have learned to provide 2x-3x “retina” icons so that their bitmap resources look crisp alongside the system UI resources at user-selected “resolutions”.

The Windows UI scaling slider behaves in exactly the same way, though fewer apps include 2x or 3x bitmap resources.

[CharlesW]

> In macOS, the entire display is rendered at 4K no matter what you pick from the resolution box.

This makes it sound as if macOS upscales a 4K render when displaying to (for example) 5K monitors, but on a 5K monitor everything is ultimately rendered at a full physical resolution of 5120x2880. But in the Displays Preference Pane, the logical resolution is set by default to 2560x1440 (2:1). One can choose a logical resolution of 5120x2880 (1:1), but I can't imagine anyone working like that.

[floatingatoll]

Correct, in the 5K case the entire display is rendered at 5K, and ditto 2K etc. (I believe the internal canvas caps at 32K, but I don’t have the tools to find out for sure.)

Whatever-sized display viewports are just crop windows into it, and the crop window in internal canvas terms is scaled as necessary, and then it renders the vector canvas onto the raster viewport.