For text rendering, 4k doesn't really work for 27" or bigger. It'd work for 24" because you could do true @2x, but there aren't many out there. For 27", besides the UltraFine 5k, I'd prefer just using @1x with 1440p too.
Everyone’s different, I guess. For me, I’m often struck by how lovely things look on my 27” 4K monitor. I have several older 1440 monitors that I no longer use because they look so grainy and unpleasant now.
(Edit: I’m using macOS, might be different for other systems)
Everyone is different! I have a Lenovo 2560x1440 monitor I bought circa 2018 for personal use for around $200 USD that is my daily driver on my home desktop. Around that same period I was using one of the LG 5k monitors at my place of work. The 5k is nicer, of course, and I can fit a lot more into the screen, but for the way I work the cheap 1440 is just fine nowadays. I use a tiling window manager and usually have my screen separated into a 2x2 grid where a program either uses a half or a quadrant of that grid. Even gridded up like that the 1440p is almost always enough space for me (code that violates the character length in vscode is sometimes an annoyance).
I suppose if you put it quite far away, a 27" 4k @2x scaling would work well. It'd feel like a 24" 1080p monitor with retina sharpness.
For all the folks confused why I'm saying you don't want a 27" 4k monitor for text, it's because the PPI isn't nicely sized for 1x or 2x, which means you have to set it to scaling that rounds and blurs subpixels.
By the way, I'm sure most 27" 4k monitors look fantastic and you should enjoy them! Especially if you don't mind or notice the scaling rounding or if you run it @2x and like the 1080p real estate.
> For all the folks confused why I'm saying you don't want a 27" 4k monitor for text, it's because the PPI isn't nicely sized for 1x or 2x, which means you have to set it to scaling that rounds and blurs subpixels.
This appears to be either a misunderstanding or a description of a deficiency in your environment for example Apple devices. For text there are 2 factors that control its size the designated size in points and for apps not sophisticated enough to scale elements appropriately according to DPI a scaling factor.
You appear to be suggesting that if you only had one knob you would be stuck with text that was either too small or too big however one or an application can adjust the size of the text independent of an integer scaling factor to produce a desirable end result. The same thing is true of images which are already trivially displayed at a different absolute sizes like every image on your browser ever.
For example on Linux most apps you are liable to run that aren't simplistic text apps are liable to be either QT or GTK. QT apps intelligently scale, GTK apps rely on a scaling factor one can set for example with an environmental variable. In both cases there is a setting for font size that effects 90% of apps of that stripe the minority having their own configuration.
It is incredibly trivial to have an environment that looks nice at any size.
If you go to true 2x scaling, things will be the same size as 1920x1080@1x on a 27". For me, that's HUGE and you don't get enough screen real estate for a 27". If you use 1.5x scaling you will lose sharpness because things won't line up to pixels perfectly.
Definitely, and it's probably not very noticeable, but there's no escaping the physical problem of not a perfect 1:1 or 2:1 pixel ratio.
Say you have a UI element that's supposed to be 9px wide. If you have perfect 2:1 pixel ratio you can use 18 physical pixels and it's as sharp as the monitor can be. If you're using UI scaling of say 1.5, the monitor needs to use 13.5 physical pixels to render it. Except that's not possible, so it will average together the 13th pixel with the 15th pixel (simplifying). It's basically introducing an extra anti-aliasing pass to your frame. This is is why the Apple/LG 24" is 4k and the 27" is 5k. All that said, I'm sure 4k @ 27" even with 1.5x scaling still looks great and you'd never notice the difference, except if you had the two right next to each other.
Yea it's good enough. I'm using a 27" 4k with my Mac, scaled show the same amount of stuff as a 5k would, so 125% I guess. Sure it probably looks worse than a real 5k monitor if I was to pixel peep, but it's great to me and I don't think 5k is worth the more than 2x asking price.
Scaled resolutions work much better than they used to. For example the iPhone 12 Mini scales at 2.88x by default and I've never heard anyone complain.
However I think it might also depend on the specific panel. I have a Lenovo portable monitor which is 1080p at 14", and running it at anything except 1x looks absolutely awful.
(Edit: I’m using macOS, might be different for other systems)