[wtallis]

> PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter.

Have you looked at the desktop monitor market recently? There are still a lot of models that are not substantially higher PPI than what was normal 20 years ago. PCPartPicker currently shows 1333 monitors in-stock across the stores it tracks. Of those, only 216 have a vertical resolution of at least 2160 pixels (the height of a 4k display). Zero of those 4k monitors are smaller than 27", so none of them are getting close to 200 PPI.

On the low-PPI side of things, there are 255 models with a resolution of 2560x1440 and a diagonal size of at least 27". One standard size and resolution combination that was common over a decade ago still outnumbers the entirety of the high-PPI market segment.

If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080.

If subpixel antialiasing made sense during the first decade after LCDs replaced CRT, then it still matters today.

[Marsymars]

Asides from Steam, consider one of the biggest markets for displaying text on the Windows OS - low-end office PCs. My entire company runs on Dell’s cheapest 24” 1080p monitors. I don’t expect that will change until Dell stops selling 1080p monitors.

[pixl97]

Dell won't stop selling them because businesses are cheap and will keep buying them.

[vlovich123]

> If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080.

Are these the natural resolution of the monitor or just what people play games at? I suspect the latter because the most popular gards are more mid level / entry level cards. The 1650 is still at #4.

[wtallis]

The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing. For most users, Steam starts when they log in to the computer. I think the unfortunate reality is that a very large number of gamers are still using 1920x1080 as their everyday ordinary screen resolution for their primary display, though a few percent at least are probably on laptops small enough that 1920x1080 is somewhat reasonable.

[gruez]

>The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing

Who's installing steam on their non-gaming computer?

[wtallis]

Not all gamers have a computer entirely dedicated to that purpose. Even among those that do, it's not uncommon to also play games or run Steam on another machine.

[ycombinatrix]

I have it installed on a non-gaming laptop. There are lots of lightweight games that I might play when traveling.

[dragonwriter]

I still have Steam installed on the laptop that was long ago replaced as my gaming computer but which is occasionally used for other purposes, because I have no particular reason to remove it.

[mvdtnz]

How is that relevant? The question was whether the resolution figure in the survey is hardware resolution or software settings, and it's the former.

[wtallis]

It's actually probably reporting the software-configured resolution, not the hardware capability. The important distinction is whether it's a system-wide resolution setting or a game-specific setting that may not apply to browser contexts (except for the ones used by Steam itself).

[DeathRay2K]

What makes you think that it’s more likely reporting a software-configured resolution? It is after all a hardware survey, and focused on what user hardware supports.

[mananaysiempre]

Plenty of gaming monitors are native 1080p. Compared to a higher-res normal monitor at the same price, you usually get a higher refresh rate and better pixel response times. Or you used to, anyway—looks like that part of the spec sheet has been effectively exhausted in the recent couple of years, and manufacturers looking to sell something as “gaming gear” are slowly moving on to other parts of it. As long as they’re raising the baseline for all of us, I’ve no beef with them.

[badc0ffee]

I wonder why 2160p 24" monitors didn't catch on. I've got a Dell one that's probably 7 years old. Works well with my retina MacBook Pro.

[wtallis]

They existed for a while, and as recently as a year or two ago there was a cheap LG 24" 4k that was only about $300. But I think the monitor market in general moved on to focus more on larger sizes, and "4k" became the new "HD" buzzword that meant most products weren't even going to try to go beyond that. So basically only Apple cared enough to go all the way to 5k for their 27" displays, and once everyone else was doing 4k 27" displays a 4k 24" display looked to the uninformed consumer like a strictly worse display.