Gross compared to a non-retina MBP. The anti-aliasing tricks that many apps use for their text rendering are broken in HiDPI mode. Use SwitchResX to change the resolution from 1440 x 900 HiDPI to regular 1440 x 900 mode and there is a noticeable improvement. I'm often forced to switch (to 1680 x 1050 so it's like the old high res MBP) because shockingly Apple's iWork and iBook Author aren't updated for the retina display.