Benefits of resolutions beyond 1080p

There's more to take into account other than just resolution, like

• color space coverage (100% sRGB is quite affordable nowadays, I wouldn't go less than this; on the other hand, >95% DCI-P3 or AdobeRGB still on the expensive side in comparison and not as widespread),
• screen type,
• brightness, and
• refresh rate.

And resolution itself should be paired with monitor size for it to be meaningful. For example:

• 24 inch monitor at 1080p = 92 PPI
• 24 inch monitor at 2160p = 184 PPI
• 32 inch monitor at 2160p = 138 PPI
• 46 inch monitor at 2160p = 96 PPI

In Windows and Linux anything around 92 to 98 PPI gives you easily readable text at 100% scaling. This is a good baseline. There are PPI calculators online: https://dpi.lv/

The 24 inch screen at 2160p (which is 4K) has twice the pixel density of the 24 inch screen at 1080p. That means if you would set your display resolution scaling in the OS to 200% you'd get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling>. However, because the density is much higher, everything looks much clearer.

The benefits are larger when reading text, IMO. You still notice an improvement with movies, of course. Mobile phones and tablets, even the cheaper ones, usually have significantly higher pixel density than computer monitors which is one reason they look better.

Of the three examples above, the 24 inch monitor at 4K will look better than the other three monitors because it has higher PPI. (Assuming all else is equal like screen type, color coverage, brightness, etc.)

I feel like I would want a proportionally larger monitor to keep the same DPI

Let's say you want a new monitor. I suggest looking at the PPI and not just the resolution or monitor size in isolation. These two units should be paired.

For example, a 32 inch monitor at 4K has 138 PPI. The font will be tiny at 100% scaling but that's expected. In this case it so happens that 1.5 x 92 PPI = 138 PPI. So by going to the OS display settings and increasing scaling to 150% you get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling> but everything looks clearer.

The 46 inch monitor above is 4K but because the screen is so large this comes out at only 96 PPI. So in terms of quality it would be quite close to the 24 inch monitor at 1080p.

PPI is one of the most important characteristics but don't disregard the rest. Try at least full sRGB coverage. And for panel type IPS is a good choice if you can afford it. (I'm afraid of OLED because of burn-in issues and I can't afford to replace monitors like they're socks. And mini-led is very expensive.)

About the refresh rate, I don't game and for movies it's kind of useless. But I do notice a difference moving the mouse and scrolling pages on the browser. (My external monitors are 60 hz and my laptop is >100 hz.)

On a side note, Apple laptop screens tend to look nice because they have high PPI and good color coverage (among other things) whereas PC/Linux laptops for the most part have low spec screens. This doesn't have to be the case, of course. My work laptop (I'm using Linux) has >200 PPI with near 100% DCI-P3 and fonts look great on it.

I had a 1440p monitor and "downgraded" back to 1080p when it broke because I could barely tell the difference when gaming and I get a significantly higher framerate in most games at 1080p, which does make a big difference for me.

I moved from a 1080p monitor to a 1440p one for my main display and it's actually really worthwhile. Not only is your daily computing sharper, but multitasking becomes easier because smaller windows are still legible.

IMO it's a lot easier on the eyes when things are sharper, too.

1080p is still more than enough, but I think 1440p is worth it for a screen you're using for hours every day :)

1440p at regular monitor size is probably all you'd need, but the annoying issue is that 1080p content looks worse on that than it does on a 1080p monitor

I was a skeptic; "I can't see all the pixels unless I'm as close to the screen as the screen is wide, why bother?"

Then I went over to my friend's place and watched some stuff on his 4K OLED. Holy shit. So I can't see all the pixels, but turns out that only perceiving 2.5-3x the data is still a big improvement.

I'm still not gonna pay for one until they get a lot cheaper.

1080p is just fine, but it's not good and definitely not great. If you've tried a high DPI display like the ones on MacBooks, you'll know what I'm talking about. Using a computer at 200% scaling just makes everything so much more pleasing to look at, especially the text. The pixels are gone, so everything looks sharp and smooth. I really cannot wait for 5K 27" monitors with high refresh rates to come out. This will likely be an instant buy from me, except if it's like 2 grand.

General high DPI with the same relative UI scale as 24" 1080p, but with much sharper visuals:

24" 4k 27" 5k 32" 6k

And the good thing is you can always set your game to use half the resolution and it will look as if it was the lowdpi equivalent, because the pixels are simply grouped using 3 neighbors, no fractional scale BS.

My laptop has a 3072*1920 screen that I use at 200% scale on Linux, and I wouldn't buy anything that doesn't work well at 200%. Apple seem like the only ones who understood this with MacOS that is designed to be used at 200% on basically ALL their retina monitors. this is why they have weird definitions, because they need to hit 200%, and based on the size of the display, a standard resolution won't reach exactly 200% and the UI will be too small or too large.

well, you get more pixels. -> more room.

i needed more pixels/room, so i got me a 4k 55" (139cm) tv for a display and it's basically like four 1080p displays seamlessly fused together. of course, you can also sit far away and upscale everything and things will look slightly smoother, like pixels will be even less noticeable.

some details in fullscreen pictures become visible that would require zooming in on 1080p, because on 4k fullscreen basically is like 1080p already zoomed in.

a problem are color gradients: without HDR on 4k you can now see there's not enough colors in 24bit colorspace (000000 - FFFFFF 8bit per channel without alpha/transparency) to fill large areas with gradients. you have to spread/dither to get a smooth gradient on a 24bit 4k wallpaper, but it's a small price to pay for more room.

Since you are convinced about the higher resolution, you really are going to enjoy it.

But let me urge you to also buy a higher refresh rate. The same discussion applies here.

Even if the human eye can't count the pixels or the frames, you WILL perceived it as more relaxing on the eye.

On a 27" monitor, it makes a huge deal for things like web-browsing, spreadsheets, etc. For video games, its not something I generally notice the difference in with a notable exception being Terraria. Having smaller UI (but still clear) to give more usable space is the main benefits imo.

I've used 4k and 1440p monitors, and my TV is 4k as well. For desktop use, 4k isn't really a big difference because of the hardware needed to run it at a decent speed. However, once I got my hands on a 170hz 1440p monitor, I can't go back to anything less. It's extreme noticeable. The higher refresh rate, and the reasonable upgrade in pixel density makes text much clearer, especially in motion.

For content viewing though, 4k on a TV it depends on how much of your field of view is occupied by the TV. Most of time though, a high quality panel is worth much more than higher pixel density. There is a massive difference between a basic 4k big box store TV, and 4k LG oled. The color, even outside of HDR content is just so much better, and the true actual black color is fantastic. Resolution is nice, but honestly, oled color is so good.

I have a 4k TV and don't get it either. Watched the odd video in 4k and the colors are maybe a bit crisper, but that's about it. I'd have to compare movies side by side to actually spot the difference.

Not worth it IMHO.

Can't tell for screens though, I don't even know whether mine does 4k or not. Was part of the home-office package from my company. I'll have to check that tomorrow, only returning from a business trip tonight.

On my 4k 32" usually I run 4 programs at the same time, one at each corner. It's like having 4 1080p screens (I keep scaling at 100%)

Higher resolutions are needed for larger displays (45'+) if you want to look at them closer. Other than that a higher resolution can look slightly better but the performance hit usually isn't worth it. Idk about professional use cases though. I'm not a designer. Btw I use a 35' 1366x768 (or something like that) monitor

I don't really care about my TV being 4K, but I like the extra desktop space on my PC.

I do a lot of code. That means I often deal with three or four programs at the same time, and perhaps 10 loaded throughout the day and I want to see them all. So I have two monitors that are each 27" and 4k.

This means I can see a web browser sized to a full 1080 size, next to a database query, and still see the code that I'm working on, and keep an eye on any new emails or text chats. Without needing to Alt-tab to switch windows. It's like spreading your work over a dining room table, instead of those little desks you got in high school.

Most apps don't need to be larger than 1080. But some can be taller to see more code (maybe 160 lines, for example) without scrolling too much. And I hardly ever deal with just one window at a time.

1440p is kinda the sweet spot, for me.

I have a 1440p 24 " monitor with 120 DPI setting.
Resolution is much better for fonts - helps with my astigmatism.

The 1440p is a compromise between price and performance.

If you can, go to the electronic shops and see in person.

Nobody is talking about how games look sharper? Looking at 1080p vs 1440p side by side, you can clearly see the difference on how the textures look less "pixelated" and more rounded up.

It looks like you have a better AA effect and better color management (depends on your pannel though).

I really enjoy/see the change from 1080p to 1440, but you clearly need good enough hardware to make it run smoothly. It's vram hungry and GPU demanding.

It wouldn't be that way if there wasn't any reason to eat that much more vram and GPU resources... Higher resolution textures

I can definitely see the improvement, even just between my desktop monitor (27in 1440p) and the same resolution at 16 inch on my laptop. Text is very nice and sharp. I'm definitely looking at 4K or even 5K next monitor upgrade cycke.

But the improvement is far from how much of an upgrade 480p to 1080p and moving away from CRTs to flat screens. 1080p was a huge thing when I was in highschool as CRT TVs were being phased out in favor of those new TVs.

For media I think 1080p is good enough. I've never gone "shit, I only downloaded the 1080p version". I like 4K when I can have it like on YouTube and Netflix, but 1080p is still a quite respectable resolution otherwise. The main reason to go higher resolutions for me is text. I'm happy with FSR to upscale the games from 1080p to 1440p for slightly better FPS.

HDR is interesting and might be what convinces people to upgrade from 1080p. On a good TV it feels like more of an upgrade than 4K does.

27" 1440p capped at 120hz is my playground. I find myself missing the extra real estate at 1080p.

Note: I do more than gaming on my PC.

I've been on 1080p since highschool, over 15 years, works perfectly for me. I value high frame rate over resolution/fidelity. Luckily for me, even mid-tier hardware is so powerful now, AAA games on ultra at 1080p can easily hit 160+

I have an AMD 6700XT and a 5800X3D with a 240Hz 1080p monitor, it's wonderful for me.

I find 1080p to be too small these days. For desktop use I like 1440p or 2160p (4K). For video, I don't notice the difference between 1080 and 4K too much but for productivity it is a massive step up. My laptop is a 14" 1440p screen and I have an older laptop with a 13" 1440p screen. I use both with 100% scaling (no enlargement) and it's fine. I don't think it's hard to see and I love having the extra screen real estate for coding and multitasking. Being able to have 2 windows side by side and still have enough room on each for a decent length line of code is great. For my desktop, I used a 28" 4K for a long time and being able to have 4 1080p windows open is amazing. 28" 4K is the same PPI as 14" 1080p, and I am already comfortable with 14" 1440p so from a reasonable distance it's no problem. I went to a 27" 1440p for a while on my desktop after that because I upgraded to a 144Hz VRR display, but just last fall I again upgraded to a 32" 4K 144Hz VRR and it's great. No problem with reading text at 100% scaling from a normal distance and it's amazing for games. I do notice games being clearer at 4K but I mainly got the 4K monitor for productivity as I missed it and now that 144Hz 4K was available I wanted it back.

Take a look onto he following image: https://i0.wp.com/www.techjunkie.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/tv-size-distance-chart.png?ssl=1

There is always a subjective component in this kind of discussions but this image will help you to see if yiur setup will make sense based in the real perception of the human eye.

The biggest thing is view distance vs size. Your eyes can only see up to a certain density.

https://www.rgb.com/display-size-resolution-and-ideal-viewing-distance

2.8k seems about the sweet spot on a laptop to be from your face & see no pixels or even have to think about font hinting & the like. The bigger wins are OLEDs for blacks & picking up something with 100% DCI-P3.

It only matters when you are watching on something like a projector screen which is large enough that pixels are not dense enough, thats when more resolution improves quality. For a daily use 23 inch monitor 4k is not worth the cost over 1080p in my opinion.

I have some older laptops that are 1080p, which was great at the time, but they are now obviously inferior at displaying text, etc. 4k can be overkill, 1440p (or 1600, or thereabouts) is usually fine (for me).

My experience has been that 1440p is noticeable jump in quality on desktop monitors but less so laptops. On desktop 4K is virtually unnoticeable, a high refresh rate, HDR, and OLED are far more noticeable.

For TV, I’ve found that it depends more on distance from the screen and resolution and bit rate of the media. I sit about 8’ from a 65” 4K tv and the difference between Blu-ray quality at 1080p and 4K is night and day.

The screen size matters significantly. More specifically, what humans care about is pixel density. A 24 inch 1080p screen does not look the same as a 27 inch 1080p, which does not look the same as a 32 inch 1080p.

A 24 inch 1080p screen is perfectly fine. A 27 inch 1080p, you can start to see the pixels more clearly. A 32 inch 1080p IMO is unacceptably bad.

I would say the standard should be 1080p for 24 inch or under, 1440p for 24-27 inch, 4K for 27 inch or above

I personally run a 24 inch 1440p screen because I'm pretty picky with pixel density, and the monitor was relatively good deal.

4K is nice for a large computer monitor if you want to replace a multi monitor setup with a single monitor. It needs to be 40+ inches, unfortunately there are not many monitors like that available.

on a similar topic, I recently upgraded my screen from two 24'' 1080x60 to 24'' 1080x144 & 27'' 1080x120. I barely tell the difference but my card sure does, I quickly limited the refresh rate of both to 60 because I it's pointless and I've read too many people saying that once you go 120+ it feels bad watching 60, and I really don't want to get used to something that just makes me spend more electricity for nothing.

If you enjoy stuff fine in FullHD, don't bother increasing the resolution. As others have explained, there are other things to upgrade before going for resolution that will have a bigger impact on the image. That said, purchasing a good screen that happens to have 2K or anything higher than 1080 is no big deal, just set your resolution to whatever you want from software and be done with it.

From my experience, I could only tell the difference if monitor was bigger than 27" like a 32" monitor but it wasn't something that I couldn't live without, well I think it's cuz I run with 3 monitors so you are always looking at different things