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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

"Shitty 1080p displays"? Back in the day, 1024px was the highest accessible resolution even on desktop hardware, never mind laptops. And now we're even getting that vertical resolution on a wide-screen display.

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"Back in the day" you could hack CRTs to output 2560 by 1600 at over 75 Hz and I'm pretty sure I've seen resolutions in excess of 4000 px width.

> Back in the day, 1024px was the highest accessible resolution

You're going back a bit there. 1900x1200 LCDs have been around for about two decades, and 1600x1200 was achievable on CRTs in the mid 90s.

> Back in the day, 1024px was the highest accessible resolution even on desktop hardware

Well, sure, a very ancient day, in computing terms. The first QXGA (2048×1536) notebook was in 2002.

Back in the day my 386sx was enough to run 1024x768

So? What does that have to do with 20 years later today?

Back in the we had decent aspect ratios.

A lot of things were tolerable "back in the day". Nowadays I'd rather pay $100 more and have much lower eye strain, if such an option is available.

How having more than 1080p on a 13..15” screen would prevent eye strain? Or ‘shitty’ here mans cheap TS, not 1080p resolution itself?

Internet commenters all have amazing eyesight (which also seems to improve along with hardware).

I don't have amazing eyesight anymore thanks to staring at shitty low res displays for almost two decades before Apple released Retina Display. I haven't used a low res display since then. I also run my stuff with pretty large font sizes, and use a 32" 4K IPS display as my primary monitor for work. I advise others to do the same.

A 4K 32” isn’t that great. The minimum I would use is a 4K 28”, but even then I still see pixels. The best solution right now for good desktop resolution is an iMac 27” 5k, which has similar DPI to a modern high end laptop. And running without the need for anti-aliasing is great for reading text in a code editor.

"I still see pixels" is a silly argument. Just put a translucent/matte filter on the screen if you care that much.

It’s the difference between reading text on a piece of paper printed via a modern laser printer and an old fashioned dot matrix one. They are both readable, but one looks much better than the other. You change test this by printing out a screenshot of a PDF vs. printing the PDF out directly.

And yes, I use matte filters on my high DPI screens, especially my iPad.

And an offset-printed book page will look "much better" than even the laser-printed one, but do people really care at that point? That's pretty much the same as complaining that a 4K resolution is too pixely.

4K is too pixels if the screen is large enough. I had a Hitachi 28” 4K before I upgraded to an iMac 27” 5k. The text on the hitachi looked like crap, you could see the pixel corners and sub pixel anti aliasing coloring bleed through 10, 12, and larger fonts (that is on Windows, on a Mac you would see lots of blurriness via font smoothing).

Aesthetics matter, for a few hundred dollars more, it feels like I’m almost looking at paper (if it weren’t for the backlighting).

At 32 inches you're only getting 138 DPI. Much like a 17 inch 1080p screen, it's acceptable but it could be a lot clearer.

The standard from decades ago is 96. Just wanting to double that, to make the pixels not blatant, is not extravagant.

Ignore the raw resolution here. Talk about DPI.

DPI is only half of the picture though (forgive the pun). Viewing distance is the other half, your eyes can't tell the difference between 100 DPI and 300 DPI if you're far enough away.

Bingo. And it's less stressful for the eyes to focus on an object that's further away. Net result: I might actually have some vision left over by the time I retire. Worth the cost.

So what, do you read books ten feet away to reduce eye strain?

A modern desk gives you about two feet between you and your monitor, which isn’t overly close, and you’ll still very much notice the difference between 138 and 220 DPI.

Only for my 150" books ;)

I sit 3ft away from my monitors, at that distance I can't notice a difference.

Yeah but we're talking about computer screens, not televisions. The viewing distance is around 20-30 inches and 100DPI definitely does not cut it at that distance.

You're not wrong but at around 30" is where is starts not to matter (for 1440p anyway) and I happen to sit ~36" away from my monitors. See [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21977571

'Retina' is just one metric. When it comes to crisp edges, there's still a difference up to 5 or 10 times the PPI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacuity_(scientific_term)

Put it further away from you - it's good for your eyes to focus further out.

I have a 27" 4K display that I run at 1440p because 2160p is too small for me to read text easily. I'm on Linux and don't use any scaling. 1440p on a 27" at roughly 3ft viewing distance is slightly better than Retina quality according to this[0] calculator.

[0] https://www.designcompaniesranked.com/resources/is-this-reti...

Use "large text" setting in accessibility settings (assuming you're using Ubuntu), and zoom in your browser, terminal, and text editor using their own settings. That's what I do. Looks great. Though my monitor is 32".

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm on Arch though and pretty happy with my current setup anyhow.

Interesting. I myself can never view native 4K under 32". Text is just too small for me.

> The best solution right now for good desktop resolution is an iMac 27” 5k, which has similar DPI to a modern high end laptop.

These iMacs are by default downscaled to 1440p.

This doesn’t even make any sense. A modern OS and application can deal with whatever resolution you throw at it, the text in visual studio code will look just as big on a high DPI as in lo DPI. The only time native is a relevant term is if the application has a fixed resolution and must be up scaled, down scaled, or resized to its native resolution. Those are mostly games, real applications that manipulate text shouldn’t be included (though some old legacy ones are, I don’t use any of those).

iMacs by default are not downscaled unless you are using fixed resolution applications. Simply put, there is no reason needed for scaling.

Also, you’d have to scale up text to 150% anyway (exactly to avoid straining your eyes).

Which is fine. The lines of fonts are much less blurry that way, especially if subpixel rendering is off.

To be fair, 1080 is quite ‘tolerable’ up to 17in.

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