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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

"There needs to be display options well above FHD/1080p."

With a 13 inch screen, 1920x1080 is at the pixel density (150) where someone with 20/20 vision won't notice pixellation from a distance of 24 inches. Even with a 15 inch display (density = 128) you're still pretty damn close. Realistically, it would make no difference in usability to go beyond 2560xwhatever in resolution on a laptop, and even that's already getting excessive. Most people with high res displays are already using magnification, which defeats the purpose of such high resolution.

I'm using the new Honor Magic Book with Ubuntu Mate installed and am quite pleased with it. Lightweight, good battery life, good screen, good touchpad (SUPER IMPORTANT), USB-C (only one port, unfortunately), dongle-free HDMI, and enough power for development. And the price can't be beat.

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Pixelation is not the only factor that makes a high-res display worth it. Smoother fonts, scaling, and overall sharper graphics are all perceptible even if you are not consciously aware of individual pixels. All of this contributes to, or helps alleviate, eye strain and fatigue.

Fonts are so god damn crispy at 4k you have a "awwww maaaan" reaction to going back down, particularly when using an aesthetically pleasing font like Fira Code Retina with ligatures

I use my 13" laptop screen at a comfortable distance of 15 in (40cm). 2K is definitionally not enough - text is either jagged or blurry. 4K is the next logical step because you can use 2x scaling.

Using scaling ("magnification") doesn't defeat the purpose. The purpose is to have clear text.

Unclear text is really a hinting+rendering problem but it's so often bad (cough cough Windows..) I'm also a fan of just throwing hardware at the problem. I quite like the ~3K display on my xps 13, although the occasional program (say, written in tcl or Java by a professor for a specific course) will not scale, which is "fun".

Separately though, where have all the high-dpi matte displays gone? Why's it impossible to get a 4K matte touchscreen in any laptop? I don't want to see my face in the screen while I'm trying to read something.

People use laptops at far closer than 24 inches, though?

Not all the time, sure. But it's kind of half the point of a laptop to be able to use them where you can't just clear out two feet to put between your face and the screen.

You can get that much space in an economy seat if you don't have a head, maybe.

When my laptop is in my lap, the screen is about 60 cm (24 inches) from my eyes. I could move my face 10cm closer, but not for long without being uncomfortable (any closer and my elbows would be behind my back).

When it's on a desk, the screen is at a similar distance.

That seems like a weird situation to optimize for. 24" between your laptop screen and your face is really not a lot of space.

I currently have a 4k 15.6 inch laptop, it is very easy to differentiate it from a 1080p one.

I certainly notice the difference between my 4K OLED 15.6" Thinkpad X1E and my old 1080p 17" MBP. The smoothness is unbelievable.

No idea whether that's the 4K or that OLED contributes too. I certainly think QHD should have been enough, but that was not an option, weirdly. Having to choose between 1080p and 4K is absurd. Give us some options in between!

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