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Comment by 867-5309 | Hacker News Reader

4K on a 14".. what is the use case for that? unless you have some hybrid long-short sightedness (d)efficiency, use your laptop as a chesttop, or want quadruple the pixels for half the battery life I really can't see any benefit

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I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see pixels, so 14 should be a little better. There is also the feeling that it is 2021 and should I still be seeing pixels? I think crisp high resolution view is much better for the eyes and feels more natural. I am also almost always within reach of a mains socket, so I don't particularly care about battery life, just that I can move the machine from one place to another easily.

4K at 15" is 294 dpi. I'm very surprised to hear that you can see pixels at that density at a normal laptop screen viewing distance.

My laptop is 'only' at 226dpi (16") and I can't see pixels unless I bring my nose to the screen.

My iPhone has ~320dpi and I can't see pixels at non-ridculous viewing distances. I don't know what GP's viewing distance habits or eyes are like but for me, considering laptop viewing distance is probably like twice that of smartphones, I can't imagine a 15" 4K laptop being anything but overkill.

I think different people mean different things by "see the pixels." I can't imagine being able to see individual pixels on a 15" 4k display at laptop distances, but I can imagine being able to notice minor distortions in the outlines of text, or more discomfort than necessary when reading small text, as a result of lower pixel densities. That could be reasonably described as seeing the pixels.

Do you use any sort of desktop scaling? I'd hope not if you can "easily" see pixels.

I'd imagine anyone who can "easily" see 4k pixels on a 15" screen would have text characters around 1mm tall.

I love pixels. Seeing them reminds me that I am in front of a computer and not a TV. Same as a car that smells a bit of oil/gasoline. Feels like a real car.

Same.

I enjoy the much higher resolution displays, but rarely get more out of them.

> I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see pixels

Bullshit. Unless you literally push your face close to the monitor and view it from a normal viewing distance, you won't be able to see the pixels.

Use a Mac with a Retina display for a week and see whether you don't notice a difference — and it's certainly nowhere near half the battery life. Everyone I know who's done this has never wanted to go back.

As someone who went from a mac (for the last 15 years including several retina MBPs) to a 1920x1080 13" screen on a lemur pro, I really don't find that it makes a huge difference to me. I thought it would really irritate me but it doesn't.

Isn’t lemur pro 14”?

As I’m mostly working on the terminal, reading/writing text, I’m also not seeing the lower DPI as a downgrade, having done the same switch as you.

Whoops yes, 14"

It's really noticable when reading/writing text. I personally do dev work for a living and when I have to use a FHD screen instead of a UHD screen it's really noticable.

It's kind of like going from 144Hz back to 60Hz when playing FPS games.

Based on lots of previous comments (and yours!) that describe a day/night difference, I've concluded this is highly personal.

Work issued me a 2018 Mac with a 2880x1800 15.4" display (220 dpi), and I work at home with it plugged into a 1920x1080 23.5" display (93 dpi) from Sceptre. They are side by side, all day long, and I vastly prefer writing and coding on the FHD display, to the point that I thought I was being trolled when I read comments about "never going back".

So, I'm guessing people just like different things!

Yeah, it must be. I much prefer using monitors at stock resolution, without scaling, for that sweet real-estate, rather than having pretty displays where I can't see pixels just so it's pretty. I had a retina MacBook for a while, it was very nice, but especially for dev work... I couldn't bring myself to care enough that I'd want a 4k screen (that I'd have to run at an effective 1080p anyway) vs just a 1440p monitor of the same size I can use without scaling.

I spend a lot of my day either with documents or in a terminal, I just don't find that it made a huge difference to my life.

Well, the 13 inch Macbook Pro only has a QHD screen (2560x1600) at 227 PPI. A 14 inch screen at QHD would still be 210 DPI. A 4K (3840x2160) display at 14 inches is 315 PPI.

I have used retina Macbook screens for extended periods of time and increasing the DPI seems like overkill to me.

Text rendering is way smoother, you can also read smaller font because they are more detailed instead of being pixelated.

While QHD is enough for me, 4K is great because it is a factor 2 compared to 1080p.

> 4K is great because it is a factor 2 compared to 1080p.

I strongly disagree. QHD is perfect for me, because everything renders natively and looks beautiful. 4K without scaling is unusable, and 4K scaled up is just 1080p - You lose all the screen real estate you paid for.

4k scaled up like that is incredibly sharp fonts tho, it looks really nice. but yea total waste of space otherwise. i was surprised to see big sur default to 200% scale on a 4k attached to m1 mac mini but obviously screen real estate is the least of concerns with that garbage padded ui

You get 4K for rendering detail, not for screen estate.

You're missing the whole point of 4K at 14". Everyone uses it scaled but there is more detail, most importantly with fonts. You don't need any stupid sub-pixel rendering stuff.

Or, you can have a 1440p and get more detail and more screen real estate :)

UI elements at 1440p/1x/14" is too small for my taste.

I really try to avoid looking at higher res screens too much. I like the lower price and better battery life of the HD screens and they look fine to me, but I think once you really try the higher res it will ruin the lower res for you.

its true, i made the mistake of seeing small text on 4k and 1080p side by side and it can be hard to go back

I lost the Thinkpad display lottery with 1080p at 14' and it's one thing I'd want from macbook any moment.

To get full 2x HIDPI character rendering at the same size as 1x on a 1080p monitor.

4K at 14" is probably not a great idea because you'd need fractional scaling.

I'm holding out for 13" 1440p, which is a perfect 2x.

I use 4K on 14". Windows defaults to 300% scaling so clearly the defaults agree with you. But 200% scaling is usable; things are a little small but the extra real estate is worth it.

I guess if my math is right, that's 104 ppi after 3x scaling? Bit large, but not bad. Take a couple fonts down in size a tad and you're probably golden. I've been writing off 4k laptops, but this brings them back into consideration for me.

> what is the use case for that?

Marketing specs?

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