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Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

I know people have made naive comments about computers for years, "why would you ever need more than 8MB of RAM?", etc

But I genuinely believe 4k is the upper limit where you stop seeing benefits in increased resolution for a monitor. Our eyes do have limits after all! I have pretty good vision and 4k is enough, and at that point I'd prefer focus on other aspects of picture quality like color accuracy and higher refresh rate.

It's already annoying enough how large a screenshot of your monitor comes out (just tested on my desktop and it came out to 10MB). 8k is unnecessary in the vast majority of cases.

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> But I genuinely believe 4k is the upper limit where you stop seeing benefits in increased resolution for a monitor. Our eyes do have limits after all!

I think it depends on how big the monitor is. You're probably right for 27" monitors. But running a 43" TV as a monitor, the pixel density is quite a bit lower than I'd like.

But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance, but much further away. So it really shouldn't make that much of a difference as long as the angular resolution checks out.

I've currently got a 32" one running 1080p, from a normal viewing distance I can't see any pixels at all. Going beyond that and having to render 4x as much already seems super gratuitous. 8K is just completely ridiculous unless you're projecting a DnD game board or something that will be viewed up close.

> But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance,

You might be if it had a higher pixel density. There are plenty of people who run 2, 3 or even 4 smaller monitors next to each other at close distances. That could potentially be replaced by one much larger 8k monitor in the future.

So many assumptions here! I use tooling to divide my 4K monitor into five rectangles: two across the top each taking up 1/4 of the screen, and three across the bottom each taking up 1/6 of the screen. Even with that, I have to layer some things, and am often actively working with three or more of the "virtual screens" at once.

I am old enough that I've started to wear reading glasses to counter my age-related presbyopia, but if I had an 8K monitor it would probably sit less than two feet from my face just as this 4k monitor does, and I would make use of every pixel.

> But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance

I sit 16-20 inches away from my monitor. I don't really think I sit further from this monitor than smaller monitors I've had in the past. Or a laptop on a stand.

As other people point out, I use it like multiple monitors that are seamlessly glued together with a tiling window manager (MacOS so Rectangle).

I and several other programmers I know use a 43" monitor an arms distance away.

I run it at native resolution, like it's 4 1080p monitors glued together with no bezel.

I can definitely tell reading text is exactly like reading from a 1080p monitor compared to my retina display macbook screen right next to it.

A 43" 8k monitor for $750 or so would be an insta-buy for me.

Do those same eye limits apply to printers? A 24” 4k screen is 180 PPI (according to Google). Can you tell the difference between a page of text and images laser printed at 200 dpi and 1200 dpi?

I think VR can definitely benefit from more pixels.

Agree. The closer the display is to the eyes, the more pixels are needed to make it convincing. I feel the tech is close though. The 2016 HTC Vive (1080 × 1200/eye) is quite pixelated, but the 2020 Index headset (1440 × 1600/eye) looks smooth and clear.

For the unvarnished truth about when resolution is good enough, look at what Apple calls Retina. 4K at 21-inch, 5k at 27-inches, 6k at 32-inches. The resolution for all those displays is good enough to stop individual pixel perception. That's the best idea of what's good enough.

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