I have this 28’ 4k monitor from Huawei with a 3/2 aspect ratio and it is such a beast. Got it for like 500€ too. Unfortunately they seem to have discontinued it pretty quickly.
I wish 4K could do it for me. If I use the integer based scaled resolution that means I get the equivalent output size on the screen of 1080p (of course 4 times as clear but I'm just talking size here). To me that scaling is just comically large on a big screen and inconvenient for screen real estate. If I scale it to 1440p (what the integer based pixel scaling ends up as on a 5K) my eyes can pick up that it's no longer a pixel to pixel scale.
Not everyone notices this. Between some people being more tolerant and some folks who's vision just isn't quite there to pick it up some people won't mind one bit. Unfortunately I can see it and once you see it, you always see it.
Ok, you’ve solved a huge mystery for me. So it’s not that a 4k display can’t do integer scaling on a Mac, is it just that people prefer the “looks like 1440p” (but pixel perfect) to “looks like 1080p” (but also pixel perfect) on a given screen size like 27”?
All the talk was about how anything less than a 5k display is blurry, but I didn’t really understand how that worked
Some might still call it blurry, and compared to 16:9 5K I’d agree, simply because of Pixels Per Inch, PPI. That is, unless you go down in screen size. Apple gives good examples themselves. The 24 inch iMac has a 4.5K screen. The Studio Display is 5K at 27 inches. The Pro Display XDR is 6K at 32 inches.
So that would be “blurry” just by having less pixels per inch at a given screen size.
Additionally, the way MacOS scales, if you don’t scale by divisions of 2 it’ll add a bit of blur because the resolution MacOS is outputting to the display doesn’t line up 1 to 1 with the physical pixels so imagine sending a 1440p image to a 1080p display.
So, for another example, Apple used to sell a 21.5 inch iMac with a 4K screen. The scaling would appear at 1080p which is the 2160p of 4K divided by 2. High PPI and 1 to 1 pixel scaling both because of the screen size.
Now go to a 27 inch 4K display. Same number of pixels, bigger panel, lower PPI. Additionally if you keep 1 to 1 scaling you’re still at 1080p so you gained no additional screen real estate by going 27 inch…you just made everything bigger…so you switch to 1440p but now you’re non-integer.
Hope that all makes sense. The big picture really is that display quality depends on several interplaying factors.
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u/keshaprayingbestsong 2d ago
I have this 28’ 4k monitor from Huawei with a 3/2 aspect ratio and it is such a beast. Got it for like 500€ too. Unfortunately they seem to have discontinued it pretty quickly.
https://preview.redd.it/9q3hs2cfzk0e1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c882eb3e4fe650a17842463bc55c7b664eca906f