Advice about dual monitor setup for MBP M1

[alfacentauro]

Hi. Currently, I have two 24" Samsungs FHD external monitors connected to my MacBook Pro 14" M1, but I have some issues related to the blurry text due to non-retina displays. I'm using Betterdummy but it has a lot of bugs (blinking images, non-working trackpad gestures in the 2nd screen...). I'm fed up.

So, I decided to buy two new monitors (even my two monitors have only 1 one year). I'm looking for two 24" models of monitors Retina compatible to avoid using apps like Betterdummy. I don't want to spend more than 600$ (with the two monitors). Any suggestions?

 

[MacNerd01]

Supposing that by “retina” you mean higher resolution, you might want to get a pair of 4K monitors if your current ones are 1080p. I’ve heard that macOS tends to have issues with lower resolution displays. I don’t know enough about displays to recommend one, but I wish you luck with your search!

 

[Christopher Kim]

Agree, getting 2 x 24" or 2 x 27" 4K monitors should work well for you. I don't know as well for 24" 4K (think there's less out there), but there are a bunch of 27" 4K monitors out there that are <$300, so you should be able to get 2 under $600.

With the 4K resolution, you'll be able to use Apple's retina / HiDPI scaling mode where it'll look a lot better than if you were running 1080p monitors.

If you like and are used to the size of a 1080p resolution on a 24" monitor (Eg. font size, size of icons, etc.), then getting a 24" 4K (3840 x 2160) would allow you to use perfect pixel-doubled HiDPI mode when running at "Looks like 1920 x 1080".

If you want a bit more usable space than 1080p, you could go one or two notches higher to "Looks like 2048 x 1152" or "Looks like 2304 x 1296".

If going with a 27" 4K screen, would recommend doing "Looks like 2560 x 1440", which is basically what the iMac 5K / LG 27" Ultrafine 5K monitor does (has 5120 x 2880, perfect pixel-doubled). While doing so with a 27" 4K monitor isn't as good (GPU will render a pixel-doubled 5120 x 2880, then scale it down to the 4K 3840 x 2160 monitor resolution), it still looks fantastic in my opinion.