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teodorpk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 4, 2020
2
1
Sofia, Bulgaria
Hello, new here - first time Mac user, after 20+ years on Windows.
Got a new Mac Mini M1 and attached a DELL U2715H monitor to it using a high quality HDMI cable, set its resolution to the native one - 2560x1440 which looks great on my windows computer. The fonts were not that sharp/crisp i'd expect them to be.

Tried different options in the command line posted here in this forum, on reddit and other forums - no luck.
Today i got a usb-c to display port cable (LMP USB-C to DisplayPort Cable) to check it the fonts look better, but still the same - the fonts look like:

Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 12.04.41.png


The monitor settings are as follows:

Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 12.05.13.png

Enabled DisplayPort 1.2 and set the Gamma option of monitor to Mac in the monitor settings (using the monitor touch buttons).

I even downloaded the TinkerTool to try adjust font smoothing but i don't think i see any difference when i change any of these (tried all possible combinations):

Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 12.04.01.png


Is this how the fonts are supposed to render on a 2560x1440 monitor? Is the only solution to get a 4k monitor and hope it will render the fonts better?
 
Thanks for that, i thought i tried that yesterday but didn't really notice any difference. Maybe because of the HDMI cable?
I'm now seeing differnece, i think i like how the text looks when the smoothing is set to 1:

Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 15.49.31.png
 
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Fyi, High Sierra was the last version of the MacOS which had good font rendering for normal (non-retina) screens. Anything newer just doesn't look as crisp as it used to.
 
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