Help Needed : M1 Macbook with Dell Ultrasharp 1080p Monitors?

[amitdel]

Greetings to fellow MR forum members!!

Would be glad to get some advice from folks here regarding using M1 Macbook with Dell Ultrasharp 1080p monitor.

My current setup is:

Dell Latitude E7450 Laptop (Windows 8.1). The laptop resolution is 1920 x 1080
Dell Ultrasharp U2415 24 inch, 1920 x 1200 monitor @ 60 Hz and around 95 ppi
HDMI to HDMI connection

I have replicated the Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, charging brick setup at home and office, and just shuttle the laptop back and forth

The current display is tack-sharp, and extremely pleasing to the eye. I do a lot of text-related work (excel, word), with a little bit of graphics thrown in; and sharp and crisp display on external monitor is critical for me.

My query is:

1. Will a M1 Macbook Air, with Big Sur give me an equivalently sharp picture on the same monitor (Dell Ultrasharp U2415, 1080p monitor)? I don't mind using different cables like thunderbolt, displayport etc, but looking to confirm if this is achievable?

2. I have spent a lot of time trawling on this issue, and am aware that retina display is 220 ppi. I am not looking for a retina quality external display; just crisp, sharp and absolutely non aliased text quality with MBA + U2415 the way it is with my current dell laptop.

If you already have a 1080p monitor (preferably Dell Ultrasharp), please do share if UI and application text is absolutely tack sharp, or it's a bit blurry / aliased with the M1 laptops?

I don't want to junk my existing 2 monitors (home, office) just to switch to mac, and it may not be possible to return the machine for this reason here; hence the query!

Thanks!
Amit

 

[Serban55]

 

[amitdel]

Thanks Serban. I checked out the video (skimmed through it!), but could not locate any info about display quality on 1080p external display? Did I miss something?

Warm Regards
Amit

 

[velocityg4]

The text on that display like any non HiDPI display will likely look a little blurry. This is due to changes made in font rendering a few generations ago in macOS. There are mitigations you can take to improve this. But text is not as sharp as a few generations ago.

You'll want a true 4K (2160p) or higher monitor not some 3440x1440 ultrawide. So you can enable HiDPI mode. Which I think is automatic now on any 4K or higher monitor. But may be enabled manually.

 

[amitdel]

Thanks for the inputs, and the kind revert! Blurry text is a huge fear, specially as I work upto 10 hours at a stretch. I used to get eye-strain and headaches prior to using the ultrasharps, but with them, it's been great so far on my windows machine.

I am most curious about the text quality of windows + U2415 vs macbook m1 + U2415.

I would have just got a 4k monitor, but replacing two perfectly great ultrasharps simultaneously would be too wasteful.

It would be amazing if someone with a M1 Macbook and a 1080p monitor could kindly test this, and update the results here (maybe screenshots, or photos of the display)?

The text on that display like any non HiDPI display will likely look a little blurry. This is due to changes made in font rendering a few generations ago in macOS. There are mitigations you can take to improve this. But text is not as sharp as a few generations ago.

You'll want a true 4K (2160p) or higher monitor not some 3440x1440 ultrawide. So you can enable HiDPI mode. Which I think is automatic now on any 4K or higher monitor. But may be enabled manually.

 

[velocityg4]

Thanks for the inputs, and the kind revert! Blurry text is a huge fear, specially as I work upto 10 hours at a stretch. I used to get eye-strain and headaches prior to using the ultrasharps, but with them, it's been great so far on my windows machine.

I am most curious about the text quality of windows + U2415 vs macbook m1 + U2415.

I would have just got a 4k monitor, but replacing two perfectly great ultrasharps simultaneously would be too wasteful.

It would be amazing if someone with a M1 Macbook and a 1080p monitor could kindly test this, and update the results here (maybe screenshots, or photos of the display)?

Not a Macbook M1 or your specific Dell Utrasharp. But this is using a Macbook Pro 2015 with a Dell P2317H monitor. This is an OS issue introduced in Mojave. I presume to improve HiDPI scaling, as Retina is Apple's focus. It's not a hardware issue.

 

[4sallypat]

.....
You'll want a true 4K (2160p) or higher monitor not some 3440x1440 ultrawide. So you can enable HiDPI mode. Which I think is automatic now on any 4K or higher monitor. But may be enabled manually.

I too have the same display and wondered what affordable 4K display would work with the Thunderbolt 3 port ?

 

[velocityg4]

I too have the same display and wondered what affordable 4K display would work with the Thunderbolt 3 port ?

Any with a DisplayPort input. You just need a USB C to DisplayPort cable. As the Thunderbolt port outputs DisplayPort. While you can technically use HDMI. For 4K@60Hz you'd need an active cable not a passive cable. Too much trouble when you can just get a 4K monitor with DisplayPort.

As to which one. It depends on your budget. They'll start around $300.

If you want it to act as a dock for Thunderbolt with charging. It's going to cost a lot more. The LG Thunderbolt displays Apple sells are the best priced I've found before.

 

[Superhai]

I don't want to junk my existing 2 monitors (home, office) just to switch to mac, and it may not be possible to return the machine for this reason here; hence the query!

Mac displays 1920x1080 just fine and just as sharp as on Windows, but as all other have pointed out, the font-rendering philosophy of Apple is slightly different from Microsoft. And you should really have a higher resolution monitor to benefit a Mac.

If you have the possibility go to a shop and ask if they can show you a Mac connected to a 1080p monitor of your size, and then decide if it is suitable to you or not.

There is another option to see how font rendering on the Mac will look like if you only have a windows machine. And that is to run MacType which changes the text rendering in Windows to the same as on the Mac. https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype

Personally I don't like how Mac look at low resolution monitors like yours, but they don't look bad in the sense that you will be fatigued. But your mileage may vary as they say. MacOS look much better than Windows without clear type however on those monitors.

 

[amitdel]

Mac displays 1920x1080 just fine and just as sharp as on Windows, but as all other have pointed out, the font-rendering philosophy of Apple is slightly different from Microsoft. And you should really have a higher resolution monitor to benefit a Mac.

If you have the possibility go to a shop and ask if they can show you a Mac connected to a 1080p monitor of your size, and then decide if it is suitable to you or not.

There is another option to see how font rendering on the Mac will look like if you only have a windows machine. And that is to run MacType which changes the text rendering in Windows to the same as on the Mac. https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype

Personally I don't like how Mac look at low resolution monitors like yours, but they don't look bad in the sense that you will be fatigued. But your mileage may vary as they say. MacOS look much better than Windows without clear type however on those monitors.

Thanks for these useful suggestions! I think I may well have to end up buying a 24 inch 4K monitor for good results. I realize that my current monitor PPI is around 95, so I can definitely benefit from something like a 185 ppi display (4k looks like 1080p in MacOS settings).

The shop suggestion is very practical - unfortunately due to current circumstances, and M1 being so new, this is proving difficult. So I was hoping someone who has both M1 and a 1080 display can weigh in.

Also realized that my current laptop and display both accept displayport, so I guess I am anyway losing some text quality by using HDMI.

Cheers

 

[Superhai]

Also realized that my current laptop and display both accept displayport, so I guess I am anyway losing some text quality by using HDMI.

HDMI displays exactly the same as DisplayPort on a monitor like yours, it supports HDMI1.4.

 

[amitdel]

HDMI displays exactly the same as DisplayPort on a monitor like yours, it supports HDMI1.4.

That’s good to know. Thanks for the follow on reply!

 

[Jugg]

Hello,
months ago I've tried a 2020 macbook pro 13" (previous generation, not M1) with a non-4k external monitor and small text looked blurry. Same monitor with my old MBP 2009 looked perfect.

 

[Deccr]

Here’s a couple of shots quickly taken from my iPhone X of my Dell P2219H 21.5inch monitor.

It looks nice to my eye, from a normal distance. Admittedly they’re probably not the greatest quality photos.

This is from my m1 Mac mini, using a USB-C -> DisplayPort adapter.

EDIT: I don’t have any high PPI displays to compare this to. I’ve got a mid 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2011 27inch iMac.

 

[littlej2]

The M1 will produce blurry text and "off" colours on most, if not all, Dell Ultrasharp monitors. This is because the Mac is incorrectly switching it into YPbPr mode instead of the standard default RGB mode.

Fixing the External Monitor Color Problem with My 2018 MacBook Pro

Connect a 2018 MacBook Pro to an unsupported monitor, and the YPbPr/YCbCr color mode can cause poor display performance. I found a way to fix it by overriding the EDID back to RGB mode.

spin.atomicobject.com

This "bug" has been around for several years, and used to have a work around on intel macs:

See: https://gist.github.com/ejdyksen/8302862

I have 2x £1000 Dell U3014 2560x1600 monitors, and I cant use the M1 on either of them. Nor can I use it on any of the 200+ dell ultrasharp monitors we have in the office.

If your monitor is old, you can use the DVI or Dual link DVI + adapter, as this cable doesnt support YPbPr mode, so works around Apples apparent sabotage of its main competitor in the professional monitor market.

I would recommend you to use the feedback app, with the monitor attached, and raise this issue with apple. If enough of us do this, they may decide to reverse this "bug".

Note: there is another another monitor issue with M1. It doesnt show the right screen resolutions in many cases. There are some workarounds for this, e.g. holding down option key when you hit the scaling option in displays settings, or using a 3rd party app such as switchResX. This affects home users, not just professionals, and Apple have said they will actually fix this one in a later release of BigSur.

 

[macnmac]

im on a u2414 and its not sharp

i also use a usb-c to mini-dp to connect them

 

[entropi]

Did Apple change anything about this whole "lo-res screen mess" recently? Because I've read about it all and seen all the cries and moans about it and was really suprised when I connected a new m1 mba to my Dell U2415 24" screen and it looked just as good as on my ancient 2012 intel mac mini? What? I didn't expect that.

You don't get any wiser reading online reviews neither, some claim o n l y the LG 5K will look good on a modern M1 mac ("MUST BE OVER 220 dpi!!1!1!") and others claim that certain, for example Dell & HP 4K screens, works totally ok too.

My family is in the market for a new external screen and it is extremely difficult to make sense of it all.