M1 MBP & LG 34 inch ultra wide 5K2K

[xraydoc]

I still don’t understand why text would be less crisp at a Displays native resolution than in hidpi. It’s too small to be usable but when zooming in in apps that support it, like a browser, I don’t believe there should be a difference.
I never heard of MacOS using different font rendering in scaled modes. If anything it gets less sharp due the the way Apple scales the UI when applying fractal scaling

No idea about at resolutions >4K, but for a resolution like 1440p, macOS's fonts look pretty crappy at native panel resolution as the font smoothing algorithm appears to expect to be able to do fine subpixel smoothly and simply can't at non-HiDPI resolutions. Ends up looking pretty bad. It's not scaled resolutions that do it, it's non-HiDPI resolutions. Scaled resolutions on a Hi-DPI display look fine, actually.

Windows' non-HiDPI font smoothing is way better than macOS's now.

But, macOS wasn't always like this. It at one point had pretty good font smoothing, and even had some user-facing options to adjust the strength of the anti-aliasing. Once all of Apple's computers got a retina display (iMacs, MacBooks), they seemed to abandon the "normal" font smoothing for non-HiDPI displays. Not sure on which OS version they gave it up.

I don't have a better technical explanation than that.

 

[kasakka]

I can confirm it does NOT work with the M2 Air.

Source: I drive the 40" LG 40WP95C 5k/2k at 3840 x 1620 HiDPI with my M1 Max MBP. Plugged it into my wife's brand spanking new, and otherwise gorgeous M2 Air and no joy. Interestingly, when you show all resolutions, 3840 x 1620 is in the list, but appears as "3840 x 1620 (low resolution)" - there are *many* resolutions with this parenthetical notation - and I can confirm that it's not nearly as sharp as it is in HiDPI vis the M1 Max. Unusable really.

Bummed but not surprised.

So does it not support HiDPI resolutions at all or just a more limited set of them? Does using DP adapter vs USB-C make a difference?

 

[Ultron]

I can confirm it does NOT work with the M2 Air.

Source: I drive the 40" LG 40WP95C 5k/2k at 3840 x 1620 HiDPI with my M1 Max MBP. Plugged it into my wife's brand spanking new, and otherwise gorgeous M2 Air and no joy. Interestingly, when you show all resolutions, 3840 x 1620 is in the list, but appears as "3840 x 1620 (low resolution)" - there are *many* resolutions with this parenthetical notation - and I can confirm that it's not nearly as sharp as it is in HiDPI vis the M1 Max. Unusable really.

Bummed but not surprised.

I know it's a long shot, but have you tried BetterDisplay (link here) to create a custom HiDPI resolution for your monitor?

 

[grmlin]

No idea about at resolutions >4K, but for a resolution like 1440p, macOS's fonts look pretty crappy at native panel resolution as the font smoothing algorithm appears to expect to be able to do fine subpixel smoothly and simply can't at non-HiDPI resolutions. Ends up looking pretty bad. It's not scaled resolutions that do it, it's non-HiDPI resolutions. Scaled resolutions on a Hi-DPI display look fine, actually.

Windows' non-HiDPI font smoothing is way better than macOS's now.

But, macOS wasn't always like this. It at one point had pretty good font smoothing, and even had some user-facing options to adjust the strength of the anti-aliasing. Once all of Apple's computers got a retina display (iMacs, MacBooks), they seemed to abandon the "normal" font smoothing for non-HiDPI displays. Not sure on which OS version they gave it up.

I don't have a better technical explanation than that.

Ah yes, that's true. I think they removed all the font smoothing for low res displays at some point as everything they sold was retina? Not sure. I remember that 15 years ago it was a totally different story, where everything but fonts on Macs looked like crap

 

[kasakka]

No idea about at resolutions >4K, but for a resolution like 1440p, macOS's fonts look pretty crappy at native panel resolution as the font smoothing algorithm appears to expect to be able to do fine subpixel smoothly and simply can't at non-HiDPI resolutions. Ends up looking pretty bad. It's not scaled resolutions that do it, it's non-HiDPI resolutions. Scaled resolutions on a Hi-DPI display look fine, actually.

Windows' non-HiDPI font smoothing is way better than macOS's now.

But, macOS wasn't always like this. It at one point had pretty good font smoothing, and even had some user-facing options to adjust the strength of the anti-aliasing. Once all of Apple's computers got a retina display (iMacs, MacBooks), they seemed to abandon the "normal" font smoothing for non-HiDPI displays. Not sure on which OS version they gave it up.

I don't have a better technical explanation than that.

Windows forces all fonts to the pixel grid. If you disable Cleartype it looks awful and jagged. Meanwhile its grayscale font smoothing works like crap, resulting in some letters being weirdly emphasized and some fonts even have font smoothing disappear altogether. Which leaves RGB/BGR font smoothing as the only viable options and that can be problematic for e.g OLEDs with unsupported pixel structures like LG's WRGB or the weird pixel arrangement of Samsung QD-OLED. For LCDs with RGB pixel layout it usually works without issues, excluding some old/company proprietary/custom UI apps that were never made HiDPI-capable.

MacOS instead does not force fonts to the pixel grid which means that text can be a bit blurry with lower res displays. Running scaling and higher res displays sorts this out nicely. But Apple has some very arbirtrary rules for what triggers HiDPI scaling and since it relies on rendering the view first at a higher scaling factor, it has a lot of weird limitations as seen in this thread.

If Apple just made HiDPI scaling more user controllable we would not need workarounds like BetterDisplay. E.g 5120x2880 -> native 2560x1440 resolution works fine on the system but Apple just refuses to allow it. It does give slightly better text rendering compared to the native res.

 

[anthonymoody]

So does it not support HiDPI resolutions at all or just a more limited set of them? Does using DP adapter vs USB-C make a difference?

A more limited set which make the UI larger and reduce screen real estate. I took the DP4 cable from my MBP M1 Max and plugged it into the M2 Air.

I know it's a long shot, but have you tried BetterDisplay (link here) to create a custom HiDPI resolution for your monitor?

Yup. No joy. Apparently the non Pro/Max chips just can't render above some horizontal threshold between 6k and 7840. Not sure what the exact limit is.

 

[flapflapflap]

I am very happy that I kept my M1 Pro

 

[grmlin]

So, I got my 14" Max yesterday and I couldn't be happier. What a fantastic machine. My 34wk95u just works 👍

But I have a question, do you use the screen with HDR on or off? It looks so dull when I turn on HDR, so that can't be correct? I'm using it 99% of the time for programming/work, so it doesn't really matter. But I'm just curious

 

[Ultron]

So, I got my 14" Max yesterday and I couldn't be happier. What a fantastic machine. My 34wk95u just works 👍

But I have a question, do you use the screen with HDR on or off? It looks so dull when I turn on HDR, so that can't be correct? I'm using it 99% of the time for programming/work, so it doesn't really matter. But I'm just curious

I experienced the same thing--UI and desktop looking washed out in HDR--and learned that it's because the UI isn't colored for HDR usage. I leave it off all the time unless I'm watching a HDR content for an extended period of time. For short YouTube videos, I don't even bother because it's such a hassle to switch back and forth. If someone has a better solution to this, I'm all ears.

 

[anthonymoody]

I wonder if the SwitchResX dev could make a menu-bar toggle for it...

 

[Rastafabi]

I wonder if the SwitchResX dev could make a menu-bar toggle for it...

You might just ask. Stepháne usually replies to mails, as far as I know.

---

EDIT: Else have a look here.

 

[anthonymoody]

Wow awesome thanks!

 

[kasakka]

I experienced the same thing--UI and desktop looking washed out in HDR--and learned that it's because the UI isn't colored for HDR usage. I leave it off all the time unless I'm watching a HDR content for an extended period of time. For short YouTube videos, I don't even bother because it's such a hassle to switch back and forth. If someone has a better solution to this, I'm all ears.

This is what you get with displays that are frankly just crap at HDR. These 5K2K screens have pretty low brightness for SDR and similarly for HDR with no local dimming. Thus watching HDR content barely works in the first place and does not really give you appreciable improvement over SDR.

I really hope in the next few years we see just better versions of this format.

 

[Robdmb]

I realize this display is a few years old, but aside from the M1/M2 HiDPI limitation, how is the actual usability of the display with newer M chipped macs? Are there a lot of quirks or is it pretty reliable at this point?

 

[issepower]

I realize this display is a few years old, but aside from the M1/M2 HiDPI limitation, how is the actual usability of the display with newer M chipped macs? Are there a lot of quirks or is it pretty reliable at this point?

Super fast here on the maxed out m1 max.

 

[grmlin]

I realize this display is a few years old, but aside from the M1/M2 HiDPI limitation, how is the actual usability of the display with newer M chipped macs? Are there a lot of quirks or is it pretty reliable at this point?

Super fast here on the maxed out m1 max.

Same here. Got the 14" M1 Max and it "just works" (TM). Offers the scaling I like, charges the MacBook, wakes up from sleep...

 

[Robdmb]

Same here. Got the 14" M1 Max and it "just works" (TM). Offers the scaling I like, charges the MacBook, wakes up from sleep...

What scaled option do you run it at out of curiosity? Have you found image retention to be an issue?

 

[grmlin]

I can’t check the scaling right now, will do tomorrow.

Image retention is a problem yes. Can be annoying after staring at my IDE for a while and switching to a bright website or something.

 

[tommiy]

As others have said M1 Max is no issues. I started with a plain M1 and tried displaylink but lack of the HiDPI resolutions made me trade in to a Max. No issues since.

 

[grmlin]

What scaled option do you run it at out of curiosity? Have you found image retention to be an issue?

that's the one I use and like the most. Looks pretty similar to 125% I used with Windows.

 

[anthonymoody]

With the 40" LG and MBP M1 Max I will say that occasionally (maybe 1 in 50-100 times?) when I wake it the cursor is "gone" and the only thing that helps is to reboot the MBP. Disconnecting and reconnecting the monitor itself isn't enough. When I open the MBP from clamshell the pointer is there. But when I close it it doesn't reappear on the monitor. Annoying but infrequent. Can't seem to tie it to anything.

 

[technoholic]

Hi

I have an M1 MBA and I've read countless threads on this but can I just confirm the following as the 3008 HiDPI on my Dell u4021qw is driving me crazy:

Neither the M1 or the M2 will natively support scaling to a res between 3008 * whatever and 5120 * 2160 right?
Which of the M1 Pro/Max will support this?

I'm thinking of picking up a new MBP but don't want to get a Pro chip if the Max is the only one to work properly.

Thanks

 

[anthonymoody]

Neither the M1 or the M2 will natively support scaling to a res between 3008 * whatever and 5120 * 2160 right?
Which of the M1 Pro/Max will support this?

I can confirm that my M1 Max MBP can run HiDPI at 3840 x 1620 @72Hz on my 40" 5k2k LG ultra wide. I believe the M1 Pro can as well though don't have one to confirm. Also, NB that the MBPs are likely to get a refresh in October so may as well wait at this point if you can. Or look for an M1-based MBP on deep discount.

 

[technoholic]

I can confirm that my M1 Max MBP can run HiDPI at 3840 x 1620 @72Hz on my 40" 5k2k LG ultra wide. I believe the M1 Pro can as well though don't have one to confirm. Also, NB that the MBPs are likely to get a refresh in October so may as well wait at this point if you can. Or look for an M1-based MBP on deep discount.

Thank you. I normally like to have the latest and greatest, and I will wait for the refresh anyway, but chances are I will pick up a M1 Max at a good discount because I was originally looking at the Air so in this case I definitely don’t need the added power of whatever the m2 pro or max bring, unless they update something else significantly.

 

[Offspring992]

Hi

I have an M1 MBA and I've read countless threads on this but can I just confirm the following as the 3008 HiDPI on my Dell u4021qw is driving me crazy:

Neither the M1 or the M2 will natively support scaling to a res between 3008 * whatever and 5120 * 2160 right?
Which of the M1 Pro/Max will support this?

I'm thinking of picking up a new MBP but don't want to get a Pro chip if the Max is the only one to work properly.

Thanks

I have the base M1 Pro 14" and just received this exact monitor about an hour ago. The 3840 x 1620 scaled option looks perfect to my eyes.