Matte also reduces contrast - it's scattering incoming light from all angles into your eyes which a glossy screen would reflect away from your eyes. If a bright object is causing glare from a glossy screen then you'll be losing contrast on a matte screen. Some matte coatings also have an irritating grainy/sparkle effect - I see the reviews of the new Asus mark it down for that.
I agree. I have a Dell U28E510D (which is actually 28") that I got from Costco several years ago and I'm quite happy with how sharp everything looks at the 3008x1692 setting. I have my M1 mpb on a stand next to it and yes, that screen looks better - slightly sharper text and better color, but I never feel like it's a compromise when I look at the Dell.
It's been said that ignorance is bliss, so having read this thread, I suppose I'm happy that I don't know what an expensive Apple 5K display looks like.
I could just as well say "Of course matte screens will simplistically have less reflection, but only if you are not able to control your lighting. The issue is how much one is offended by blur."
That's very interesting. Other 5K 27" displays I've looked into and recall (e.g.: the Asus ProArt) were listed as matte. Do you know of any non-Apple 27" 5K glossy displays?
Basically this! I am not a display snob, but can remember my 2k cheap display running sharper at native resolution with macs.Because Apple doesn't properly support fractional scaling so you can get artifacts and issues since it's not an even integer scale. On a 4K monitor to get an even integer scale you have to use "looks like 1080p", which on a 27"+ monitor looks huge and bad. Some people also don't like that 27" 4K is only about 150 ppi and want 200+ like the Macbooks.
This blog goes a bit more in depth into why some people don't like the non-integer scale:
Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2
Since writing about Mac external displays in 2016, not much has changed. LG, Dell, Samsung, and other display makers have either never catered for the specs many Mac designers and developers want, or they’ve reluctantly produced products that have been short-lived or compromised.bjango.com
Personally it's not something I cared about or noticed but some people do.
See this is where this whole argument is just making a mountain out of a molehill. "looks like 1920x1080" is not a good option as it makes everything way too big in my view. And suggesting that over the 1440p option which....again making a mountain out of a molehill.....still looks incredibly amazing. And this is coming from someone that depends on high quality displays for their profession.
Nope that is false. Native 1440p displays at 27" and a reasonable distance I can still see the individual pixels. Not so with my new 4k displays. Everything looks much crisper and nicer with the 4k display.
Oh yeah one of the deciding factors for getting a new display was not just about resolution increase but refresh rate. Not only for the visual improvements and how things feel, but it is also quite significant at addressing eye strain. A lot of people don't realize how much of a difference it can make, even if you cannot "feel" the difference, your eyes will be much more happy with it. I was suffering a lot with eye strain and my eye doctor was the one that suggested getting higher refresh rate.
When did you last use Windows? 2010?
I wasn't suggesting one over the other - they're both perfectly good options. Whether "looks like 1920x1080" is too big is a matter of taste, but it is very usable and eliminates any fractional scaling, if you have an issue with that, while using the full 4k resolution of your screen to display content. Ruling it out as an option is just as much mountain-out-of-a-molehill as ruling out "looks like 1440p" because you think it looks "a bit fuzzy". Same for "looks like 3840x2160" which IMO is on the verge of usability for people with with normal eyesight at 27" - I used to have a 4k 16:9 28" display and, back when my eyeballs were 10 years younger, could use it perfectly well.
Uh using it now actually. MSI Afterburner is something I use daily that does not scale. So do some legacy applications and open source software. Its horribly difficult to use these applications since everything is so small.
Using Windows and a 4K monitor set to 2560x1440, the image won't be as sharp as on macOS. This is because macOS uses oversampling, scaling to 5K and then downscaling to 1440p, which doesn't happen on Windows.
That is the difficulty with this argument. My original comment wasn't really directed at at you, I was just piggy backing off your comment as a spring board sorry for not making that clear. I constantly see in these topics over the years they either recommend 1920x1080 which is too big for a lot of people, or 3840x2160 is too small for a lot of people. And the only viable option to a lot of people (myself included) 2560x1440 is DESPISED in these threads causing a lot of confusion. Its all about the "fractional scaling issue". People either suggest one extreme or another and not the one that is ideally preferred by a lot of people and really......doesn't have the issues that are constantly brought up in these threads.
That depends entirely on viewing distance.
...but you wouldn't do that on Windows. You'd set the resolution to 3840x2160 and the scaling to 120, 150 or 175% to adjust the UI size to taste. MacOS doesn't support the variable scaling option: you've got 100% (1:1) and 200% (2:1) baked in to (for a 4k display) "looks like 3840x2160" and "looks like 1920x1080" respectively, and anything you want in between is provided by rendering at to some other resolution internally and downsampling the result to 4k.
