Why I RETURNED my 4k Monitor // MacOS Scaling Explained!

what is up guys today i'm going to talk to you about monitors mac os and why i return my 4k monitor for 1440p version of the exact same thing let's get into it [Music] so this was a topic that i was trying to research when it was an issue for me and i was trying to find answers but i couldn't find a lot of information on it other than some forum posts and reddit posts and things that i was getting varied answers because it was people's opinions but i didn't find really any good videos about it so i wanted to put this out there i for a long time was running on a 1080p 24 inch monitor uh very not accurate on colors and such and i got kind of sick of editing all my photos on my macbook screen because i didn't trust the colors on my external monitor so i figured it was time for an upgrade and i ended up going with the asus pro art display and i'm going to do a full review of it in the future but for now this is not the review so i originally bought the 4k version of this asus pro art display had hdr all the same specs as this one and some extras um 100 srgb so on so forth really nice monitor made for designing and photo editing and really just creative work and i was super excited that i got a 4k monitor and that i was going to finally have like a huge upgrade from the original monitor that i'd been using for six seven years so i ordered the 4k version waited about a week and it came in and right off the bat looked amazing however there was one issue when i plugged it into my macbook everything was very large and after going into the settings on my macbook i realized that the recommended and the like what it defaults to is scaling a 4k 27-inch monitor at 1080p diving a little bit deeper into this first of all if you were to scale it at 4k on a 27-inch monitor everything is super tiny and it's it's not comfortable to use so what mac os does is it cuts that in half and scales it at 1080p because it's technically like a native scaling for a 4k monitor and how mac os works and so it was scaling everything pretty large and so i you know it was technically more room than my 24-inch 1080p monitor but not really it was just bigger but still like the windows and text and everything was pretty large it felt like my mom's phone or my grandmother's phone where they have the text enlarged and it felt really weird and so i went in and downscaled it to a 1440p scaling for the ui which at first fixed it it looked like this everything on the screen was the correct size and i was like okay cool problem fixed however in your monitor settings for the scaling on a 4k 27 inch you have a few options the default is 1080p and that is it says you know show text larger on screen and then the 4k it says show text smaller show ui smaller on screen and those are the only two that are like the obvious that wants you to pick these and then in between 1080p scaling in 4k there were a couple options i believe there was three there was uh two random ones that i don't remember exactly and then in the middle there was 1440p scaling which on a 27-inch monitor is really comfortable for mac os however when you click any of those in-between resolutions you get a little pop-up that says using a scaled resolution can hurt your performance and so i was like hmm a scaled resolution what does that mean all of this is scaling it's these are all different scales i had to dive deeper into this and this is where i had trouble finding information on this and after i did find some really nice articles but nothing that gave me just like a direct answer right off the bat here is the basis and while i talk about this i'm going to pop up this little chart that i have here on the screen i got this off of bajango.com i will link it in the description this was the best explanation article that i found and nothing else really gave you this exact answer except for articles or forums that were referring to this article so mac os is designed to work best at 110 ppi or 220 ppi which is pixels per inch you get the pixels per inch number by taking you know certain resolution to certain screen size and then that's how many pixels are per inch mac os is designed to work best at 110 or 220. now 110 is best which is like good for non-retina and then 220 is best for retina so and this also kind of explained to me what a retina macbook is essentially it is a macbook where the pixel density is about 220 pixels per inch and then they cut that in half so they scale it up two times and then you get that exact same 110 ppi scaling but you have a lot more pixels so it looks retina you don't see the pixels it just looks crispy and clear and that's why macbooks look so good nowadays and ever since retina macbooks came out it's because the scaling is doubled so that you have a super high pixel density and on your screen so with that rant out of the way mac os works best at around 110 or around 220. that being said when you don't have that mac has to to get it into a comfortable viewing has to scale it with the gpu so that's why it was running either 4k or 1080 because those weren't having to scale in a non-integer scaling which is what is explained in this article so 4k at 27 inches is about 163 ppi on this chart in the bad zone that is not good for mac to get it in a comfortable like where it is really supposed to be in terms of sizing which on a 27 inch monitor 1440p is about perfect it has to do a few things and this is why it's using the gpu on my monitor when i had it at the 1440p what it was doing in the background was upscaling everything to 5k and then cutting it in half which is then 1440p and that's how it was getting that so 60 times a second on a 60hz display it was scaling up to 5k and then downscaling cutting it in half to 1440p 60 times a second now at first i didn't notice this however one reason i got this bigger monitor is for blender for 3d rendering now i already don't have the best macbook for this or the best computer i'm running on the original m1 macbook pro 13-inch i will say it does much better than i expected especially since they came out with the apple silicon version of blender and the newest update adds in metal support which is apple's background like gpu rendering anyway things that i could render perfectly on my old monitor or on my macbook screen were lagging hard on that 4k monitor it's using gpu scaling which is already hindering performance and then also using a very gpu intensive program so i was like whoa what's going on that's when i started diving in because i was like this is destroying my performance then i would switch it back to 1080p scaling or 4k just to test it out and it worked a lot better i will say it didn't work perfect because it was still having to run 8 million pixels but a lot better and that's when i dove in found this article and was like oh that's what's going on so i had this crossroads where i either had to because using it 4k scaling was not an option it just was not usable i either had to use it at 1080p scaling which made everything big and in turn kind of ruined the point of me buying that monitor which was around 500 or i returned the 4k monitor downgrade to the 1440p version which i lose hdr but i still had 100 srgb spectrum 100 rec 709 so really good color really good color performance it is factory calibrated so straight out of box it's amazing kalman verified which is basically a color standard and you get a calibration report like you would for a studio monitor and so it still was an amazing monitor but i had this i had this thing in the back of my head where i was like oh i'm going to really see the pixels i'm gonna notice it because i read a forum post that had said that 1440p at 27 inches is technically lower resolution than 1080 at 24 inches and i was like well i don't want that that's basically downgrading news flash it's not so eventually after some thought i came to the conclusion that i was going to save a hundred bucks downgrade to the 1440p model because straight out of box no scaling it is perfect size the interface the ui everything is perfect on a 27 inch monitor for mac os 1440p is like sweet spot this is what i wanted and so i really i kind of came to the conclusion that if i'm still getting the color that i need out of the monitor i don't need 4k i just need good colors and i need something that won't hinder the performance of my computer and something that is bigger and gives me some more space so i downgraded now 1440p at 27 inches is around 109 ppi so that being said it is now doesn't have the retina aspect like the 4k did and yes i can kind of notice it if i really look but right here this far away from the screen i never sit this close and i can't even see the pixels like i have to get really you know up there to see it and still you know is kind of iffy i still can't really see it but point being is it's not that bad the only thing that i've noticed in terms of the differences of the 4k and this one is the brightness the 4k had hdr so it did get a little bit brighter at its peak but i still run this thing at about 50 brightness most of the time so i don't really need that still have usb-c connection on this monitor so i can run usb-c to it and then use it as a hub if i want to i don't even use that i use displayport because i use a cal digit hub again i came to the conclusion that i didn't need the 4k and all it was really doing was hindering my performance and so i downgraded now with that out of the way i'm super happy with this saved some money and it still looks amazing and so the last thing i want to touch on is this actually then gave me an answer to a question that i had wondered for a while which was why is apple always use kind of weird resolutions on their monitors they're 27 inches they always are 5k on their 32-inch they use a 6k monitor now you know the easy answer is apple is over like you know over the top and they want to be the best and so they just use higher resolutions but no the reason that their new 27-inch studio display is 5k resolution is because when you cut that in half at 1440p and so you you kind of two times the scale which is how it works it looks like this so the scaling is exactly like this on their 5k but it's super good quality they wouldn't release a 1440p monitor not apple however at 5k it scales perfectly for their ui at 32 inches on a monitor like their pro display xdr which is 6k that scales perfectly for their retina 220 ppi which then is two times at like a 110 ppi scaling which i'm throwing all these numbers out but basically that's why they use those resolutions that's why they don't use a 4k monitor that is the answer that i was looking for that is what i haven't been able to find very much on the internet except for that one article and so this may not make a lot of sense to you i'm not the best at explaining things however if you have a macbook or a mac product and you're trying to use a 27-inch monitor 4k you may not have any issues if you're just you know using word documents and browsing the web and even editing photos no issues you can scale that at 1440p or really any scaling you want and you won't notice a huge difference however if you're doing intense video editing or 3d rendering or anything that takes gpu usage and your computer isn't you know one of the six thousand dollar seven thousand dollar max and you notice a performance drop that's why nobody told me so to wrap this up that is why i returned my 4k pro art asus monitor and got the 1440p model i'm not saying you should do the same i am by no means saying that you shouldn't get 4k some people want it some people won't be affected by this some people have a much more powerful computer that can probably still scale it and not see much or any performance drop however i did and so i downgraded i still have amazing color super accurate straight out of the box factory calibrated and it does what i needed to i can't see the pixels it still looks amazing especially the upgrade from my old monitor so with that being said i'm happy and you know if you want something that is scaled perfectly and works perfectly with your mac product do not get a 27-inch monitor at 4k it's not made that way like i said i will link this article down in the description for you to see but basically it shows a list of monitor sizes and then resolutions and tells you if it's good for retina or like good for non-retina which i would ignore that that kind of threw me off at first because even if you have a retina macbook and you are in the good for non-retina which 1440p at 27 inches is either way as long as you're in the green then it scales good for mac if you're in the red it doesn't that's it that's the tweet that's all i have for you today if you have any questions leave them down below again i know this was a rant so i apologize but i will leave some articles and explanations down below and i will leave the link to this monitor again this is the asus pro art 2 7 8 cv this thing's amazing on their website like made by designers for designers it is meant for content creation so the colors are super accurate straight out of box you get a calibration report anti-glare coating blue light filters built in a little bit of everything anyway i'm going to keep ranting but that is all i have for you today if you enjoyed this video leave a like down below if you didn't tell me why if you have had this happen to you or you've had different experiences definitely let me know down below i am actually genuinely curious if anybody else has had this issue and either wasn't able to figure out the answer or had a different solution or it hasn't affected you at all let me know this is this is a topic that i've dove in deep into since it happened so yeah anyway i will see you guys in the next one thanks for watching have a wonderful day [Music] you

Channel: Hunter King

Views: 464,899

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Id: kpX561_XM20

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022