Can we lower resolution on 4K displays?

[Amir123]

Hi all.
I just switched from an old Dell Latitude 15" full HD screen to a new HP Envy 17" 4K touch screen.

However, I am not happy with the new display. Everything has gone extremely tiny including icons and text at the native 1920 x 1080 resolution.

When I lower it the next level, 1600 x 900, on-screen content changes to acceptable size but it loses the crispness and sharpness of everything we see on the display. Its horrible to look at, its so blurry and crappy.

On my old Latitude 15" display, everything is super sharp and crisp and comfortably large to read, both text and icons (in its native 1336 x 768 resolution).

Can we maintain the sharpness of things on my new 4K display at below the recommended resolution?

 

[dullard]

Yes and no.

Like you said, lowering the resolution directly will ruin the way things look. I wouldn't recommend doing that.

But, you can ask Windows to ask the programs to display things larger. Assuming you are on Windows 10, right click on the desktop. Then select the "Display settings" menu option. Roughly in the middle there will be a slider that says "Change the size of text, apps, and other items". Move that around until you like the results. Text will now mostly be readable and sharp.

Unfortunately, not all programs were written to adjust properly. Especially old programs. They may end up looking really wonky (way too large or way too small). You'll have to experiment a bit with that setting depending on the programs you use.

By the way, 1920 horizontal pixels is not 4K. 4K by definition is roughly 4000 horizontal pixels.

 

[whm1974]

And I don't think that 4K is suitable for laptops anyway.

 

[Amir123]

Thanks for your answers. Yes, I think it has worked. Lets see how it fares.

 

[wilds]

I lower my 4k monitor's resolution to 1680x1050 to match my laptop's resolution.

I then use Moonlight for Chrome to stream my desktop to my laptop. It looks excellent.

 

[postmortemIA]

4K's native resolution is not 1920x1080.

 

[gdansk]

Display scaling? Set it to a percentage that is comfortable. I usually run at 150% on my desktop and 200% on my laptop.

 

[postmortemIA]

Whoever likes to do the display scaling, I suggest them to take this monitor test and see what it does to all their pictures.
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/clock_phase.php

 

[gdansk]

If you're having scaling-related problems on a website, you can set the scaling to 100% for that specific website rather than all applications. It works well, for example, it made that display test site look fine.

 

[postmortemIA]

If you're having scaling-related problems on a website, you can set the scaling to 100% for that specific website rather than all applications. It works well, for example, it made that display test site look fine.

All non-vector-based images on all sites are blurry if you don't use 100% scaling, the test just amplifies the effect. Blurriness is consequence of 125% or whatever scaling you apply to images that cannot be scaled up or down without the interpolation.

 

[gdansk]

All non-vector-based images on all sites are blurry if you don't use 100% scaling, the test just amplifies the effect. Blurriness is consequence of 125% or whatever scaling you apply to images that cannot be scaled up or down without the interpolation.

Yeah, but unless you're using your web browser to draw pixel art it is honestly a non-issue. You know when you need to view an image without scaling and you can do that in many different ways. Phones have been doing it for years and it works for consumption. PCs give you the option to ignore scaling because sometimes pixel perfect is necessary for creation.