macOS 4K Scaling Explained: The TRUTH About Quality And Performance!

[@mafi8000]

I was literally looking for a new monitor for my Macbook right now, and the 4k scaling issue was still a big question mark. And then your video came online, what a fortunate coincidence!

[@ErikGT]

Yeah me too

[@ValdemarDeMatos]

Coincidence would be that none of the thousands of viewers of this video were looking for a new monitor 😅

[@himashakurera]

@@BozBundalo what's about the scaling? is that sharp?

[@chidorirasenganz]

@@himashakurera not unless you’re running it at a 1080p equivalent vs 1440p equivalent for a 5k display

[@ngamsomset]

@@chidorirasenganz that's correct. I scale mine on 1080p as well.

[@csimet]

Nice overview. Being a photographer, I picked my iMac 5K to give me as much room to work at 1::1 density and added a 4K LG to my MacBook for the same reasons. I needed the ability to zoom to 100% 1::1 resolution to edit and apply sharpening correctly. Having said that, I wish Apple would allow independent text scaling (2x, 4x, etc.) along with the display scaling... it can be a pain on those monitors to see menus, fly-outs and panels since they can be very small on those high density displays. It usually means working closer to the monitors than most would typically do so.

[@eoinkirwan3147]

Exactly, just give us text scaling please!!

[@AaronFigFront]

maybe third party apps like better display can help? it can create dummy display with or with HiDPI at different resolution.

[@Ed_Mann]

One thing is for sure, OS functionality that helps their customers isn’t going to come from Apple. The recently announced new Apple credo is “DEAL WITH IT. Suckers”

[@WasabiNoise]

Amazing explanation! I'm an iOS software developer and I used scaled 4K monitors for years with no issues although I have to say that I want to go to a the Apple 5K display because I never find a scaling that I like when it comes to text/UI rendering size. The issues I'm running into are more about software, for instance DaVinci Resolve, sometimes it does something strange where the fullscreen mode doesn't fill the entire screen (looking like a 1080p native overlay). DaVinci also loses the ability to use two screens mode, and if you move the window, you cannot get passed a certain point vertically. All this lead me to believe there's an issue that is triggered when using scaling. And yep, I can resize the screen to 4K native or 1080p retina, and it fixes the problem. So there could be that people is running into bugs that are triggered at some point (I still don't know how to properly replicate on DaVinci to report it).

[@maekloev]

Very thorough explanation on how scaling works on macOS. Certainly the best I’ve encountered so far. Very well presented - thanks a bunch! 👏

[@otherother8664]

It is im looking for a good not great moniter without paying $1599 but the only down side for that is 60 hz for me so much money should have everything i need in it

[@trungdaivlog]

With scale factor of 1.5 -> blurry at border of texts. I would rather take a 27" 2K monitor

[@chrisleedesignstudio]

Thanks Kyle! I appreciate your well-researched content and the high production value of this video. I’m a graphic designer working on a mac mini m1 and am so happy I found your channel. I’m thrilled about buying the 27” 4k monitor and scaling to enlarge the interface so I can actually see the menu. I also appreciate the many helpful viewer comments. Generating great engagement like this portends much success for your channel! Way to go!

[@wahyuichsanfauzi7092]

hi @chrisleedesignstudio, do u successfully scale the app interface size, macOS text, and icon size? if u did it, may you share it to me, cause i've just bought 27" 4k and i've a problem with the small text in all apps. Thank youu

[@Ben77769]

I’ve been researching this topic for the last couple of weeks and found so many different answers. Thank you so much for clearing this messy topic up once and for all, excellent video! 🙏👏👌

[@inv3st_eth839]

How it would show on external display if i buy 32 inch 4k display and downgrade it to 1080p ?

[@TripleIProductions]

​@@inv3st_eth839did your figure this out?

[@jasras5003]

@@inv3st_eth839 I think the larger the screen gets at the same resolution, the worse it will look. E.g. Text and stuff in theory should look way sharper on a 27" 4k monitor downscaled at 1080p than it would on a 32" 4k monitor downscaled at 1080p.

[@zr0dfx]

Great video on a topic I am very interested in since I just bought 2 27" 4k panels for my m1 pro. I have to say I have used the scaling option and everything is working just fine. No slow downs or anything.

[@Tonellacam]

You scaled down to 1440 from your 4k computers , im about to buy a 4k 27 maybe I should just buy a 1440 asus pro art instead of the 4k , im gonna plug my M1 Max for video editing

[@ElayneOkaya]

@@Tonellacamwhat did you eventually decide on?

[@georgemalczynski]

I'm also using a M1 Pro Macbook, I was given a fairly high quality 4k display and it has been fine so far.

[@Ed_Mann]

@@Tonellacamthat’s what I’d do.

[@Ed_Mann]

@@georgemalczynskiI think success or struggle in that configuration is largely dependent on how GPU intensive your work is. Video you’ll perceive lag, photo editing lag will be there but it may not be noticable to you. Pedestrian tasks, whatever your system yiekds, you’ll think of as normal.

[@pricejs87]

I wish I would have seen this video earlier. I wasted way too much time and mental energy stressing about this issue. Thank you for making this plain and clear!

[@IsaacFromHK]

From my experience, the scaled performance thing doesn't really affect M1 chipset much, but if you use an intel mac, and try to watch some video at scaled resolution, you will see the GPU usage jumps up pretty high and the fan starts to kick in. that is true when I compared this on my 2017 macbook pro 15 inch vs the Mac mini m1

[@gamervmid]

Yeah! The same story with my MBP 15 2018 😢

[@UTJK.]

I have a 16" Intel... it got really slow if used at scaled resolution. No problem with the M1.

[@ricarmig]

Well on my M1 Mac Mini if I move a lot windows, 3D ... I notice some slowdown. On native nothing at all.

[@frostgodx]

every computer no matter the chipset will start heating up playing 1440 or higher video its just the nature of rendering video to the monitor even with any M1 (my m1 max 32 core even gets to 65c from 40c resting temp when watching a 4k video.

[@RNFedit]

@@UTJK. so what’s the best resolution for mac intel?

[@artscopemedia]

Finally someone made a concise, well researched video to address such a serious Apple Mac screen display issue. There are a few other videos related to this issue and they certainly contain a lot of scare-mongering misinformation. This video hits the nail on the head. As a video editor, plus grading footage means I am using a 5K Mac Display plus a 4K Display as dual monitors with my Mac Studio. Thank you. 🙂

[@visualstudiosproductions]

How? 5k imacs can't be used as external displays. There is no other "5k mac display". Do you mean the apple studio display?

[@tgilbert4319]

@@visualstudiosproductions Yes, that would be what Dion meant. They are running a Mac Studio that has no built in display. The only 5K external displays available now are the Apple Studio Display and (maybe still available) LG Ultrafine.

[@lenguyenphi]

Yeap, I work on both Windows and Mac and I've been hesitating to buy a 32 inches 4k monitor or save for the 32 inches XDR whichs is ridiculously expensive until I have to buy it for my wfh office. Man I can say that I was being happy from day 1 until now. Windows and MacOS both displayed great on my LG 32UN650 which is 1/3 the price of the XDR's 1000$ stand!!! I can confirm that all Kyle say is correct!!!

[@tomhollett]

@@lenguyenphi What display settings do you use on your LG in terms of scaling size and HDR? I'm trying to decide the sweet spot for my LG 32UN650 on a Mac Studio M2 for photo and astrophotography editing.

[@Vincent_Roy]

Thanks for the video. I have been using a Viewsonic VP-2768 4K for a year now on my M1 Mac Mini connected in DP on a thunderbolt hub, and noticed no issues.

[@awwwtomotive]

Wow I just found your comment and I will buy the same monitor as yours today 😂

[@jasras5003]

@@awwwtomotive How's it going with your Viewsonic?

[@josefrogoschewsky6458]

Excellent video - really enjoy your explanation of scaling vs performance and your overall video style, great job.

[@caedenisviral]

extremely underrated youtuber, going off the quality and video information alone, I would’ve assumed you had over a million subscribers. Keep up the good work man 👍

[@Aspireonthego]

Thanks for the awesome and in-depth explanation! I have a 27" 4K monitor hooked up to my top spec macbook pro 16" 2019 and have not noticed any performance hit, scaled at 1440p. Under most tasks, I don't even hear the fans spin up.

[@martinwoodfilms]

Same here

[@samaelmorningstar8737]

which monitor do you have?

[@Aspireonthego]

@@samaelmorningstar8737 Dell u2720qm

[@Aspireonthego]

@@samaelmorningstar8737Dell u2720q

[@cvdavis]

Great analysis and clear explanation. I came back to watch it a second time when I was again considering which monitor to upgrade to for my Mac mini 2

[@smajdovamanka]

A thing to note - the text rendering quality on non-retina displays degraded when Apple removed sub-pixel antialiasing. It was hidden from the settings in Mojave and removed entirely in Big Sur. The scaling wasn't an issue beforehand, you could use a 1366x768 display and it would have nice, sharp text. It was my favourite MacOS feature and they didn't bother to support it because with Retina displays it's not needed. But if you have a 3rd party monitor with less DPI than ~220, it doesn't look as good anymore. This is of course a separate issue than the performance. I never noticed a difference running scaled resolutions. But the font rendering thing bothers me a lot as a webdev. Such a dickmove from Apple. Kyle says the difference is not noticeable, which may be true if you're on 4k 27", but on 32" it's not. The text looks like garbage, it's blurry, the whole thing is embarrassing considering Jobs was about nice typography. More info: www.howtogeek.com/358596/how-to-fix-blurry-fonts-on-macos-mojave-with-subpixel-antialiasing/ news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17477526

[@lucalorenzetti9905]

True story!!

[@emilemouannes2236]

32 4K here. Text was blurry. I returned the MacBook Air m2 and went back to my windows machine. Night and day difference.

[@mrjellow]

I've been using Macs since '06. This will be my last Apple computer. Apple was always a nuisance when it came to removing features but lately it really feels like you are trapped in a very very expensive cage. 'Oh you want an external monitor for your 2000 dollar MPB?'' Buy our 1500 dollar display..without a stand'. Think different, think Windows.

[@smeyichou3514]

I was considering buying a Mac Mini with a 4k ultrawide, around 32 or 34 inch. So you're telling me either I should go with a 27 inch 4k monitor, or a 5k monitor?

[@hydrolifetech7911]

I was viewing some code on 32 inch monitor and I was flabbergasted. The code didn't make sense. Only after hours of trying and failing did I view it on Macbook's screen and noticed all the - signs I was seeing on the 32 inch were all =signs! Ridiculous!

[@jaimin.rathod]

Thank you for making this video, it shows consideration for other users. I just got a MBP M1 Max with 32GB RAM, and I'll be using it multiple Adobe apps displaying simultaneously. I'll use a scaled resolution and see how it goes. Your explanation of the scaling was so easy to understand!

[@MCName115]

Thank you so much!! I'm upgrading from 2k due to blurry texts to 4k to solve it and now I found out about virtual scaling and as I found out after watching your video there are so many missinformation abou this online. Thanks a lot for this video.

[@mrsin666]

I really like your real-world approach to your testing, although you‘ve missed a pretty important point in regards to 3D rendering performance: as long as you‘re rendering something like cinebench where you‘re outputting a specific resolution, of course there‘s no change in performance because the workload is literally the same. When you‘re rendering a 1080p image, you‘re always rendering a 1080p image no matter the scaling. Now if you take a look at realtime rendering performance, like the blender viewport, you will definitely see a performance impact because the viewport is rendering at a resolution based on your internal resolution. So 1x scaling renders at the displays native 4k resolution while something like 1.5x renders at an internal 5k resolution which will demand a lot more from the GPU. With simple scenes not a big deal. But when your scene becomes more complex, that impact will become increasingly noticeable.

[@iamdragonetta]

Why not use a 5k monitor instead of a 4k monitor, if the 1.5x renders at an internal 5k resolution?

[@axelsfirst]

@@iamdragonetta Either price of buying one or maybe quality od displays, 5k monitors do not have true HDR, like QD-LED monitors, so they could be much better for watching movies.

[@markeissler]

@@iamdragonetta Where are these 5k monitors coming from? There is only one 5k option right now: Apple Studio Display. That's the whole problem. The world has settled on 4k monitors (and the occasional 8k) but Apple has settled on 5k and 6k monitors. What sucks more is that Apple has decided to only offer one choice at each resolution.

[@chidorirasenganz]

@@markeissler LG has their 5k monitor as well but 4k is usable on smaller displays such as the old Intel 21.5in iMac and the new M1 24in iMac. As far as other options I’m sure they are coming sooner than later

[@smashedlegends]

@@markeissler 27 inch from Apple is not an option. Its way too small to be an option.

[@gregfromthevaley]

I just don’t understand why Apple won’t let us change size of system font. We could use monitors native resolutions and adjust interface

[@BurnAfter8]

You’d still have a problem with file and app sizes on the screen

[@SokoladoFabrikas]

because interface design system is not a piece of water

[@joekim3902]

Windows does that already and scaling on 4k displays is an absolute shitshow

[@ellandill]

@@joekim3902 fonts on windows looks a way better on 27'' 4k than on mac, even comparing same applications like chrome or evernote

[@michaelriga6431]

@@ellandillAgreed! I have a 4k LG Ultrafine on WIndows everything looks a lot better. Even SuperHuman looks better!

[@pushpdeeppandey]

Thank you! I didn't find this to be an issue either but heard so many youtubers make a hue and cry about it. Frankly if I'm using a larger 4k display, I definitely need the extra space it comes with where I can see more of the panels or place more program windows alongside as the need be. So while I will continue doing what I was doing, at least after seeing this video, I'll be more at peace about the overall performance hit. Thanks for testing this out and sharing your thoughts here!

[@classicaloracle]

I have been looking around for many weeks to find a definitive answer to this after deciding the Apple Display was not for me. You have cleared up a lot of concerns. Thank you! Subscribed.

[@ZR1Terror]

So did you get this display?

[@tutubeos]

In the end I bought the LG 40” ultrawide for my Mac Studio. Yes, in native resolution, text is too small. I’m using it scaled, no issues, its awesome! Thank you! 🙏

[@SharkBoy87]

What scaling, the 1440p? Seems very large for 40”

[@delsurmusic]

Hello Kyle, finally a video that clearly explains this scaling thing. I even went to the Apple store and ask to the specialist and he just did not have a good answer. Thank you very match for your time and efforts!

[@avicreates]

Excellent! subbed! High quality detailed production!

[@mrasquaretech]

He did a video no one asked and I’m so glad he did that. Very informative.

[@DaleC1980]

That was so helpful. I have a mac mini with a samsung 32 inch 4k. I scaled it to 3200x1800. I liked the scaling size but it still looked scaled. I thought it was still 4k but making it look bigger. So I took a screenshot and realized it was 4x. So now I just set it to native 4k and manually adjusted screen elements such as the menu bar size, the dock and desktop icons as well as the Safari text size.

[@MonicaRubio]

wish you could do a tutorial or something because i have a macbook air with a samsung 32 inch 4k and i genuinely hate using it bc of how laggy it is

[@dallas88b]

Thanks Kyle. Another great video. Needed a proper video addressing this topic 👍

[@jochenretter]

Thank you Kyle, you made my worries vanish and saved me a lot of time.

[@BoomerBlogging]

Just revisited this from a year ago. It is so well explained and illustrated that IMHO it is the "go-to" V;og on the internet for this question/matter/explanation! Thanks again - very well done and as preofessional as it gets!

[@rubenj3128]

Noone talks about DisplayPort vs HDMI, but that also makes big difference. I had blurry texts as well when I got a 4k and QHD connected simultaneously, but resolved it by using a USB-c to Display Port cable instead of HDMI.

[@murdockscott]

I had been shopping for a new monitor to replace my aging Apple Thunderbolt and had landed on the Dell U3223QE as a possible choice but could never find one being demonstrated anywhere. I tried looking for information online but was continually warned off because of the “dreaded Apple upscaling performance hit”! I witnessed many people calling others foolish for even considering a 4k monitor, mostly based on a video made by a seemingly well meaning young man who was very vague about the specifications of the gear and workflow he was basing his opinions on. I was dubious due to my several decades of experience as a digital artist, creative director and purchaser of gear for art departments. It just seemed like something else was going on. Like maybe he was using a low powered Mac mini or worse yet an older Intel based computer with integrated graphics. Since the Apple Studio Display did not seem like a good deal to me and I really wanted a 32 inch so I could sit back a bit from the monitor with my aging eyes, the Dell seemed perfect. I am very glad I ignored all those people insisting that it would cause technical heartache to hook a 4k monitor up to an Apple Studio Max! I purchased the Dell and it has been GREAT! Thank you so much for working to dispel this nonsense. I wish this video had existed back when I was looking, it would have quickly put my mind at rest and made me feel less crazy about my inherent belief that the information must have been overblown.

[@imtony]

I’m also planning for a monitor. Does it give the retina look at 3840x2160?

[@jspring86]

Great video man!

[@cesarbernal9789]

Thanks Kyle, after a lot of research your video finally clarifies things to me!

[@TrutherTalk]

Thank you for this video. It was pleasantly surprising, and informative.

[@kokodoug90]

This was the perfect video for my question I had. Thanks!

[@johnaistrup9250]

Thank you! Just what I needed to watch to understand scaling on my Mac! Cheers! Great video!

[@jayel27]

As someone who has been using dual 4K monitors since 2015 and recently went triple monitor setup I can confirm that the scaling is a huge problem on intel macs and less so on my M1 mini and even less in my M1 Max Studio Max… for now anyways. Webex, google meet and zoom kill the machine and force me to disconnect a display and switch to 1080p in order to stay on a call. Even more so if I’m trying to screen share. When I work on my 34” 1440p ultrawide I have zero issues with performance. Same scenarios run smooth. That’s in a 2019 15” MBP with 32gb of ram and two GPUs. Go 5k or 1440p. It will future proof your setup. Trust what apple is doing. They’ve optimized their machines well as well as scaling.

[@sagunmdr]

1440p 60hz or 1080p 120hz?

[@jayel27]

@@sagunmdr if you are on 27” monitors, 1440p. You can find some with higher refresh rates. I have one that is 75hz. But I don’t game so if you do, I’d imagine you want higher. But 1440p if you are using it for work and creative. If you are gaming, get the best your machine handle. I don’t use 1080p on 27” as the UI is too large. Not good for the work I do.

[@myrealusername2193]

@@sagunmdr if you’re at anything above 24”, then go 1440p. macOS is (despite apple’s attempts) not really used for gaming so a super high refresh rate is less important than resolution.

[@moshcorerider]

I had massive problems with my old 27 Intel iMac (i5 2015) when plugging in to a second 4K panel the GPU was struggling very hard and the fans spun very high

[@ВладимирКакТуз]

@@myrealusername2193 in makos at 144hz it is much more pleasant, and accordingly more productive to work, than on clumsy 60 or 75 Hz

[@bryans8656]

Thanks for this explanation, it helped me understand why the ASUS ProArt 2K monitor I use with my Mac desktop scales so well.

[@Scolio]

Thats the 300 dollar one right? Im trying to find a display that will work with the mac mini Im getting out of the box and that one claims “mac support” which I would hope means it doesnt need any special treatment to look good

[@bryans8656]

@@Scolio Yes, that's the one. You won't have to do anything special to set it up with your mini. Just plug in the HDMI cable and the power cable and you're good to go.

[@avi_g]

Hi do you still like it? I am confused about the whole 4k vs 1440p thing and idk if the text on that one will be too blurry.

[@JeffreyGVny]

This was very helpful. Thanks for the in-depth analysis!

[@WineWorldTV]

I have a Late 2015 iMac 27 and an LG 27MU58-B 27" monitor. I've had this setup for 5 years. For many years I ran the monitors at a resolution higher than 1440p thinking it would be better. I saw a similar video a couple years ago explaining basically the same thing and switched to 1440p for both monitors. Other than a brightness difference and a slight color difference, the LG monitor looks just as sharp as the iMac. Yeah, I could pixel peep and see a difference, but the reality is for 95-99% of the work I do, it doesn't matter. For video editing, I use the iMac to make sure my colors are good, but otherwise, it doesn't matter which monitor I'm using. Great video.

[@frostgodx]

you can easily tell a difference between 5k running at half (1440) vs a 1440 display at native res once your used to the 5k though which is what annoys most people. You see the same things in windows laptops people cry about the 1080 screens looking like crap but love a 4k screen running at 200% scale the same 1080 just because you don't see the pixels.

[@jdelgadocr]

After researching on this issue and watching other videos on this specific topic I came to the conclusion MacOS takes the info from the monitor to determine if it is "Retina capable" based on the pixel density and the target number is 220 ppi. People with 27"4K have to juggle around and play with the scaling to get something that works for them. As I was using a 23" 1080p and my objective was better image quality for my sight (instead of screen real state) I opted for a budget 24" 4K from LG which, apart of manually adjusting the color calibration, it enabled the Retina scaling by default and I didn't need any hacks. I'm using an MBA M1 8Gb with Big Sur.

[@reinercraja]

" budget 24" 4K from LG" what is the model number

[@jdelgadocr]

@@ortsaslanmy 24” 4k works great. Very nice. I would like to get a 27” 4k 144hz for smoothness but M1 won’t handle that. I’ll need to get an MBP M2 Pro/Max first to have high refresh rate.

[@jdelgadocr]

@@ortsaslan The 24" 4K monitor has been working like a charm. No video issues of any kind. I'm planning on my next HW upgrade already: 4K with a high refresh rate (120-144Hz) instead of the standard 60Hz. For this, I've found 2 caveats: 1 - no 23-24" 4K monitor with a high refresh rate in the market so a 27" will have to do. It would mean around 10% less PPI but it's acceptable as overall eyesight strain will be lower. 2 - The M1 family doesn't support high refresh rate video. Only from M2 onwards. Well... I was already thinking of an M2 Max 32GB anyway! 😉

[@blakespot]

Thanks for this video. I will share it with the worried folks I see in the forums every now and then. I have an LG DualUp display for my Mac Studio that I have come to *adore*. It's a 28-inch IPS screen with a 16 : 18 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2560x2880 and a ~140dpi. As such and like 4K screens out there, it needs to be scaled; the macOS UI is far too small at native res and too large at macOS' suggested 1280x1440 HiDpi mode. To get this working right, I reached for the great BetterDisplay app that enables myriad low and HiDpi modes for usage. I settled in at an effective resolution (looks like) of 2304x2048, which is actually scaled up to 4608x4096 and then back down to native. It looks GREAT and sharp and I'm well pleased, but I was worried about performance I might be losing, after hearing the concerns of several out there talking about 4K screens. Here are a few pics of this unusual setup on my desk: flickr.com/photos/blakespot/albums/72177720302080369 So, on the BetterDisplay Discord I had several conversations with the friendly author who put my worries at ease. I showed him a couple of videos where someone is claiming that they can hardly use Blender any more and so they went out and got a 1440p screen, etc. He has no idea what those people are talking about. I wanted to share one of the examples he gave me that basically stopped me from thinking about the performance question ever again. He said : "If we try to make sense of it, a 5K framebuffer has about 15 million pixels. so at 60fps about 900 million pixels must be processed. Let's say 1 billion pixels. If we say that scaling is done super inefficiently, let's say every pixel requires 5 floating point operations to be scaled. That is 5 billion operations per second. Now the M1 Pro can do about 5 teraflops, that is 5 trillion (5 000 billion) operations per second. That means that all the scaling stuff will consume 0.1% of the capabilities of the GPU. Even if there are additional inefficiencies and super wasteful processing, so everything requires 10x as much processing, then the desktop scaling will keep occupied the GPU 1%.
Even if somehow the 1% will turn into 10%, still 90% of the GPU is free. So surely scaling will not make a smooth video playback drop to 1fps in any circumstance. It would be such an obvious issue that I think everybody would know about it." Thanks again for the video!

[@murdockscott]

That video you mentioned is almost certainly the same one that countless people tossed out at me when I was shopping for a new monitor. Having done this computer thing a very long time, I was a bit shocked at how one person could throw everyone into such a spiral. It just didn’t smell right, but SO many people believed it whole heartedly. The 4k Dell (U3223QE) I ended up with is great and was much better value that the current Apple offerings.

[@freddymiguelponce]

This is my first time in your channel. WOW! what a great video! Thanks for putting all this info in a simple way to understand Have a Productive and Healthy Day!

[@raghavbhalla177]

So I recently switched to the M2 Mac Mini Pro from a Windows System and this blurry text was making me go nuts on my LG 27UK650 (4K 27" Monitor).. After few hours of searching found two possible solutions. 1st being "defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO" command (in terminal) that aims to ENABLE subpixel antialiasing in MacOS universally. 2nd being "defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0" that aims to DISABLE font smoothing entirely. I tried the 2nd option first and OMG. The difference is of night and day.. In fact to afraid to give the 1st option a try now as the text looks EXACTLY how it does on my Windows PC with the same monitor while in 4k. Hope this helps someone as this issue was truly sucking the joy of getting a new system :( Another thing, I was using the 2560x1440 scaling (2nd box on the latest MacOS). The cable I am using is a thunderbolt to Display Port one, on HDMI the issue was much worse although I haven't tried it on HDMI post the terminal trick that worked. EDIT: So I asked GPT why 2nd command worked for me. Here is the summary.. I stated M1 Mac Mini just for reference as M2 just came out lol: ["The effect of font smoothing can greatly vary based on the type of display, its resolution, and even specific models of computers and monitors. The AppleFontSmoothing feature is primarily designed to improve text legibility on low-resolution displays, such as non-Retina screens, by adding extra pixels to the edges of characters to make them appear smoother. However, on high-resolution displays, such as your 4K monitor, font smoothing can sometimes have the opposite effect, making text look blurry or shadowed. This is because high-resolution displays already have a high enough pixel density that the individual pixels are not distinguishable to the naked eye, so adding extra pixels to the edges of characters can just muddy the image. When you set AppleFontSmoothing to 0, you effectively disabled font smoothing. This allows the text to be rendered more crisply on your high-resolution display, which in your case, resulted in a better visual outcome. It's also worth noting that the M1 chip uses Apple's own graphics architecture, which might handle text rendering differently than the Intel chips used in older Macs. This might be another factor in why disabling AppleFontSmoothing worked well for your M1 Mac Mini."] ^^ Pretty much sums it up as I was wondering why something that is designed to improve the visibility of fonts is having an adverse effect for me!

[@foronefilms]

I'm running a MacBook Pro M2 Max in clamshell with (2) Dell 27" 4K external monitors set at 1920x1080 (HiDPI). Works well for my purposes. Crispy display and no performance issues. Toggle the "Show all resolutions" setting to select HiDPI mode.

[@berndnuel508]

Same / prefer also $K 27" Dell

Thanks, Kyle, for the amazing video review about 4K resolution. I was really confused before I watched your video, and now it's much better.

[@PKarthikeyaneeb]

Thanks for clearing this up for me!!!

[@jettlaggg]

This cleared out a lot of things I had in mind. Thank you so much!

[@cinicrus]

Nice overview. Thanks dude 😊

[@chengong388]

Dude, OBVIOUSLY there’s no difference running benchmarks, they’re specifically designed to be resolution independent. Scaling to 1440p is the same as connecting to a 5k display, which is perfectly within the designed capability but you are now running a 5k display, so things that must render more pixels, like for example Photoshop and Lightroom with be slower.

[@ChillumT]

Interesting video. I used the new Dell Ultraharp U3223QE with my MacBook Pro 14 with 32GB Ram for 4 month. I did not like the scaling at all. I also had a 27" k5 iMac from 2017 at the same time, so I had the option to compare. I ended up selling both the Dell display and my iMac to afford a Apple Studio Display. I lost around $3-400 on this mistake but I couldn't be more happy. Fantastic display with perfect scaling. Hopefully other people don't make the same mistake.

[@mrmertozturk]

Oh man I have the *exact* same MB setup and I was looking for the same Dell monitor... Now things got a lot more complicated... I don't have the budget for the Apple monitor so I'm really not sure which monitor to get.

[@ChillumT]

@@mrmertozturk to be totally honest, I would go for a 1440p monitor. Or even better. Go a for dual 24” LG Ultrafine setup. The new version with dual thunderbolt connections. Another thing to consider was to go for a used Apple Thunderbolt Display. They are cheap now and hold the resell value if you regret.

[@mrmertozturk]

@@ChillumT Thanks for the reply. The thing is my old setup was a 32" 2k and a 24" 1080p. I do very little to no gaming. Almost 100% programming. And I am in the process of moving to a different country and thus will be building a new setup from scratch. I was thinking of a 32" 4k 60hz and a 27" 2k (or 4k maybe) 60hz setup. The more I research a proper monitor for my 14" MBP M1, the farther I am from actually choosing one lol.

[@ChillumT]

@@mrmertozturk sounds like we do similar work. My advice would be to stick with the proper Apple resolutions. At 27” go with 2k or 5k and at 4k 24” only. If the look at Apple 32” display they run it at 6k to keep the correct scaling. But hey… it’s up to you :)

[@lukaspictures]

@@mrmertozturk what exactly you didn't like about this setup? I am planning of buying this monitor for my 14 pro m1

[@grics667]

Excellent video - as always!

[@marekgitarzysta5193]

The best explanation I could find - good job!

[@vladibarraza]

You're nearly the only one that says don't worry too much about it. This whole conundrum about native scaling gave me headaches, 'cause I didn't want my MacBook to feel sluggish. But my base MacBook Air M1 has no problem at all running a 4k 27" display monitor. Just as you said. What I mean is thank you. PD: I bought a QHD monitor, used it with better display at a HiDPI, and decided to return it for a 4k monitor.

[@zaaap0]

It won't be sluggish as probably 99% of macbook pro users dont use >80% of it's potential. But text will look bad, images are not that sharp also.

[@vladibarraza]

@@zaaap0 Before I used the app Better Display the text wasn't sharp, but that app solved those problems you mentioned.

[@francescoliguori4708]

@@vladibarraza What settings do you set in BetterDisplay? With a 27’ 1080p monitor and Macbook Air M1 8/256 with BetterDisplay's HiDPI mode I notice a significant increase in temperature.

[@vladibarraza]

​@@francescoliguori4708 I use it at 2048x1152 HiDPI, 60Hz, without any issues at all. The text is tack sharp. Your issue with temperature may be due to how macOS handles the monitor's resolution. As you know, macOS multiplies everything by two and then scales it down to half the size. So, my system thinks that my monitor is 4096x2304, which is exactly double 2048x1152. My monitor is actually 3840x2160, but if I used that resolution, the text would be too small. I don't know how to help you other than to suggest ignoring the temperature. Your computer has processors that monitor the temperature and control how high it is allowed to go without causing damage to the components.

[@RonBearry]

Kyle, you are the only person to explain this concept in basic terms without over informing! Thank you! I just bought a new Mini to replace my obsolete 27" iMac. For a monitor I went with the very hyped BenQ PD322OU. The default resolution on my Mini with this monitor is 1920 x 1080. At this resolution UI elements are definitely larger than my old 5K iMac. But it's also kind of nice when my eyes get tired. But I wanted a second resolution that would provide more UI space when I need it. I went with 2304 x 1296. This is scaled of course but not too bad. I do however notice that the text is a little blurry when I look closely, certain bolded text, etc. Now I just need to decide if I can settle with it and have the flexibility or switch to a 5K display. Thanks again Kyle for the very straightforward explanation.

[@moderndaybeatlefan]

This video helped me out a lot! Thanks for this.

[@Jared-Pace]

Great video. The question I keep coming back to is if I’m going to scale a 4k display to 1440 why not just buy a native 1440 display?? Perhaps I’m missing something but I don’t see the value in a 4k display if I’m scaling it to a non native resolution. Personally I DO see a difference in image crispness when using scaled resolutions.

[@ChillumT]

I totally agree with you. I also see the difference. I use a native 1440p monitor at work for the same reason.

[@SR-mm2wz]

Because a 4K display scaled to 1440 looks sharper (depending on your eye sight) than a native 1440 panel. When you scale the 4K it virtually creates a 5k display and then halves it. I have a 4K 27 LG display and a 1440 27 LG display and I can easily see the difference in sharpness with both set to 1440. You seem to be saying this isn’t the case for you and you see better sharpness at native 1440p than retina 1440p (5k halved)?

[@ChillumT]

@@SR-mm2wz Yes. Maybe sharpness is a difficult thing to explain. Let me say like this. 4k look more “blurry”. Where 1440p looks more sharp though, with less pixels. And also scaling throughout all applications is correct.

[@SR-mm2wz]

@@ChillumT sounds ideal then. I don’t get how a lower PPI can ever look sharper than a higher PPI but you got to use what works best for you.

[@SR-mm2wz]

@@ChillumT just to double check you are upscaling to 5k first and then back down to 1440, you aren’t just scaling 4k down, as in that case I agree it world look worse and would prefer native 1440p.

[@HusainU]

Just bought a 4k monitor(Samsung ur55, 4k, 28') and running it off an m1 air 8gb. No issues so far, I use it mainly for school work and software development.

[@davidrenoz]

I have the same setup, and I'm finding the text blurred

[@vintage0x]

Great video, Kyle. I've run my M2 MacBook Air alongside a 27 inch 4K 144Hz monitor for a few months now, and I've had literally no performance or visual problems. I run it at the scaled "1440p" and it's perfectly sized, and looks great. I wish there was more prevalance of 5K/6K/8K monitors. Those extra PPI go a long long way in making text look extra beautiful, particularly to typeface-obsessed freaks like me.

[@kishorevb8331]

can you help me understand why everyone runs it on 1440p and not 4k

[@vintage0x]

@@kishorevb8331 there's a reason i put 1440p in "quote marks", Kishore. Context clues such as that are important! We don't mean actual 1440p, we mean running it at 4K resolution but at 1440p equivalent ***scaling***. So it appears at 1440p size but actually it's just 3840x2160 scaled, as laid out in this video.

[@user_es1]

Hi! Do you know if 27 1440p screens are good for Macs. The thing is that I’m considering to buy a macbook, and only have both 1080p and 1440p screens. Thanks !

[@vintage0x]

@@user_es1 both 27” 1440p and 2160p (4K) are good for mac, but people have said scaling works better at 1440p. Go with what works best for your budget & use case.

[@maulerjan]

​@@vintage0x What? No. 27" 1440p has 109 PPI and Mac looks terrible on that. You need a 4k monitor scaled to 1440p to make it okay to look at. 5k scaled to 1440p is even better, but there are no real options for buying a 5k monitor.

[@AaronFigFront]

💛HiDPI is not mentioned. That is a really important feature, literally why 2x exact scaling looks sharper than others without the 3rd party apps to enable HiDPI.

[@dmug]

Man, I thought about making this video but this is so good I don't think I have anything to contribute. This is a great video,.

[@KyleErickson]

thanks! I really appreciate it!

[@akin242002]

Thanks for this video. QHD seems to be the best choice monitor for those that cannot afford a $3k 5k iMac or Apple 5k Monitor in general.

[@Technoholicplus]

I have excatly same monitor and m2 mac with 16 gigs of ram, thanks for making this video.

[@dario3765]

Congratulations on the quality of your analysis!

[@bickybickford]

Thank you for the information, I am looking for a new monitor for my Mac Studio and was worried about 4K monitors but I am no longer worried.

[@alex-pattison]

Great video! Helps demystify the topic.

[@martin_isla]

Really great video! Just a comment regarding the explanation at the beginning of the "4K Scaled Performance" section. We can't compare pooling and batching to actual screen refresh because those are two completely different things. Batching saves CPU and memory, which is great and highly appreciated, but that's completely unrelated to refreshing the display. I know it's just an example, but I feel like the comparison and conclusion isn't relevant to the video. Displays do need to redraw 60+ times per second and the Mac does need to render at a given resolution and downscale every time. This doesn't mean things need to be recalculated, but again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the display. And finally, this isn't as terrible for performance as it sounds. You can think of it as taking a screenshot and resizing it. Once everything is rendered and you get the final (for example) 5K image you just need to downscale it, which is fairly quick and explains why there's virtually no difference between native and downscaled resolutions.

[@evindrews]

It annoys me so much this is apples solution. They should be able to provide clean scaling, there's no reason you can't scale by 1.5x. Rendering at 5k then trying to squeeze that into a 4k screen is unnecessary

[@jcantin9491]

Thank you very much for your point of view on the subject. It has convinced me to go for a 4k monitor

Can't agree with you. Scaling has impact on the performance and it's clearly visible e.g. in Blender when you rotate some complicated model in the viewport. You can also just open same model in the viewport and then open also the preferences window. Next, try to move this preferences window over the viewport. You will see how low fps it is in scaled mode comparing to the native 4k. It may not be noticeable when web browsers, text editors, some IDE or other less demanding apps are used. Usually I use scaled mode most of the time, and switch to native 4k when working with graphics. Of course the better machine you have, the less you see this problem. I have MacBook Air M1 16/512 and it is quite noticeable even when switching desktops with lot of windows open.

[@ashatron656]

Agreed. On a mac m1 pro I noticed text legibility was noticeably worse at "looks like 1440p" vs 100% or 200% scaling.

[@zoltangacsi5331]

@@ashatron656m1 max. Same here

[@Eric_Elephant]

Would it be wise to simply buy a 1440p

[@justalostlocal]

​@@Eric_Elephantheard that 1440p monitor has mushy text. I use discord a lot. It would drive me crazy.

[@kumardeepanshu8503]

Bro should I by 2k or 4K , I am very confused,

[@TheGabriel75011]

Best video of this topic and great community in the comments too Thanks a lot

[@socialwill]

I think 5k 27” or 32” is a good sweet spot for the Mac as it can give you a good sharp image, but be easy for macOS to scale. For me I would like to see a 5k 32” with a higher refresh rate of 120.

[@murtadha96]

Untill a new type (or revision) of connector comes out, nothing can handle that much bandwidth.

[@socialwill]

@@murtadha96 TB5 is looks to give us that bandwidth

[@niter43]

@@murtadha96 DisplayPort 2.0 can support 5k@159Hz with 10 bit color, without DSC

[@maulerjan]

@@niter43 Yeah, I wish there was a monitor that could run 5k@120+hz 😭

[@PEMAMETAL]

The 5k 27" is ideal for mac, so as 21.5" 4k. The 5k 32" is not because it has 183 PPI. The important thing is to keep around 220PPI, otherwise text will look very big with the 2x factor scaling that will be suggested as default by macOS. In order to have a regular text size you will have to choose a scaling factor that is not 1x or 2x, making macOS work harder the same way a 4k 27" does when chosen 1440p resolution

[@TheAppleLoadout]

Great content. Brilliant presentation. Such a shame that those leaks and rumors channels have 20x subscribers than this professional.

[@MarbsMusic]

Very thorough explanation, thank you!

[@SulemanKhan-kn9mj]

From what i understand its if you have 4k montior better to go with 1080p resolution, yes you will have less space but it will look good and if you need extra space then either go with native 2k where text will be blury compare to 4k with 1080p or if you have budget then go for 5k so can you can use at 2k resolution

[@foobar6846]

I'm not sure what why you would think that rendering a picture in blender would give noticeable performance differences based on scaling. You're rendering the same amount of pixels. After you've experienced true 2x scaling with a 5k panel and 1440p resolution you'll never want to go back. The difference is night and day. But given the price of current 5k panels it might not be worth it to most people. So if you're unsure and are looking for reviews either for or against a 5k panel, just don't. Buy the monitor and try it for yourself. I'm pretty certain you won't return it.

[@arturoglz.1057]

I had'nt seen any good explanation obout the scaling issue, until now!

[@rsr789]

Fantastic video! Thank you for posting!

[@michaelwerner5165]

Thanks. An extremely helpful video, which helps debunk myths around scaling and performance

[@raytsh]

Great, best video on that topic! Thanks!

[@FireBlade57]

Finally someone explained this properly! Thanks a lot!

[@timforcade1029]

Excellent video! Thanks

[@Mzansi74]

Thanks Kyle. Great explanation!

[@picchioknossus8096]

Man I appreciate your point of view but you are assuming that everyone has enough computing power for the scaling to not matter and that is just not the case. As long as your Gpu can keep up with it you don't notice the difference. The benchmarks also do not matter as in order to benchmark something the benchmark has to control the resolution, so most likely you are running the benchmarks at 1080p non scaled or something like that. Le me make a clear example: On a Macbook pro 15 2015 with dedicated graphics if you scale the internal display to non integer scaling the scrolling becomes painful in many applications. On an external display at 4k it gets even worse to the point where any scaling different than default and non scaled is not usable. It gets even worse with a Macbook pro 13 2015 as that model does not have a dedicated Gpu. If you disconnect the power supply the hardware gets throttled to the point where on the 13inch moving a window on a 4k external monitor without integer scaling results in massive lags. So of course I do believe you that you don't see any difference in performance. It's enough to have more performance to not notice it. I'm not expecting this to be a problem for anyone using an M1/M2 modern machine. Edit: I was almost forgetting about one thing: screen-capturing and streaming. Not a chance in hell that you will be able to use OBS on an Intel mac with non integer scaling at a resolution higher than 720p. The quicktime recorder is also ridiculus, it tries to record at native resolution with 5-10fps making the system lag to hell.

[@mysteriousboozebunny6534]

Something I've been asking myself for years is, why do display manufacturers insist on using the same resolution on multiple different display sizes, completely disregarding pixel density? It just doesn't make sense. Why not aim to give every customer 2x scaling?

[@vsk.design]

FINALLY SOMEONE DID IT. Thank you, subscribed

[@ct9328]

It’s so interesting that there are almost no 4k monitors around 21/24 inches, even in 2022. I bought a 27-inch LG 4k monitor, but that’s too large for me. I will return it. iMac is expensive for me as I only want a monitor instead of a computer. LG’s 21/24 inch 4k monitors are about the same price as iMacs. Therefore, I tried my MacBook air with 1080p and 1440p monitors but the resolution was awful, horribly blurry. Please produce high-resolution monitors for those who want around 21-24 inches. It should not be that hard.

[@thedevhow]

find a used Dell P2415Q, it's 23.8" 4K and looks great at 2x scaled, even without being in the 218ppi perfect zone.

[@tutubeos]

Thank you very much. I’m about to buy a monitor for my new Mac studio, but I was really getting frustrated about the PPI matter: being near 110 or 220 PPI is good, anything else is bad. At the end, I think we should buy whatever we like and test it.

[@prakhar1144]

What did you end up buying?

[@InsaneFilms]

Great explanation. Thank you.

[@apolayil]

Mac has a tendency to set 4K displays to scale with LoDPI (non-retina). This makes the image quality slightly blurry and makes the text especially not crisp. The app betterdisplay forces HiDPI (retina) mode which tremendously improves the crispness of the images and especially makes the text sharp similar to native macbook and ipad dispalys. I highly recommend it as it will solve most mac image quality issues.

[@continuouslearner]

i tried betterdisplay and even paid for the pro version but it did not offer me a hiDPI option.

[@pgulyas]

Very good explanation, thanks a lot!

[@darrenrowley5646]

I just purchased the asus 279crv on an m1 MacBook Pro. I wanted to specifically edit photos. I saw a video with a guy saying he returned it due to the scaling issue. From using it I don’t understand what he’s talking about the text is sharp in Adobe rgb and pixel density seems fine zooming in on images. The only time I had an issue was when I switched hdr on the Mac and I got flickering when I moved the mouse in Lightroom so switched it off and it was fine. The other issue I had with text was when I put sharpness to 100% on the monitor setting and on screen the text pixalized and looked bad, so I put it back to zero and looked great again. I think people have issues with monitors because they don’t understand the monitors settings. Only thing I noticed dosnt look so good was watching Disney + hd movies and didn’t look 4K like it does on my 4K tv.

[@EnokMadrid]

I just got the LG 40" 40wp95-w, it's a 5k2k monitor. Scaling issue is there but barely noticeable, the blurriness is minimal and I haven't had any performance issues. The default resolution makes the interface very tiny and the next native resolution without the scaling/performance warning makes the interface huge. So to hit the sweet spot I have to used a scaled resolution. Thanks for this video and all the research/ tests performed.. I feel at ease knowing I shouldn't worry about scaling issues since this monitor was a big investment.

[@Brithor]

What chip are you using? I'm looking at buying this monitor but worried my base M2 chip is not going to cut it.

[@EnokMadrid]

@@Brithor M1 Mac mini

[@markeissler]

@@Brithor Probably not a good idea. Neither is the M1 Mac mini. They just don't have the GPU processing power and I bet that for every negative review you see on KZbin or threads like this it probably comes down to: 1) I'm running an Intel Mac; 2) I'm running the most affordable base model M1/M2 MB or MBP I could find. You're likely to find better success with a native 5k monitor (the 5k2k is just a gimmick, it's 5k horizontally but it's a 4k vertically) otherwise you'll still run into needing to scale and a lesser machine just won't perform well.

[@EnokMadrid]

Mac mini, M1 with 16gb ram... I run design software with large files. Video editing. Zoom calls while presenting my screen with all design and browser software running. So far so good, I haven't had performance issues from the monitor. It's all smooth.

[@CraftsmanontheLake]

Good explanation... We needed to get this ironed.

[@jayzn1931]

This is really confusing. I first heard about the from "Hunter King", who made a video about why he returned his 4K monitor and got a 2K one: Blender viewport performance was bad. It did make sense to me that this would consume a lot more resources, as it is rendering in higher resolution than 4K. You showed us your tests, showing that there is virtually no difference. I am thinking, that Hunter King simply got worse performance, because he compared it to the internal display of his Macbook, which is close to 2K, so of course with a 1440p monitor this should be better. Anyhow, I am still not sure what's the case now. I mean, for all 3D applications, the performance should be quite noticeable, as the scaling needs all the performance that the higher resolution needs, right? Will look into Artisrights video about that as well...

[@nishilvy]

Awesome. Exactly what the doctor prescribed. Thanks so much!

[@vasileandreicalin2685]

I got a mb pro 16 2019 with 16gb ram and i7 and sometimes my mac slows down a lot with 2 4k monitor and the scaling to 1440p. With the new silicon chips maybe it's not an issue but with my config sometimes gives me problems... I wish i had bought 2 qhd monitors and not 4k or even a super ultra wide .

[@onlyvik]

Great information thanks. The new Benq PD3225U is on my list. Seems like a great option with my Macbook Pro 16 inch M1 Max

[@maulikjadav9673]

Great video. Liked and subscription added. Keep going 👍