There’s more to take into account other than just resolution, like

• color space coverage (100% sRGB is quite affordable nowadays, I wouldn’t go less than this; on the other hand, >95% DCI-P3 or AdobeRGB still on the expensive side in comparison and not as widespread),
• screen type,
• brightness, and
• refresh rate.

And resolution itself should be paired with monitor size for it to be meaningful. For example:

• 24 inch monitor at 1080p = 92 PPI
• 24 inch monitor at 2160p = 184 PPI
• 32 inch monitor at 2160p = 138 PPI
• 46 inch monitor at 2160p = 96 PPI

In Windows and Linux anything around 92 to 98 PPI gives you easily readable text at 100% scaling. This is a good baseline. There are PPI calculators online: https://dpi.lv/

The 24 inch screen at 2160p (which is 4K) has twice the pixel density of the 24 inch screen at 1080p. That means if you would set your display resolution scaling in the OS to 200% you’d get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling>. However, because the density is much higher, everything looks much clearer.

The benefits are larger when reading text, IMO. You still notice an improvement with movies, of course. Mobile phones and tablets, even the cheaper ones, usually have significantly higher pixel density than computer monitors which is one reason they look better.

Of the three examples above, the 24 inch monitor at 4K will look better than the other three monitors because it has higher PPI. (Assuming all else is equal like screen type, color coverage, brightness, etc.)

I feel like I would want a proportionally larger monitor to keep the same DPI

Let’s say you want a new monitor. I suggest looking at the PPI and not just the resolution or monitor size in isolation. These two units should be paired.

For example, a 32 inch monitor at 4K has 138 PPI. The font will be tiny at 100% scaling but that’s expected. In this case it so happens that 1.5 x 92 PPI = 138 PPI. So by going to the OS display settings and increasing scaling to 150% you get the same font size as <24 inch, 1080p, 100% scaling> but everything looks clearer.

The 46 inch monitor above is 4K but because the screen is so large this comes out at only 96 PPI. So in terms of quality it would be quite close to the 24 inch monitor at 1080p.

PPI is one of the most important characteristics but don’t disregard the rest. Try at least full sRGB coverage. And for panel type IPS is a good choice if you can afford it. (I’m afraid of OLED because of burn-in issues and I can’t afford to replace monitors like they’re socks. And mini-led is very expensive.)

About the refresh rate, I don’t game and for movies it’s kind of useless. But I do notice a difference moving the mouse and scrolling pages on the browser. (My external monitors are 60 hz and my laptop is >100 hz.)

On a side note, Apple laptop screens tend to look nice because they have high PPI and good color coverage (among other things) whereas PC/Linux laptops for the most part have low spec screens. This doesn’t have to be the case, of course. My work laptop (I’m using Linux) has >200 PPI with near 100% DCI-P3 and fonts look great on it.

I had a 1440p monitor and “downgraded” back to 1080p when it broke because I could barely tell the difference when gaming and I get a significantly higher framerate in most games at 1080p, which does make a big difference for me.

I moved from a 1080p monitor to a 1440p one for my main display and it’s actually really worthwhile. Not only is your daily computing sharper, but multitasking becomes easier because smaller windows are still legible.

IMO it’s a lot easier on the eyes when things are sharper, too.

1080p is still more than enough, but I think 1440p is worth it for a screen you’re using for hours every day :)

1440p at regular monitor size is probably all you’d need, but the annoying issue is that 1080p content looks worse on that than it does on a 1080p monitor

I was a skeptic; “I can’t see all the pixels unless I’m as close to the screen as the screen is wide, why bother?”

Then I went over to my friend’s place and watched some stuff on his 4K OLED. Holy shit. So I can’t see all the pixels, but turns out that only perceiving 2.5-3x the data is still a big improvement.

I’m still not gonna pay for one until they get a lot cheaper.

1080p is just fine, but it’s not good and definitely not great. If you’ve tried a high DPI display like the ones on MacBooks, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Using a computer at 200% scaling just makes everything so much more pleasing to look at, especially the text. The pixels are gone, so everything looks sharp and smooth. I really cannot wait for 5K 27" monitors with high refresh rates to come out. This will likely be an instant buy from me, except if it’s like 2 grand.

General high DPI with the same relative UI scale as 24" 1080p, but with much sharper visuals:

24" 4k 27" 5k 32" 6k

And the good thing is you can always set your game to use half the resolution and it will look as if it was the lowdpi equivalent, because the pixels are simply grouped using 3 neighbors, no fractional scale BS.

My laptop has a 3072*1920 screen that I use at 200% scale on Linux, and I wouldn’t buy anything that doesn’t work well at 200%. Apple seem like the only ones who understood this with MacOS that is designed to be used at 200% on basically ALL their retina monitors. this is why they have weird definitions, because they need to hit 200%, and based on the size of the display, a standard resolution won’t reach exactly 200% and the UI will be too small or too large.

well, you get more pixels. -> more room.

i needed more pixels/room, so i got me a 4k 55" (139cm) tv for a display and it’s basically like four 1080p displays seamlessly fused together. of course, you can also sit far away and upscale everything and things will look slightly smoother, like pixels will be even less noticeable.

some details in fullscreen pictures become visible that would require zooming in on 1080p, because on 4k fullscreen basically is like 1080p already zoomed in.

a problem are color gradients: without HDR on 4k you can now see there’s not enough colors in 24bit colorspace (000000 - FFFFFF 8bit per channel without alpha/transparency) to fill large areas with gradients. you have to spread/dither to get a smooth gradient on a 24bit 4k wallpaper, but it’s a small price to pay for more room.

Since you are convinced about the higher resolution, you really are going to enjoy it.

But let me urge you to also buy a higher refresh rate. The same discussion applies here.

Even if the human eye can’t count the pixels or the frames, you WILL perceived it as more relaxing on the eye.

I’ve used 4k and 1440p monitors, and my TV is 4k as well. For desktop use, 4k isn’t really a big difference because of the hardware needed to run it at a decent speed. However, once I got my hands on a 170hz 1440p monitor, I can’t go back to anything less. It’s extreme noticeable. The higher refresh rate, and the reasonable upgrade in pixel density makes text much clearer, especially in motion.

For content viewing though, 4k on a TV it depends on how much of your field of view is occupied by the TV. Most of time though, a high quality panel is worth much more than higher pixel density. There is a massive difference between a basic 4k big box store TV, and 4k LG oled. The color, even outside of HDR content is just so much better, and the true actual black color is fantastic. Resolution is nice, but honestly, oled color is so good.

On a 27" monitor, it makes a huge deal for things like web-browsing, spreadsheets, etc. For video games, its not something I generally notice the difference in with a notable exception being Terraria. Having smaller UI (but still clear) to give more usable space is the main benefits imo.

I have a 4k TV and don’t get it either. Watched the odd video in 4k and the colors are maybe a bit crisper, but that’s about it. I’d have to compare movies side by side to actually spot the difference.

Not worth it IMHO.

Can’t tell for screens though, I don’t even know whether mine does 4k or not. Was part of the home-office package from my company. I’ll have to check that tomorrow, only returning from a business trip tonight.

On my 4k 32" usually I run 4 programs at the same time, one at each corner. It’s like having 4 1080p screens (I keep scaling at 100%)

Higher resolutions are needed for larger displays (45’+) if you want to look at them closer. Other than that a higher resolution can look slightly better but the performance hit usually isn’t worth it. Idk about professional use cases though. I’m not a designer. Btw I use a 35’ 1366x768 (or something like that) monitor

I have a 1440p 24 " monitor with 120 DPI setting.
Resolution is much better for fonts - helps with my astigmatism.

The 1440p is a compromise between price and performance.

If you can, go to the electronic shops and see in person.

I can definitely see the improvement, even just between my desktop monitor (27in 1440p) and the same resolution at 16 inch on my laptop. Text is very nice and sharp. I’m definitely looking at 4K or even 5K next monitor upgrade cycke.

But the improvement is far from how much of an upgrade 480p to 1080p and moving away from CRTs to flat screens. 1080p was a huge thing when I was in highschool as CRT TVs were being phased out in favor of those new TVs.

For media I think 1080p is good enough. I’ve never gone “shit, I only downloaded the 1080p version”. I like 4K when I can have it like on YouTube and Netflix, but 1080p is still a quite respectable resolution otherwise. The main reason to go higher resolutions for me is text. I’m happy with FSR to upscale the games from 1080p to 1440p for slightly better FPS.

HDR is interesting and might be what convinces people to upgrade from 1080p. On a good TV it feels like more of an upgrade than 4K does.