Higher Image Quality

Imagine that you have some blocks and are asked to arrange them into a circle.

Now you are given four times the amount of blocks but they are a quarter of the size and you repeat the the task.

Despite being the same size the second circle would look smoother, less blocky, and more detailed than the first one.

This is the reason why higher resolution screens and images look better quality, because the building blocks of the image (the pixels) are usually smaller and there are more of them available to use.

Resolution & Screen Size – The Consideration That Many Forget

If your goal is to have more space on your monitors to display more stuff then stepping up in resolution is only useful if you increase the size of the screen.

Why is this? If you have two 24” screens and one has four times the amount of pixels of the other, the pixels on the higher resolution screen need to be a quarter of the size of the ones on the original screen.

This means everything displayed on the monitor is a quarter of its original size, often making things very difficult to read or interact with.

Windows deals with this small pixel problem by scaling up everything displayed on the screen, this works great but reduces the amount of usable space.

Why is this? If you need to make text the same size as on the original 24” screen to be able to read it clearly then Windows has to increase the size of everything back to the size that is was on the original 24” screen.

It does this by increasing the number of pixels used to display things on the screen, a chart which was 400 pixels wide now becomes 800 pixels wide. This scaling uses all those extra pixels you had, resulting in this higher resolution screen only being able to display the same amount of information as the lower resolution one.

The only way to utilise this extra space is if you don’t scale the Windows interface, and the only way to do that (without resorting to using a magnifying glass) is to make the pixels bigger by increasing the size of the screen.

Size & Resolution Sweet Spots

We have done the math, and have tested things for you in the ‘real world’, for anyone without significant vision problems here are the resolutions and sizes you should consider:

FHD // 1920 x 1080 Resolution

This is a typical resolution for a 21.5” – 24” widescreen monitor and it works perfectly at that size with no scaling required. Going up to a 27” at this resolution would make things look bigger on-screen so this is a good option for people who require that.

QHD // 2560 x 1440 Resolution

A great resolution at the right screen size, this offers 77% more usable space than an FHD resolution, so four of these would display the same as seven FHD monitors.

We recommend a minimum of 25” for QHD screens, with 27” being far more common and often lower cost.

4K // 3840 x 2160 Resolution

Often talked about and often misunderstood, a 4K resolution offers 4 times the amount of space as an FHD monitor but you need to drastically increase the size of the screen to actually take advantage of the extra pixels.

You would need a 40” sized screen to avoid scaling, even a 32” 4K monitor would require scaling to some degree. Anything smaller than this at 4K is more aimed at gamers or graphic designers rather than at someone looking for a usable space increase.

What About UltraWides?

Ultrawide monitors are becoming more common, physically (as you may expect) they tend to be very wide screens, often curved.

In terms of resolution they usually have a large amount of pixels to use horizontally, but suffer vertically compared to a traditional multi-screen setup.

Generally you find most ultrawide monitors offer the same as two standard screens side by side, this means you get resolutions like 3840 x 1080 which is the equivalent of two FHD (1920 x 1080) monitors side by side, or 5120 x 1440, which is two QHD screens side by side.

Scaling is not usually an issue with Ultrawide screens as they have been designed big enough to use without the tiny pixel problem.