It's not about smaller text size, it's about clarity, with a proper scaling (like on Mac OS) 4K can have the same font sizes as on smaller resolutions, the clarity tho will be incredibly better.

And to add to that, higher DPI usually = less inter-pixel gap, which for some people reduces eye-strain.

That's personal preference. I prefer more screen real estate over larger font's at higher clarity.

But with 8K you can have the same font size as you currently have with 4K but with a better clarity...

Huh since when does macOS have 'proper' scaling? I usually only hair complaints... same with windows 10 for old apps.

Can you give me an example? I've been using retina macbooks since the day they were released, and I've never seen a single issue with scaling...

Ah never had issues with my retina mbp or 12". Unless I connected it to an external display. Which is where people seem to complain.

Used it with 27 Cinema Display for couple years, never had issues with scaling , now switched to 32 inch 4K from asis and its also working perfect.

macOS is the only OS that gets it right.

You can even drag a window from a HiDPI monitor to an old fashioned one and it will do what's right.

> and while the additional definition might be "nice," I certainly can't work with any "smaller" text.

I never understand why people say things like this. Why not just throw more pixels at text rendered in a readable font? Does DPI scaling not work on their operating systems?

As my monitor resolutions have gotten larger, my text on screen hasn't become smaller at all. I simply go with a higher fidelity. Isn't that what most people do?

I go smaller including on my retina displays. My point is I'd love to eliminate 4x 4K monitors with 1x or 2x 8k display, they just need to be larger than 32".

I don't think most people do that, they don't go smaller.

Also, do you know what a larger than 32" display is going to do to your poor neck?

Resolution has very little to do with smaller text.

If it does, you're doing something wrong.

(It does improve legibility of small text, I'll grant you that)

Not true, the default settings on OSX on a retina display give you an effective lower resolution with higher clarity. I opt for the higher resolution with lower quality. It effectively makes your text, windows, buttons, icons, smaller.

So resolution has something to do with larger text then? ;-)

Anyway, on iMac Apple doubled the resolution (quadrupled the number of pixels) when they introduced the "retina" versions so there was no font size change.

I'm using a single 44" Vizio 4K TV for my main monitor attached to a Dell XP 15 laptop which acts as a second monitor (it also has a 4K screen).

I picked 44" as the optimal size for me by standing 3 feet in front of all the 4K TVs at my local warehouse store and seeing what sized TV let me see the entire screen without swiveling my head - 48" was just a little too big.

My 4K screen works really well in Windows 10 other than a couple of old apps that don't to font scaling for their title bar correctly. I have the TV scaling at 125% and the laptop scaling at 250%. I'm not sure what an 8K screen would do for me as a programmer.

>I'm not sure what an 8K screen would do for me as a programmer.

Maybe you wouldn't be stuck with monochrome bitmap fonts for good clarity. AA on 4k is still quite uncomfortable in comparison.

How is the response time? I thought using my 40" 4k Samsung TV had too much "mouse lag" for desktop use.

I don't notice any lag at all.

One thing I also did before I bought the exact model was do a little research -- the TV I bought has 1 HDMI port (out of the 5 available on it) that runs at 60Hz instead of 30Hz like the other 4 ports. I use that port for my laptop. I also read online that that port also skips the "Ultra HD engine" in the TV but I can't find that in the tech specs.

Btw, while I was looking for the tech specs I realized I have a 43" TV not a 44" (https://www.vizio.com/m43c1.html)

That might be due to HDMI, if I remember correctly HDMI 2 supports 4k at 60hz, but HDMI 1 can only do 30hz. If you have display port on it, use that instead and you should be good.

I have two Samsung 4k monitors and they are unbearable to use with HDMI at 4k, I had to get a new video card to drive them both over display port.

Forgive my ignorance since I've been on Mac for so long, but does windows still not do UI scaling?

It does scaling well now and also handles multiple monitors much better than macos. I love that it doesn't matter what displayport I use, Windows remembers the monitors and doesn't force you to swap cables until your monitors position match their configuration in the OS.

It does scaling well for apps which have been updated to fully support the UWP scaling APIs. Everything else is quite disappointing and wildly inconsistent. In my business, apps which use the UWP account for maybe 15% of usage time? I've encountered many situations where one cannot even achieve clear text, at any size, for a given app without overriding the default scaling system and using the "not recommended" custom scaling factor (i.e. the legacy controls).

Multiple monitor support on Windows 10 I've also found to be very dependent on your graphics drivers and hardware configuration, as it always has been.

Windows does UI scaling, but you can't say the same for it's application ecosystem. Any app with a custom UI needs to explicitly support scaling.

Windows has HiDPI support pretty well nailed down AFAIK. Laptops like the Dell XPS have been shipping with HiDPI screens for a while.

Linux support is spottier, especially when using multiple displays of varying DPIs, but even Gnome works pretty well on a HiDPI laptop these days.

> Linux support is spottier, especially when using multiple displays of varying DPIs, but even Gnome works pretty well on a HiDPI laptop these days.

Actually, Gnome is the only one that doesn’t do proper HiDPI support. It only supports 96 and 192dpi - not any other ratio.

In comparison, Qt supports different ratios for every screen, all ratios specified as float – you can even scale up, down, whatever.

The environment variable used is

    QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=DisplayPort-2=1.75;HDMI-A-0=1.08;

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 on a Dell XPS 13 (3200x1800) and it works well as long as I use 2.0 as the magnification value. Other values such as 1.83 are broken.

I'm using XFCE (Debian unstable) on a Zenbook (3200x1800) and that works really well too. There isn't a magnification value to set - rather you set the display DPI.

Windows 7 is still pretty bad. Maybe windows 10 is better

Forgive me, but windows 7's last large update (Service Pack 1) was "February 22, 2011; 6 years ago" according to wikipedia. As this was before high resolution monitors really took off at all, you can see why windows 7 doesn't have great support.

I can't say anything about windows 10's support (The highest I have is 1080p)

Windows 7 is what my company and many others still use. I only described what I have seen.

It sort of is, in that it sort of works... but scaling on Windows 10 still introduces a bunch of UX issues. Especially if you pair a Retina laptop with a 1080p external and try and use both side by side.

DPI scaling is pretty good, only time it's an issue is when people use older versions of qt or Windows forms (?) which shouldn't​ be an issue for many people.

Sort of, but a lot of stuff doesn't scale. Java apps, things like WebEx...

Actually, Java Swing and JavaFX do scale. JavaFX does not scale on Linux, though, because it uses GTK to determine the scale ratio, and GTK is still broken.

Qt’s had QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=DisplayPort-2=1.75;HDMI-A-0=1.08; for years, but GTK still only supports one global scale factor, and that’s limited to 96dpi or 192dpi.

So JavaFX only scales to these, while Java Swing scales perfectly (but still only handles one global scale factor)