It's even worse than I thought!
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=4k+monitor+24...
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HMUA2VC/A/lg-ultrafine-4k...
There appears to be exactly one 24" 4K display being sold. Which is more a niche than a good number.
My theory is that most people, for all practical purposes, are blind.
So at 24” 4K does everything looks nice and smooth without scaling like a built in Retina display?
I spend most of my day watching a screen, and I want it to be perfect. Because of this, I would be tempted to buy the new Apple display. However, buying an iMac makes much more economic sense. I have no idea why display manufacturers can't get the details right.
Windows and Gnome look gorgeous at 2x rendering. macOS does too, but that's expected.
Where are you getting this? I was looking at monitors recently and it's impossible to find ANY 24" 4K monitors. Most of them are 27", which at that screen size you really need scaling. My LG 27" 4K recently went out so I downgraded to my older 1440p 27" monitor. I'm not using scaling anymore, but the text doesn't have that buttery smooth look...