Ok, as far as I know the DPI problem starts with M1 macs, meaning the text rendering looks terrible if DPI is < 150.

AFAIK it’s nothing to do with Intel/Arm swap over.

macOS in recent years dropped support for antialiasing because Apple (+ the UltraFines they sold) displays are all[1] high dpi.

The other issue with a PPI of 150 is you’ll likely end up needing to use a non-evenly scaled resolution to get things “sized” right, so even basic things like a 1px line won’t be crisp, because it won’t be rendered as 1 solid pixel.

1: Yes I know the 24” 4K isn’t quite the same “high dpi”.

ok thanks. makes sense.

Is there any fundamental guidelines one can follow as far as PPI goes so that the monitor doesn't look miserable? I am looking for something reasonably large and quality that doesn't break the bank.

You want 100-130 dpi or over 200 dpi. Avoid the bad zone in between (which includes most monitors on the market).

Thank you so much for your helpful responses. At 100dpi how does the monitor look compared to the Macbook retina screen? Does it look fuzzy?