The Problem With Using 1440 Screens With a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me tell you why you should avoid using a 1440 display with a Mac. 

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Now most Macs come with a built-in display. All MacBooks, of course, and also the iMac. But some Macs, like the MacMini and MacPro, you need to get an external display to even use the Mac. Other times with some of those other Macs, like MacBooks, you want to get a second display. So when you shop online for displays you're going to find many different types. Most displays are going to be about 27". That's 27" diagonally. Although you'll find ones that are larger and smaller than that. But the main difference between the displays is the resolution. How many pixels are on the display. You're going to find two different types that appear a lot. One is called a 4K Screen. Lots of these types of displays out there. The 1440 ones are a little bit cheaper and you're going to hear lots of people, particularly gamers, singing their praises. So you're going to wonder why not go with one of those displays instead of a 4K display.

Well, let's start first by looking at the display themselves. This is what you get when you get a 1440 display. It's 2560 pixels across and 1440 pixels high. This gives you a total of about 3.7 million pixels on the screen. But what about a 4K screen. A 4K screen is 3840 pixels across and 2160 pixels vertically. Now these numbers may not look too different. 2500 versus 3800; 1440 versus 2160. But in fact a 4K display is twice as many pixels. More than 7 million pixels than a 1440 display. Keep in mind these screens would normally be about the same size, 27". So 3½ million versus 7 million pixels on the same screen size. Let's taks a look at what this would look like. Here's a 4K display and a 4K display has got all these little pixels. We're looking at the upper left hand corner. Let's zoom in a little bit more so you can see these individual boxes that are pixels. Now if this is a 4K display and we were to superimpose on top of that a 1440 display this is what the pixels look like. You can see how much bigger here the pixels are. So imagine the same things on the screen for both displays. You've got a much finer look to a 4K display than a 1440 display. Again, here's the 4K display. Here's the 1440 display.

Now when you use a 1440 display you have basically two ways to use it. One is at its full resolution. So 2560 pixels across. That's built-in to the display. That's the physical aspect to the display. But if you use that as 2560 pixels across virtually, in other words displaying all the interface elements of all your apps at that resolution, you get something like this. Look at how small the menu looks at the upper left. Look how small all the bits of text look. You have plenty of space to put different windows and have different apps on the screen at the same time. But everything is really small. Now Macs are built to use screens as high DPI screens. In other words more than one physical pixel representing a virtual pixel in the interface. Apple calls this Retina, Retina Display. So if you were to use a 1440 screen in retina mode you would have to take 2 pixels across and 2 pixels vertically, in other words a 4 pixel group, as one pixel. You would get virtually this which allows you to see everything really nice. Text looks really nice. Images look really nice. It's really easy to see except that you don't have much screen real estate. You only really have 1280 pixels across, or 720 vertically to display things. All the physical pixels on your screen are being used, but they are being used to make the text look finer and the images look clearer. It looks great but everything is bigger. So using a 1440 display optimally you really have a choice between everything being really small and there being lots of space or everything being really big and looking clearer but not having a lot of space. 

Now wouldn't it be great if you can go right in the middle of that. Well, that's actually what you get when you use a 4K display. Use a 4K display using high DPI or retina and you get 1920 pixels across and 1080 vertically. You get this. Something right in-between the too small and too big that you get with 1440. You have a nice compromise between having space on the screen but still having everything look good and text is easy to read. 

So being this and seeing how much better 4K screens are why are 1440 displays so popular? Well, they are mostly popular among gamers and for good reason. First of all there is a little history there. 1440 displays appeared at a time when 1920 by 1080 screens were more standard. In other words, non-retina displays. So going to 1440 from 1080 was a jump in resolution. Things looked a lot better. So for awhile gamers had better resolution than people using their computers for like regular computing tasks. In addition, since there are fewer pixels you can spend money elsewhere. Instead of having higher resolution you can have higher refresh rates or better brightness or blacker blacks. That kind of thing. Gamers really value these especially since the screen is refreshing just about every pixel all the time at a really high frame rate and this is what makes games look good. But if you're starring at a webpage that isn't changing for several seconds or a minute or working at a word processor with the only thing changing is a space where you're actually typing new letters, then that high refresh rate isn't as important. It's much better to have more pixels. 

Also since 1440 has half the number of pixels of 4K that means the graphics card only has half as many pixels to deal with. So it could be spending some of its power on higher frame rates, rendering 3D graphics and textures and all of that rather than having twice as many pixels to take care of. But if you're using your computer for regular computing tasks, browsing the web, word processing, spreadsheets, editing video as opposed to simply watching video, things like that, then you probably want to prioritize higher resolution, have that 4K screen, and have your Mac screen right there at that sweet spot where things aren't too small or aren't too big. For instance here's iMovie running on a 1440 high DPI screen. You could see everything is pretty big. There's not much space there and you compare that with using a 4K screen and now it's a much better experience. This is more what iMovie is designed to look like. Here's Xcode running on 1440 and high DPI. You can see everything is pretty big. It's easy to read and all of that but you're really quickly going to get overwhelmed with all the little windows and panels and things you need when coding. You have much more screen real estate when using a 4K screen. But yet things still aren't too small. 

So what about if you were to take a 1440 display and decide to actually set it to 1920 by 1080. In other words the same resolution that you would set a 4K screen to. After all 2560 by 1440 is still greater than 1920 by 1080. So why not? Why not set it to that middle resolution. Well, here's what you get. On the left you'll see a 4K display and you'll see how it's normally used. Each of the blue squares is showing a physical screen pixel and each of the white squares is showing kind of a virtual pixel of your interface. It's really nice at high DBI because a group of 4 equals 1 virtual pixel. So you're just getting a higher resolution inside that pixel. The same thing when you're using a1440 screen as 1280 by 720. You're getting 4 real pixels representing 1 virtual pixel. You can actually show more definition in that pixel for a photo or for a font that's rendered as a nice curve because you're got 4 pixels for 1 virtual pixel. 

But here's what happens if you try to set it in-between. If you try to set a 2560 by 1440 screen as 1920 by 1080 notice how everything overlaps in a messy way. The physical pixel at the top left actually contains only data from one virtual pixel but then the pixel to the right of it, the pixel below it, and even the pixel diagonally to the bottom right contains an overlap of several virtual pixels. Everything has got to be kind of mixed up. It works but it makes things a little but blurry. It's not optimal. For some people it may be okay and certainly for playing games where it is rendering stuff to the screen using the real physical pixels, it is not going to make too much of a difference. But if you're doing things like looking at text on the screen, looking at photos, it's going to give everything kind of a fuzzy feel to it. Which is why you want to stick with something like this to have it look the best on your Mac. 

So hopefully I've shown you why it is much better to only consider getting a 4K display not a 1440 display for your Mac. The prices are about the same. 4K display may be a little bit more. But it is definitely worth it to get twice as many pixels and have everything look really nice at the regular 4K high DPI resolution. But let's say you're stuck with a 1440 display. Maybe you've got on lying around and you just want to use it as an extra display for your MacBook. You don't want to invest in a new screen. There are a few things you can do. First, of course, you can go into System Preferences and then go into Displays. Then select your display and then hit Display Settings. Here you're going to see Default for Display or Scaled. Now, 1440 screen Default for Display may actually display everything in that really small mode I showed you before. Everything is really tiny and you have lots of space. So you're going to want to go to Scaled and then you're going to want to look for a better option here. Try all of the ones given to you out. Notice when I hover my cursor over one of these it tells me the actual pixel resolution. So ideally you would want to set it to something that is 1280 by 720. That may or may not be one of the options. It really depends on your display and how well Mac works with it. But try each of these and see which one works best for you. 

Now you don't get that many options there when looking in System Preferences So what if you need more options to try out more things. Like you want 1280 by 720 but it is not offered. Well, you can use some 3rd party apps to get there. I use Switch Res X which is a 3rd party app and it gives you these extra controls in here. So under my display here in current resolutions I can set my screen to all these different resolutions. So even though I have a 5K screen that does not give me the option in System Preferences for 1280 by 720 high DPI I can actually use Switch Res X to do that. To set my screen to that. Or try out some other alternatives if you like. You find Switch Res X here at this site.

There's an alternative that some people use called Better Display. You can download that from this website here and give that a try as well. Each one of these gives slightly different options but the general idea is that you can force your display into modes that maybe don't show up normally in System Preferences. 

Now I have a few more things to add. First is, of course, that resolution isn't the only factor when getting a display. There are other things like Refresh Rate, Screen Brightness, How Black is a Black Pixel, and Energy consumption. There's lots of things to consider and certainly if you're into gaming and you want to get a screen that has a good refresh rate you should be looking at that. I'm thinking mostly of just using a screen as a second screen or using an iMac or MacPro for computing type tasks, not gaming. 

The last thing is want to say is a very important tip. I hear from a lot of people having trouble with external displays. It turns out that they are using HDMI to connect to the display. Some Macs have a HDMI outport. Other times they are getting a converter to convert their Thunderbolt to HDMI and an HDMI to the screen. After all a lot of screens have HDMI input. HDMI sounds familiar. It's what your TV's have. Why not use it? But, in fact, when you're using HDMI you're translating your Mac's screen output to essentially another language, HDMI, and then that is going to the display. A lot of times you loose options and you loose quality when doing that. Instead just go directly from your Mac to the screen. Most screens you get will have Display Port connections. Thunderbolt on your Mac handles Display Port natively. For instance, you can get a Display Port cable that's USBC on one side and whatever it is your screen is, either Display Port or Mini Display Port, on the other side. Then connect basically your Mac directly to the screen. I've had lots of people using HDMI and have had different problems with their screen and have that all go away when they simply swap out that cable for the simpler Display Port cable and go directly to the screen. So avoid using HDMI when connecting an external screen to your Mac. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.