Monitors Suck

I’ve been rethinking my desk lately. Lately, of course, means over the last ~8 months, because I’m slow at these sorts of things. Also I’m allergic to spending money and that’s the actual solution to the problems I face.

See, for a log time, since about 2016, I’ve used my laptop as my main computer and monitor even when at a desk. While I was on-site at work, I had my laptop directly in front of me connected to a dock so I can use a separate mouse and keyboard. I also would use a larger, external monitor but it would be off to one side. Even when I started working from home, I would still use my laptop as my main screen and have my (much) larger 27 inch gaming monitor off to the side. I eventually rotated the big screen vertically so I could avoid turning my head so much.

I highly recommend having a secondary monitor be vertical. It’s very useful.

I always did this because the laptop screens were much sharper than any desktop monitor. I wanted clarity above all else.

This worked for a while, but bad posture started catching up to me and the ~13 inch screen started to become an issue. So I went to the basement and dug out my older monitor, a 21 inch 1080p from Dell that I bought almost 10 years ago. I put it on some books and boxes to get it higher and I now use my MacBook in “clamshell mode”.

I recently bought a cheap VESA desk stand (not arm) to get it higher. Kind of janky, but a solid improvement over the books/boxes approach.

It works great! But the resolution is a massive downgrade. This is the first time since ~2015 that I’ve been using exclusively “non-retina” displays and it sucks. So what could I get to replace it?

Here are my requirements:

• 21-24 inches in size
  • I find 27 to be too large for my main monitor. I like to share my screen on meetings and I don’t want things to be super tiny for whoever is viewing.
• “Retina” DPI
  • Resolution scaling in macOS is terrible. Rendering anything other than 1x or 2x causes extra GPU load and, from what I can gather online, ends up looking kind of blurry. I’m staring at text all day, I want it to be crisp as fuck.

I’d also like a 16:10 aspect ratio, but that’s less important.

What does “retina” even mean? macOS works best at either ~110 or ~220 DPI. ~110 would be “non-retina” where ~220 would be “retina”. To get that DPI, you need 5k at 27 inches or 4k at 22 inches. This is why the current iMacs are “4.5k” at 24 inches. 4k at 27 inches is a very common size/resolution combo and results in ~160 DPI which is somewhere in between. 4k at 24 inches isn’t perfect but is close enough. This page breaks down the whole situation nicely.

I can find monitors that meet one or two of those requirements, but nothing that checks every box. For instance, this one from ASUS looks to be very nice at 24 inches (and 16:10!) but isn’t “retina”. There are a handful of 5k monitors that are proper “retina” but are 27 inches, so too big. Also, 5k monitors are all annoyingly expensive.

There are two models that I found that would be perfect (or close enough since neither are 16:10):

• This one from ASUS which is way too expensive for a 24 inch monitor. If I’m going to spend over a grand, then I might as well just get a 5k. Hell, the Samsung linked above regularly goes on sale for around $850!
• This one from LG which seems to be discontinued and is rarely in stock.

So now I’m stuck. Maybe I get that ASUS one that isn’t “retina”. Maybe I find a used LG Ultrafine 4k on Facebook marketplace. Maybe that LG 24 inch 4k comes back in stock. I don’t know. Monitors are terrible.