It looks like 2023 will be the year HiDPI comes to Windows! I’m excited! It’s taken way too long. As I make this thread, Samsung and Dell have announced HiDPI displays. Let’s use this thread to collect information on what else is coming now that the competition has begun.
Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor (U3224KB)
Samsung ViewFinity S9 5K Monitor (S90PC)
HiDPI usually refers to displays with >200 PPI (pixels per inch). Apple uses the marketing term Retina, although technically they use it to mean PPD (pixels per degree), making it distance dependent.
HiDPI can bring two advantages:
2560x1440(2K) at 27”. 4MP. 109 PPI. [This is close to the PPI for which Windows(96) and macOS(109) were originally designed. So you’d probably run this at 1x scaling.]
3840x2160(4K) at 27”. 8MP. 163 PPI.
3840x2160(4K) at 32”. 8MP. 134 PPI.
5120x2880(5K) at 27”. 15MP. 218 PPI.
6016x3384(6K) at 32”. 20MP. 216 PPI.
It’s going to take burly GPUs to push this many pixels. Doubly so once the first manufacturer brings us a high refresh rate, HiDPI display. Here’s to hoping!
Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor (U3224KB)
Samsung ViewFinity S9 5K Monitor (S90PC)
HiDPI usually refers to displays with >200 PPI (pixels per inch). Apple uses the marketing term Retina, although technically they use it to mean PPD (pixels per degree), making it distance dependent.
HiDPI can bring two advantages:
- Individuals pixels cannot be seen by the typical eyeball. This is especially nice for displaying text or pictures.
- Certain HiDPI ranges allow perfect 2x scaling. This eliminates fuzziness on macOS (which is vector based) and potential layout weirdness on Windows (which is bitmap based).
2560x1440(2K) at 27”. 4MP. 109 PPI. [This is close to the PPI for which Windows(96) and macOS(109) were originally designed. So you’d probably run this at 1x scaling.]
3840x2160(4K) at 27”. 8MP. 163 PPI.
3840x2160(4K) at 32”. 8MP. 134 PPI.
5120x2880(5K) at 27”. 15MP. 218 PPI.
6016x3384(6K) at 32”. 20MP. 216 PPI.
It’s going to take burly GPUs to push this many pixels. Doubly so once the first manufacturer brings us a high refresh rate, HiDPI display. Here’s to hoping!