Two Ventura Macbooks have different behavior for my display

[rcrez]

I have a 3k portable 13" display. The resolution is 3200x1800. That means it should run at high DPI at 1600x900.

I also have two Macbooks. One is a MBP Intel 2018 and the other is the MBA M1.

The MBP runs it either 3200x1600 with super tiny everything or 1600x900 and pixelated.

The MBA runs it at 1600x900 super sharp retina quality.

Why the different? The MBP is undesirable and MBA is desirable.

Both is running Ventura.

 

[kasakka]

Apple's handling of external monitors is pure, plain garbage. It can be very erratic.

Check your display setting on the MBP for HiDPI scaling support. This is notoriously a feature that may not work if you have anything that deviates from a standard 4-6K 16:9 display. Most likely the MBP just doesn't detect it as a HiDPI display. You can try the BetterDisplay app to see if you can activate HiDPI scaling using it.

The M1 series seems to be at least a bit more friendly in this regard.