Laptop 4K Screen - Will running it at 1080p look odd?

[mda]

Hello all,

Looking to pickup a laptop soon perhaps.

However, the one I want just happens to have a 4K screen... which, for light gaming and most work at 15", I feel is a lot overkill. Battery life aside, I'm looking at other potential drawbacks to this.

I know non native resolution scaling is not good, but given that 4K is 2x 1080p in terms of both width and height, then would the display look bad should I run some (older/light) games and older office programs at 1080p?

Thanks!

 

[kasakka]

If it has an AMD or Nvidia GPU you can enable integer scaling and 1080p will work just fine.

 

[grim4593]

Why would you want to run the screen at less than native? Windows has a setting for scaling for menu interfaces and text. You can set it for 125% so everything is larger without sacrificing resolution and/or dealing with aliasing.

 

[ZodaEX]

Why would you want to run the screen at less than native? Windows has a setting for scaling for menu interfaces and text. You can set it for 125% so everything is larger without sacrificing resolution and/or dealing with aliasing.

View attachment 479569

It improves battery life significantly.

 

[MrGuvernment]

It improves battery life significantly.

Even when your not doing anything 3d related? (i know browsers can use the gpu) but does it use it that much? I guess seeing as you are pushing the GPU more, but if it is a hybrid laptop that has iGP + external?

 

[ZodaEX]

Even when your not doing anything 3d related? (i know browsers can use the gpu) but does it use it that much? I guess seeing as you are pushing the GPU more, but if it is a hybrid laptop that has iGP + external?

Forcing 1080p on my 4k Xperia phone significantly improves battery life while web browsing. I can think of any reason why it wouldn't improve battery life while web browsing on a laptop as well.

 

[LukeTbk]

It improves battery life significantly.

Because it is an OLED that close pixel like a cellphone ?

Forcing 1080p on my 4k Xperia phone significantly improves battery life while web browsing. I can think of any reason why it wouldn't improve battery life while web browsing on a laptop as well.

Oled phone screen close pixel on lower resolution, apparently.

 

[ZodaEX]

Because it is an OLED that close pixel like a cellphone ?

Oled phone screen close pixel on lower resolution, apparently.

Right. OLED laptop screens do that too.

 

[mda]

Thanks for the input. I guess nothing to be afraid of then.

Yeah, I have issues on some older / legacy programs where display scaling doesn't really work. For the most part I may be running 4K with scaling but there may be times I will be forced to run 1080p. Frankly speaking, for a 15" screen, I think 1080p is just enough, and 4K is ultra overkill.

Workstation laptop GPU upgrades are crazy too. So 1080p may do fine for light/medium gaming with a 3050 equivalent laptop... We all know how a 3050 laptop will handle 4k...

 

[uOpt]

Why would you want to run the screen at less than native? Windows has a setting for scaling for menu interfaces and text. You can set it for 125% so everything is larger without sacrificing resolution and/or dealing with aliasing.

View attachment 479569

That is fine for what comes with Windows, but there is a lot of software out there that doesn't scale. Especially if you like older games.

 

[XoR_]

Worry not my friend.
If you run in situation where game or program doesn't run well at 4K there are two solutions:
1. For games drop resolution - just make sure laptop you are getting has integer scaling option (should have but just make sure it does anyways )
2. For desktop set windows scale to 200%

re.2
Nice thing about Windows scaling is that while it generally sucks for older/unsupported (scaling-wise) at non-integer scale ratio it will scale such programs with integer scaling if your scale ratio is integer.
Meaning on 4K monitor if you set scaling to 200% you will have supported applications look nice and sharp and older/unsupported applications will just use 4x pixels for one application pixels with nice square and sharp pixels.
The only slight issue is that Windows by default have colored subpixels and subpixel rendering doesn't really work when you scale image. This is however not such a big issue, just makes text less than ideal with slightly visible color fringing. This can be reduced by ClearType tuner too. Another option is using MacType - which anyone who cares about text rendering should be using anyways - and here fonts can be made to look orgasmic (have synesthesia - do not judge ). And besides even though subpixel font rendering looks better on native panel there is a fact that native panel with the same PPI as what you get by 200% scale will look worse. I mean ClearType text still looks better at 2160p panel with 200% integer scale than native 1080p panel.

So as long as you do not want to use in-between scaling ratios you should be good to go.
Also Windows will automatically switch scaling of applications when you move window from monitor between monitors.
You can also disable scaling of old applications if you find that eg. image viewer you like doesn't utilize monitor's resolution. That will make them very small and of course should not be needed for programs which support proper scaling.

The main issue with scaling is that a lot of programs people use do not support proper scaling and at something like 125%, 150% etc they will look terrible. At 200% though its entirely different story

Example

There is this color fringing I mentioned earlier but its almost imperceptible. This also looks better on 4K monitor at 200% scale than monitor next to it which is set to 100% scale. The most glaring thing to me when testing it (I normally use 100% scale on 4K monitor because its giant 27") is font hinting. I normally use MacType with light subpixel coloring.

Here is example of scaled image with Windows Clear-Type (I guess its default settings), iOS preset (AntiAliasMode=4) and the same with AntiAliasMode=0 on the right

As can hopefully be seen Windows font rendering doesn't even preserve font's original shape and stretches it out in order to align features with pixel grid of the monitor. Its done in order to make fonts sharper looking but sharper doesn't make them easier to read or nicer or anything. It just makes text look uninspiring and bland... just like it is on my work laptop

Anyways, I advertise MacType here because I love the program and it also helps with readability A LOT
At 165 PPI as I use my 4K monitor at (100% scale) I can perfectly read tiny fonts with MacType but with Widnows's font rendering everything starts to blur. Apparently sharper != more readable or nicer or anything. Raster fonts (line in good old days of Win98/2000/XP) were sharper and more readable. there is a way to get raster fonts in Win10/11 for literally every part of the system with good old Tahoma instead of Segoe UI and its what I did for tablet which has 10" 1920x1200 screen. Still MacType looks better but for tablet there was a case to have raster fonts instead because Atom CPU is kinda slow even without additional software hooking all processes to repaint all text. On normal PC performance is not an issue though.

Anyways if you find that even 1080p on 15" is a tad bit too small (it will give virtual PPI of 148) you might want to try it out. Or if you always thought that OSX/Linux had proper text rendering while Windows looks like crap then too
There is only one issue with web browsers. Can be fixed with this https://github.com/GTANAdam/GDIChromium and the issue is that DirectWrite applications are not supported by MacType. Though in this case I do not think at almost 300 PPI pixel peeping will be an issue. I mean its for other applications, like those which will need integer scaling because they are old and do not support proper scaling. DirectWrite applications support scaling because that is pretty much why they use DirectWrite