27” 4K vs 27" 1440p - Which Is The Best For Mac?

0:00 I have a bunch of monitors that I've been testing in the studio for a couple of weeks now and if you have a Mac device and you are wondering which resolution is best for you that will work and give you the best user experience on the Mac well you found the Right video My monitors are the same screen size so they are all 27 in and the only thing that's different is the resolution so in this video I'm simply going to be comparing a 4K and 1440p monitor I did do a very in-depth video comparing 4K 1440p and even 1080p if you want to see that I'll leave it on top here and in the description of this video for now we're just focusing on 4K and 1440p 27 in external monitors before

0:47 you go out and buy a new external monitor you definitely need to know how microw deals with resolution to be specific Mac uses 2x scaling for high resolution monitor such as 4K 5K 6K and in some cases even 8K monitors to show you an example of what I mean right here you can see this is on my 4K LG monitor so you can see by default for a 27 in 4k monitor the default scaling that Mac always sets the user interface to Is 1920 x 1080p so it makes my LG ultra fine 4k monitor you can see here the monitor has the ability to go all the way to to 4K but because of the 2x scaling that I mentioned you can see

1:34 it's setting it to 1080P and at the same time if you go and click on your Apple logo and hold the option key you can go to the system information then go to where it says graphics and display and you can see right here we can refresh our page by pressing command and R and you can see for my LG outra find the resolution of the panel so the panel native resolution is 4 3840 by 2160 which is 4K but then you can see the UI looks like 1920x 1080p at 60 HZ if you have a 5k monitor then because of the 2x scaling that Mac OS uses for high resolution monitors by default the UI is going to be set at 2560 by 1440p from

2:21 this simple example we can now make out what macrowave scaling is and put simply macrowave scaling is a feature that adjusted the size of text icons and other elements on the screen to make them appear or smaller depending on the displays resolution and user preference since this is something that we can adjust according to our need and it helps ensure that everything looks sharp and is readable especially on high resolution monitors like 4K 5K 6K or even 8K monitors one of the most important things that Mac always takes into account like I mentioned is resolution and because you know our monitors are the same size the resolution is different meaning that the pixels per inch that the monitors have

3:08 are also different there's actually a whole calculation that you can use to be able to calculate how many pixels per inch if you have a 27 in 4k monitor it will give you this many pixels per inch and that's the same average that I have on my 27 in 4k monitor if you have a 27 in 1440p external monitor then you can also come up with a total number of pixels per inch keep in mind that in most cases under the specsheet of an external monitor that you're trying to buy the manufacturer will sometimes put how many pixels per inch the monitor has and instead of doing the calculation you can actually be able to just see the figure right there I would like to highlight this important information especially when it comes to non retina displays so

3:56 this chart that you are seeing right here shows different screen size sizes 24 20 in to 24 25 to 29 and so on and different resolutions for those Associated monitors and you can see this is against different pixels per inch that the monitor has so you can see here for example for good for non retina ppis you can see here for example if you have this 34 in 1440p display it has a PP of 109 pixels per inch and you can see for a non Retina display that is in good range a 27 in 1440p monitor which I have

4:41 right here you can see it has an average PPI of about 109 pixels per inch and that is good for non retina displays you can see right there so from this chart right here we can see that for 1440p monitors and along with those with lower resolutions they generally do not have high enough pixels to be considered retina displays so this displays usually have a PPI of about 100 to 110 pixels per inch which is within the typical range of non-retina displays for these monitors Mac assumes that the pixel density is low enough that the display does not require scaling as the UI elements should already appear at a

5:28 readable and consistent size when sitting comfortably on a desk this can be Illustrated for example right here if I select my 27in 1440p monitor you can see by default Mac is not scaling the UI and at the same time if we refresh this page you can see this is my 27 in 1440p panel it's the maximum resolution that this panel can go to and because this is a non-retina and Mac always assumes that the pixel density is low enough that it does not need scaling and it's not too small it's readable so right here you can see the for a 27 in 1440p monitor macrow is going to set it to 2560 by

6:14 1440p and at the same time the monitor or the panel resolution 2160 X 1440p and Mac UI is going to look like 2560 by 1440p at 180 HZ this is the refresh rate of this Monitor and at the same time you can see if we go here because this is the default scaling we don't have any message or any error that's saying hey using a scaled resolution will lead to Performance effects because this is the default scaling or the default setting that macro sets at 27 in 1440p at it runs natively at 1440p now I've selected my 4k monitor right here and I I want to show you the differ with the 4k monitor

7:01 so you can see for a 27 in 1440p 4k monitor like I showed before the UI is scaled to 1080P and by that you can see how Mac sets the UI it doesn't have the message that says this will affect performance and at the same time you can see Mac ow knows that this is a 4K panel and it's going to make the UI look like 1080p but if you were to set a 4k monitor to run at 3840 by by 2160 which is natively 4K if you set it at that you can see how the UI looks and at the same time if we refresh this page you'll see our resolution is 4K and the UI looks like 4K and at the same time you can see

7:46 we have the message that says using a scaled resolution may affect performance because we are using it not in the Default Resolution that Ma sets so without scaling the user elements would appear very small on the screen as they would be rendered one to one pixel ratio so to prevent this and to make sure that the UI elements are more readable on a 27 in 4k monitor Maco scales the display to effectively simulate a lower resolution in this case by default 1440p and that message disappears and if we refresh this page you can see we are back to 1080p so Mac scales the display to effectively look like that of a lower resolution ution monitor while taking advantage of this displays high

8:33 resolution for crispness Sharp text and images this is why 27 in 4k monitor scaled by default for macro to 1080p will look much much sharper compared to a 27 in 1080P monitor so a 27 in 4k display has much more pixels and the resolution is much higher than a 1080P and that's why it will always look sharper than a 27 in 1080P to help you understand how Mac OS is going to handle different resolutions at 27 in I'm going to put a graph here on the screen to help you see how it handles this and take note that once the resolution goes to 4K and Beyond then macro is going to

9:20 use that 2x scaling so for example on a 27 in 1080P panel that has a native resolution of 1920x 1080p Mac West is going to make the UI look like 1920x 1080p so they essentially no scaling and using the default set resolution on this 27 in 1080P monitor you won't get the message that says that this will affect performance on a 2K also known as 1440p monitor that has a native panel resolution of 2560 by 1440 the UI is going to be scaled to look like 2560 by 1440 so essentially there is no scaling again the panel is just running at its native resolution on a 4k monitor that

10:08 has a native panel resolution of 3840 by 2160 like I showed the UI is going to be scaled to look like 1080p which is 1920 by 1080p on a 5k display for example like the Apple Studio display it has a native panel resolution of 5120 by 28 80 and the UI is going to be scaled to look like 1440p because if it was scaled to 5K natively you would need a magnifying glass to see and just to go a little bit further a 6K display just like the premium Apple Pro display xdr has a native panel resolution of 6061 by 3384 and the UI is going to be scaled to 308

10:55 by 6191 P because we're just comparing to 27 in 4k and 27 in 1440p we've seen that 4K 27 in is scaled ma is uses the 2x scaling but on a 27 in 1440p it's not scaled so the first thing you need to do on a 27 in 4k monitor is to choose the resolution that works best for you now the first option that you have right here for a 27 in 4k monitor is to run the display natively at the scaled resolution that Ma set which is 1080P and at this setting you can see that the text looks really sharp it's really crisp and the different user elements as well as the menu bar and dock they are

11:41 really sharp and in Focus but the disadvantage to this is the screen real estate because 1080p looks much bigger than 1440p and also another advantage of running it at its default set resolution is that you won't get a message that says this affect performance but if you want more screen real estate you might want to run your monitor at a higher resolution which is not 1080p for example 1440p and you can see how much screen real estate that we've gained so this is how 1440p looks and then if we go back to 1080p this is how 1080p looks again going back to 1440p this is how it looks and going back to 1080p right here

12:26 you can see how it looks and back and forth you can see how how much it crops in when you go to 1080P and then when you go to 1440p on a 4K display this is how it looks you can see it right there on 1440p you have more screen real estate because 1440p on a 27 in 4k monitor is scaled and 1080p is not when you select 1440p unlike 1080p you are going to get this message that says using a scaled resolution may affect performance and in fact you can see what this message means right here because on our 4k monitor right here you can see our LG Mac in order to implement the 2x scaling it doesn't think the native panel resolution is 4K in fact it thinks

13:12 it's 5K which is 2120 by 2880 and it's making the UI look like 1440p thereby implementing the 2x scaling and that's why we are getting this message that says using a scaled resolution may affect performance because we've selected 2560 by 1440 a pretty cool thing I thought I should share is when you are using different monitors scale to different resolutions so 1440p at 1440p uh 4K at 1080P and by MacBook at this default set resolution if you try and arrange your windows you can see how my 4k monitor looks and this is how my 1440p looks and this is how my Max display looks but if you were to go into

13:58 your settings right here go to the 14 uh 4k monitor and set it to 1440p and then try and the range all the windows are now the same size for my external displays I want to clarify something as a lot of users seem to get hang up on this message using a scaled resolution might affect performance so my display right here is 4K 60 HZ so a lot of people think that if you have a 60 HZ display the system is going to use the GPU to redraw the entire screen 60 frames per second but that's not the case because once your system has rendered or redrawn the white component of the particular window it doesn't need to redraw it again unless the window size or components continuously change and are resized if the system did redraw

14:46 everything 60 frames per second every time you did something then your system would literally be unusable so this is just a message to tell you or let you know that you're using a scaled resolution and from my EXP experience and from what I've seen using different monitors as I've been testing this if you have an apple silicon M1 I'm actually using the Apple M1 Pro 14in MacBook Pro this literally has no impact on GPU as well as CPU and I confirm this by running geekbench 5 scores and doing different exports on videos and I literally didn't see any effect using 4K scale to 1440p as compared to using 1440p at 14 40p but there is an advantage of running 4K at 1440p

15:34 compared to running 1440p at 1440p on my 27 in monitors let me show you what I mean by this this is how 4k on a 1440p panel looks look at the text look at the different user elements look at the dock look at this menu bar as well and all the different systems this is how 4K looks on 1440p and I'm just simply going to take the same window and make it pop up on my 1440p monitor set at 1440p so that you can see the difference in sharpness now this is the same window on my 1440p monitor running natively at 1440p and you can see it right here so this is the monitor that

16:19 you are viewing right here running natively at 1440p and the UI looking at 1440p you can see there is a very big big difference on how clear the image looks and how the different menu bar as well as our different dock the sharpness is very different compared to that of a 4k monitor running at 1440p and this is actually very easy to explain because even though the UI is set or looks the same the resolution in pixels per inch that each monitor has is different so a 4k monitor has about 8.3 million pixels while a 1440p monitor has about

17:05 3.6 million pixels so the amount of pixels that a 4k monitor has are more than double that of 1440p and that is why when you take a 4k monitor and make the UI look like 1440p it looks much sharper and Visually it's more pleasing if you try and zoom in close to the monitor to do pixel peeping you won't be able to see much as compared to 1440p running at 1440p where the text in this case is not as sharp and it's because the pixels in a 4k monitor are much more and at the same time the resolution is much more in a 4k monitor so 4K will always look much sharper than 1440p even if you use different

17:52 applications like better display to try and set 1440p text and makes it look sharper it's still limited because it doesn't have enough resolution or pixels to match that or 1440p at 4K in conclusion 4K is almost best in most case scenarios it's the best if you're going to be consuming content like watching this video it's also going to be really good if you're going to be creating content like using your monitor as an external display for editing different videos and viewing different uh elements on the screen it's going to look sharp it's also very good if you are like a programmer or if you are a student 4K is going to look much better than 1440p the only time I would

18:39 recommend you go for a 1440p over a 4k monitor is if you're using a nono silicon Mac or a really old Mac device that's going to be affected by using a scaled resolution which in that case would definitely affect performance and also the other time I'm going to recommend a 1440p monitor over a 4k monitor is if you are doing gaming or if you are looking for a high refresh rate or high FPS monitor that's affordable because it's very easy to get an affordable cheap high refresh rate monitor like 1440p 180 HZ 250 or even in some cases 400 HZ at 1440p it's doable

19:26 but on 4K it's not yet there in fact most external monitors at 4K are at 60 HZ and then if you're going above like 120 HZ or even higher like 144 and 4K it tends to be more expensive so that's just my quick two cents and a bit of research here if you want to see 4K at 27 in versus 1440p 27 in versus 1080p 27 in I did a whole video that I left in the description of this video that you can check out and I explained the macro is 2 to ex scaling in more detail so check it out and uh let me know what you think and hope you like this video if you found it helpful in a way leave a like And subscribe and I'll see you in the next video peace