Do I need a higher resolution Monitor?

I sit at a computer desk such that my viewing distance is about 450mm and my current 1920x1200px monitor has 0.265mm pixel pitch.

At my age, my peak visual "acuity" is about 3 cycles per degree falling to very low contrast threshold at about 15 cy/deg.

I can not discern the pixels on my monitor under my dim lighting with the monitor "white" set at about 80 cd/m^2. For image quality assessment I normally view at 100% zoom.

Although an 8K monitor might bring me say about 0.1mm pixel pitch, am I right in thinking that an 8K monitor on my desk would be a total waste of money??

He's talking about extinction, though. Extinction happens at a much lower resolution than the resolution at which aliasing can still be perceived, in the form of jaggies. On my 39" 4K monitor, I can just barely make out a 1-pixel checkerboard pattern, and it turns solid grey by 25 or 30 inches from the monitor, but I can see jaggies from 18 feet away, without glasses, even though I need +0.5 diopter glasses for maximum sharpness at 18 feet.

So, just like many of the tradeoffs in imaging and photography, the tail of failure is quite long and varied by context.

The GUI problem is very real, though, which is why I can't get fully excited about a 4K monitor for text and icons. If you want to see more GUI real estate, and more things on the screen at once, the point of diminishing returns comes pretty quickly. I haven't used a curved monitor yet, but I suspect that one might be necessary to see a lot of GUI at once, but once you have one of those, you can't go much further.

Most of the solutions to GUI scaling leave a lot to be desired, especially when you are dealing with software that has both imagery and text/Icons/sliders. You want the full res for imagery, but if you upscale the app or the whole desktop 200%, you lose that resolution for imagery, and if you scale at something like 150%, which is often more reasonable for the GUI, then all of the imagery experiences the savage resampling ratio, and you can never see 100% pixel views, even if the software thinks it is giving them to you. We need software that always allows full monitor resolution for images and things that are generally downsampled, but fully-scalable GUI elements.

It really seems that even in 2023, a decade or so after 4K became available, apps are developed by people using monitors no more than 2K (or maybe curved 2.5K).

I have been using 4k monitors for several years now. I have found that gradually most major software packages scale well enough.

Thanks to the wonders of intraocular lens replacement surgery I have excellent vision especially for my age { I just turned 59 }.I certainly cannot see any pixels on the monitors . I currently use the BenQ PD3220U.

My main reason for a 4k monitor was video editing. While it is not my major interest I do enough of it and typically output at 4K, so a 4k monitor was an obvious choice.

As for 8k though ironically the close distances used in typical PC scenarios. Would be able to take advantage of 8k resolution. My sister has I think a 75” 8k TV and to see the resolution difference, compared to 4k. You need to be viewing at an uncomfortably close distance where I suspect headaches and the like would be a must with any length of usage. This is based on viewing 8k clips from my Z9 and 16:9 crops { 8256x4644 } which fills the 7680 x 4320. The images look glorious when viewed close up 😀 but honestly at more normal TV viewing distances much harder to tell

If you look at the suggestions for viewing distances at the rtings website { a very good resource for reviews } . Basically 4k at common PC viewing distances a 32” monitor is plenty. For 8K to ake advantage of the resolution I think you would need a rather large screen. 8K monitors are very limited in choice and bloody high in prices. I have seen a few YouTube folk using 8k TV’s as monitors but given the smallest 8K TV’s are I think 55” I think that would be way to much. There a couple of 5k monitors again not cheap

www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship

Thanks for all responses so far!

I based my acuity versus age on this set of graphs:

I found the same thing Alan, I recommended a monitor for my brother the same model I used and brought it to my house to calibrate also using a spider . And sitting next to each other same room same everything the results were slightly different. I assumed small differences in manufacturing but who knows

I assume that corrective glasses would change this somewhat . Or is that testing based on issues such as age-related macular degeneration

For about ten years I had two ACER 1920x1080 21.5" monitors, but a year or so ago I supplemented those with a 27" 3840x2160 Dell (in the centre). I have no spider or other device to check the accuracy of these, but the Dell gives better results on colour and B&W bars than the Acers. In relying on this, admittedly subjective assessment, I am still waiting for someone to tell me that all my photos are too light/dark or have an odd colour balance. I have become used to the difference in resolution between them, but I use the Acers almost exclusively for text. The Dell can be rotated by 90°, which is very useful for the music work I do. I dont think I have ever used any of them to view individual pixels. I rely on the 100% magnifications professed by Photoshop and Photolab to look at details.

David

A timely question, Ted, because I can offer you another anecdotal data point.

For many years I stuck with 23" 1080p screens. Then when covid confined us to barracks, I got myself a budget AOC 31.5 inch 1440p. The screen seemed huge and there was a welcome increase in real estate. Because the increase in screen size and resolution sort of cancelled out, I found the AOC no more difficult to use with standard apps than the FHD screen. However, although I could now display larger images, they didn't look any sharper.

Recently, over on the DPR medium format forum, an enthusiastic poster there waxed lyrical about the wonders of his new 6k monitor for displaying his medium format images. He also said that anyone shooting medium format had to have at least a 4k monitor. Inspired by his rhetoric, last week I purchased a 32" 4k BenQ 3280U (i'm looking at it now).

Given that the increase in pixels for a 12" x 12" image area is about 45%, I was expecting a small improvement in the crispness of the rendition (I expected nothing like the improvement promised by my ebullient and over-enthusiastic friend). And that is what I got. When I inspect images on the screen they have a small but visible improvement in crispness, punch and fine detail. Especially evident on sharp lines which look a little clearer and cleaner. Like all of these things on the 'ole web it's easy to get carried away and describe them as "ground breaking" and the like, when once you have calmed down and returned to the real world, you realise should be corrected to "just noticeable". I appreciate the modest improvement, but I don't think it be a large enough a difference to make me mourn it had I to return to my old 1440p monitor.

Although I find the improvement in the display of images to be modest (although welcome), I have noticed an unexpected benefit. The new monitor is proving more helpful while editing that I was expecting. I am noticing small editing flaws more easily than with my old monitor that need to be fixed. That's a bonus.

1440P and 32" is a good compromise, IMO. 4k kind of an improvement, kind of worse. I find 24" type FHD monitors are still sharp enough for general use but once you get used to having more screen real estate, they do seem a bit cramped.

4k comes with a cost, though. Text and screen chrome elements render too small for my taste. I tried to compensate by boosting font size in those apps that allow it but it wasn't too long before I gave in and engaged the operating system's 125% scaling mode. I reckon 4k is sharper but a 40" monitor size would be better.

David, I had a 42" 4k monitor for a while and I found a bit too large for my liking ended up going with a 32" . Windows scaling has got a lot better of late and the software that I use { PS, word etc } scales reasonably well. I think it boils down to personal preference and interests .

My problem is that, at my viewing distance and screen pixel pitch, some "detail" is lost. Therefore, if am interested in image "detail", I zoom in Nearest Neighbor so that blocks of 4, 12, 16, etc, screen pixels represent one image pixel with no alteration in color-picker values.

"detail" in quotes due to lack of definition in the genre.

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Thank you for sharing your experience.

Arvo's comment above that 80 cd/m^2 would burn his eyes contrasts quite strongly with "too dim"!

What brightness in cd/m^2 "looks best" for you and under what lighting in lux at the screen? Mine is about 10 lx.

Sounds like your eyesight is way better than mine - I am myopic, 83 years old, have glaucoma and don't wear glasses at the computer.

I do not go to any stores - been stuck in a wheelchair since November last and can barely stand. All my photography these days is theoretical.

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Oh.

Looks like your and Arvo's and my vision are each completely different.

My eyes spend most of the day accustomed to being in front of my monitor

Dare I ask what lighting you view your prints under?