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AG Hi Res Screen Advice

O

owlbabu

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 2, 2010
37
0
Hi guys. I had a question regarding the Anti-glare Hi Res Screens on the 15'' MBP. I checked out that screen and the hi-res glossy screen as well as the plain old glossy screen in the Apple store. The AG seems really nice, especially when I work next to windows and things. But the problem lies in the Hi-Res screen.

With high resolution, I noticed that all the fonts were smaller, the menus were really small and everything. I watch movies a lot on my laptop when I'm bored.

Am I right in assuming that:

The AG Hi-Res screen will make my movie-watching experience much better?

A Hi-Res screen will make the pictures extremely crisp and clear?

A Hi-Res screen will not be straining on the eyes? It seems like with all the small font, it could be irritating...I'm not sure guys...

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
 
the high resolution screen will make movies and pictures that are also high resolution look better, but lower resolutions images and movies when viewed full screen (or covering more of the display than the resolution of the media, itself) will look worse.

If you do not like the small fonts, I would not get the high resolution display.
Personally I am surprised Apple has not either offered a low resolution anti glare display or moved toward resolution independence in their OS.
 
So on that basis alone, I shouldn't go for Hi-Res?

I heard it's awesome in terms of screen real estate and just beautiful clear and crisp picture quality. Is it something you just get used to?
 
owlbabu said:
So on that basis alone, I shouldn't go for Hi-Res?

I heard it's awesome in terms of screen real estate and just beautiful clear and crisp picture quality. Is it something you just get used to?
Click to expand...

I would *always* get the highest resolution possible. Heck, resolution is the ONLY reason I got my 17" uMBP (1920x1200) in 2009. Small fonts are a good thing to me since it makes everything look more crisp.
 
uberamd said:
I would *always* get the highest resolution possible. Heck, resolution is the ONLY reason I got my 17" uMBP (1920x1200) in 2009. Small fonts are a good thing to me since it makes everything look more crisp.
Click to expand...

Definitely. I love the high res on my MBP. I can't go back to a lower resolution screen anymore.
 
owlbabu said:
A Hi-Res screen will make the pictures extremely crisp and clear?
A Hi-Res screen will not be straining on the eyes? It seems like with all the small font, it could be irritating...I'm not sure guys...
Click to expand...

You should do two things to reduce eye strain:

1. Use TinkerTool to set the system-wide font smoothing to Light. Default is medium.

2. Use TinkerTool to set various system fonts to bigger sizes or clearer typefaces. For instance I use Caslon 14pt for window titles.

While I haven't used the high-res Apple display except in stores, I *have* used a 15.6" 144-dpi 1920x1080 FHD display that was in a Windows PC (Lenovo). Photos looked beyond stunning. HD video was very good too. Of course, under Windows you can enlarge the fonts system-wide as well, so fonts were stunning too.

Apple really ought to make a 144 dpi display available in at least one of their laptops. They probably don't because there is a shortage of them.

FYI, I have only seen these displays in Lenovo and Dell laptops. Lenovo is crap quality... you should avoid it.
 
I think there is really no reason not to get high res.
It is nonsense that lower res videos look worse on high res. DVD quality looks either the same or better on high res. 720p will look slightly better but you probably cannot see the difference and 1080p will look definitely better on the high res.
I think almost all fonts are big enough. Browser stuff except for Flash can be easily and perfectly enlarged. Everything else like movies, pictures, games look naturally better on high res.
For gaming. Since you cannot really use AA with most games on the 256mb GPU anyway the higher res doesn't kill that much performance but it does help with negating the missing AA a little. Also scaling to 1280x800 works fine too in games. But I prefer higher res to almost unnoticeable differences in details.

There are really very few menus of some programs that have small fonts in OSX that you have to live with. The content is usually zoomable everywhere. In word the page is just crisper but anyway at the zoom level you want it. The Menus are smaller which is perfect because they are usually oversized or probably optimzed for WUXGA and bigger screens.
 
I would also always opt for a higher resolution (wasn't available to me in my circumstances).

Even if it turns out you don't like the higher resolution, you can always lower it (not best of ideas ^^).

But TinkerTool as already mentioned, can be used to alter font sizes, so it shouldn't be a problem, but it just makes everything better (unless what you're viewing e.g. low res film).

Im not the best at explaining things... It's in my head, but doesnt want to be written down xD
 
So I should get the Hi-Res then? I'll probably go to the Apple store and check it out once more. I kinda want the Anti-Glare, and the Anti-Glare is only available in Hi-Res so...I might not have a choice. But I didn't really have any problems with the standard 1440 X 900 glossy display on my 2009 MBP.

We'll see. But does everyone really love their high resolution screens, even with the small font? Are they that awesome and worth the upgrade?
 
owlbabu said:
So I should get the Hi-Res then? I'll probably go to the Apple store and check it out once more. I kinda want the Anti-Glare, and the Anti-Glare is only available in Hi-Res so...I might not have a choice. But I didn't really have any problems with the standard 1440 X 900 glossy display on my 2009 MBP.

We'll see. But does everyone really love their high resolution screens, even with the small font? Are they that awesome and worth the upgrade?
Click to expand...

You would've been working with much lower resolutions back in the day. And you've managed to progress to a much higher resolution, it just means you can multitask, and have more 'room' to use.
 
The new high res anti glare is possibly the best laptop screen on the market currently, bar none

its incredible in every aspect and using this alone has put me off glossies for life!

get the AG for sure, you wont be disappointed one bit its amazing
 
TheBritishBloke said:
I would also always opt for a higher resolution (wasn't available to me in my circumstances).

Even if it turns out you don't like the higher resolution, you can always lower it (not best of ideas ^^).

But TinkerTool as already mentioned, can be used to alter font sizes, so it shouldn't be a problem, but it just makes everything better (unless what you're viewing e.g. low res film).

Im not the best at explaining things... It's in my head, but doesnt want to be written down xD
Click to expand...

Why isn't lowering the resolution the best of ideas? are the images or text somehow distorted by lowering the native resolution?
 
Richo said:
Why isn't lowering the resolution the best of ideas? are the images or text somehow distorted by lowering the native resolution?
Click to expand...

Yes, Mac OSX doesn't like rescaling to a new resolution very much, to say the least, and what you are doing is changing the OS' resolution, essentially zooming in, then when math is applied, you end up with fuzzy distorted icons, text, etc.
 
I've been using hi-res displays for years and for me anything less makes fonts look too large. I think the small font thing is something one just gets used to after a while.
 
You can make the font bigger in safari by pinching your fingers, and osx scales up to a 30" display without text distorting.

I cant wait to get the hi res. Its only 1680x1050. So it will look crisp not tiny!
 
darrellishere said:
You can make the font bigger in safari by pinching your fingers, and osx scales up to a 30" display without text distorting.

I cant wait to get the hi res. Its only 1680x1050. So it will look crisp not tiny!
Click to expand...

Go educate yourself. Your post is nonsense..
 
I have no problem reading anything on the high res AG. I was expecting much smaller fonts due to this forum. It's entirely legible, and I do find that this resolution is perfect.

I've had my first macbook for a few weeks now - and am loving it.
 
OK guys this has helped. I will go to the Apple Store and make one final check and make the decision. It seems that most people love their HR AG screens.
 
owlbabu said:
So I should get the Hi-Res then?
Click to expand...
NO.........

WAIT, yeah get it...

Definitely...

Hmmm small fonts... No way!

Standard all the way...

But... I'll regret it...

Sorry man, just kidding. I was in the same boat as you 2 weeks ago. I went with the hi-res ag. Web fonts can be enlarged and when you do that you have large text that is insanely crisp. For me I wish the toolbar bookmarks in FF were a bit larger and that the tool palettes in CS were larger. But, that being said, this thing is gorgeous!!
 
Haha, k sounds good. I'll have to check it out further. It's a tough decision because it should not be worth that much money to do a simple upgrade like that. I'm pretty angry at Apple about that.
 
Some fixes to help

My biggest issue with the small fonts was the mail and calender programs. You can adjust the font for incoming mail so it automatically sizes it to a set size, but there is no way to make the outgoing mail larger. I write a lot of mail so this was a big issue for me. Here is the fix I used:

In terminal (in utilities) put in the following
defaults write com.apple.mail AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1.25
to undo
defaults delete com.apple.mail AppleDisplayScaleFactor

The header on the mail program looks a little strange, but I love that my mail program is normal size again.

I could not find a fix for calender that I like and switched calender programs to BusyCal which allows you to set the font size.

Safari is easy with a pinch zoom or apple +. Most other programs I use I have to deal with smaller menus, but can zoom what I am working on.

I think the reason that many more people do not by the 17 is fear. You will love the extra real estate!
 
I've made the mistake of getting a 1920x1200 display on a 15" Dell Lattitude and then on the 17" MBP.

Never again. That resolution should be reserved for a minimum of 19-inch and larger desktop LCDs.
 
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