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Check Best Buy. You can pick up an open box 1920x1080 for under $125 on a good day.

Of course, I'm not doubting that you can get them for under $200, as I've got one myself. I'm just saying that at the most you'll spend $200 is not true, unless that person meant the largest minimum you'll spend is $200, which is accurate.
 
Of course, I'm not doubting that you can get them for under $200, as I've got one myself. I'm just saying that at the most you'll spend $200 is not true, unless that person meant the largest minimum you'll spend is $200, which is accurate.

No, my statement is accurate. You're reading it too literally.

When I say "$200 at the most", it's saying that one's budget does not have to exceed that amount in order to select from a wide variety of 1920x1080 monitors. Which is factual. If you know where to shop. Are there 1920's that exceed that? Sure. But for what the OP needs, it's overkill.

This is one of those rare instances I would steer someone to the dirt cheapest monitor they can find, then work their way up from there to find a good quality one, not to exceed $200 max.

mmmmk?
 
Just use "SwitchResX".

This completely does what I want! I use an 11" macbook air, and the highest native resolution wasn't enough to show the complete toolbars of the application I needed to use.

SwitchResX was able to scale a higher resolution to my screen.

Yes, it's tiny. Yes, it's slightly fuzzy, but totally usable.
 
Heya, heya:

Unfortunately, this thread went way, way off topic. The suggestions to connect an external monitor, although well intended, were not remotely close to answering the question that was posed.

I'd like to extend a special thank you to creator2456 for suggesting SwitchResX which allows 2560 by 1440 to be shown on the native resolution of the now former 13-inch MacBook Air (1440 by 900) and the native resolution of the now former 11-inch MacBook Air (1366 x 768) as if an Apple Thunderbolt Display was connected in Mirror Desktop mode. It also supports other resolutions. Yes, everything is really small, but for those times that you're on the go and need the extra pixels (even if scaled), it's great.

SmartResX is shareware with a 10-day trial for those that may want to try it. In the SwitchResX Preferences, the setting for 2560 by 1440 is under "Color LCD". Under "Current Resolutions", the MacBook Air display can be set to several higher resolutions than the native resolution, including 1680 by 1050, 1920 by 1080, 2560 by 1440 and as high as 2560 by 1600. If purchased, SmartResX is currently $16.

In addition to being helpful for MacBook Air owners, I see SmartResX being very helpful for anyone with the now discontinued Mid 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro with SuperDrive with a native resolution of 1280 by 800.



-Warren




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I'm hunting around for what the original posted was asking and so much of this threat was the useless and unhelpful belittling of the original poster for asking a question the people answering do not also want to do. What a waste of time. Thanks to whoever said to try SwitchResX, as I had this problem in 2014, figured out I could solve it with SwitchResX, but ended up also finding a way to manually edit a file or setting in MacOS that isn't in any Preferences panel (probably a text file) that allowed me to FORCE which resolutions were shown as available for my monitor. This let me choose ones way larger just as people are doing with SwitchResX without dealing with the licensing issue of having my boss buy SwitchResX. The problem is, I stopped using this mac for so many years and have taken so many OS upgrades that the setting is reverted and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change it again, to trick the OS into showing more resolutions in a custom monitor definition. If I figure it out again, I'll come back here and post it, but shame on everyone who shamed someone for wanting something odd, and shame on that one person who whined about resurrecting an old thread. If the issue is active and hasn't been completely resolved, the thread serves a purpose.
 
True to what I said, it took a few hours, but I'm back with the risky solution for a modern Mac. The way to add more resolutions without SwitchResX is to edit the Overrides configuration file for your monitor. Do it wrong and you could be in for a world of hurt. Set it to a resolution your monitor doesn't support while scaling isn't happening and you could be stuck with a black screen. I haven't finished testing this, but I'll be back when I do, if the mac isn't trashed. Worked for me in 2014, but it was a lot easier because this file wasn't as protected. Some users do an alternate method where they still edit this file in the System folder, but the tutorial I'm linking suggests not bypassing system protections, because if you do it'll just be replaced with every OS upgrade.

Eh, in the end this still isn't working correctly, but I was able to edit these monitor overrides plists in the distant past and it does add resolutions to external monitors, as the originator was asking for. Still, there is now a freeware called "Disable Montor" that does what SwitchResX costs money to do, so I came back a third time to offer that link.
https://github.com/Eun/DisableMonitor
 
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There's also a less powerful and simpler tool that often gets bundled on ThnkDev called QuickRes. It used to be much cheaper than SwitchResX but no longer, it seems. When I was on a MBP15 1440x900, I used it to force 1080p so I could see more cells in my school's LMS. Now I use it to bypass the "scaled" resolutions, and it plays nicely with the LG UltraFines.
 
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