MBP Retina with Dell Ultra Sharp..Better results?

[peejack]

Hi guys I currently have a MBP retina and an HP Pavillion 23xi monitor. The image is awful on it especially the text, it's so blurry it's hardly readable.

I have been trying to do some research into this and it looks as if some screen are bad with the retina.

From what I have I read the Dell ultrasharps seems to be giving a better result.

I am currently looking at the Dell Ultrasharp U2212HM 21.5 inch widescreen IPS LED Monitor.

Does any one have any experience with this monitor on rMBP or can offer some advice?

Thanks.

 

[tengtengvn]

I have a Dell UltraSharp U2412 and it looks great.

 

[peejack]

I have a Dell UltraSharp U2412 and it looks great.

Thanks. How do you come out of the MBP? The text isn't grainy?

 

[johnnnw]

It's just that the Retina doesn't work well with that HP monitor, it's that that monitor is pretty bad in general, especially when your used to a Retina.

The Dell does look a lot better. Won't look as good as the Retina, the pixel density isn't the same, but it will look better than the HP.

 

[swerve147]

If you're comparing the sharpness with Windows in the same scenario then don't. OS X's native font smoothing does not do as good a job with external displays as Windows. An example of this would be the text in the menu bars.

Otherwise this thread may help. You might want to read the whole thing, but the "forcing RGB mode" mentioned in post#101 seemed relevant if the above wasn't the case:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1390034/

 

[peejack]

So this will happen on any monitor really?

I have used the terminal command for font smoothing and played around with the setting and got the text looking a lot better now. Nowhere near the retina obviously but looking better.

Not worth opting for the Dell then as I presume I won't see a lot of difference?

 

[swerve147]

^^I would say yes. As a new Mac owner the blurriness of the text in menu bars really bothered me compared to Windows, but after seeing examples of blurry text using external monitors with other Macs (friends and family) I concluded that it wasn't anything wrong with my Mac, that's just the way it is.

If you can try this, Bootcamp Windows with your same setup, I think you'll discover that it isn't a hardware problem, but an OS X issue.

 

[ColdCase]

Not much difference in the text, but using the OSX zoom feature makes text a bit larger and easier to read. Just a touch is all you need.

The big difference between the monitors would be in color and contrast ratio.... for video viewing and photo work.... perhaps gaming.... and $$$$