Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

To 13" rMBP owners: 1920x1200?

C

CARABAO

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 10, 2012
37
0
Hi 13" rMBP owners, do anyone of you run / try to run your computer at 1920x1200? I know it's not in the stock resolution options, but I was just wondering if anyone has tried it for daily use. The stores in my area do not allow installing 3rd party apps - so I can't try it firsthand.

Some questions:
1) Have you tried running it in 1920x1200 (HiDPI or not)
2) Is it usable?
3) Does it leave any scaling artifacts / distortion? Using a non-Apple app for setting the resolution, I'd expect the scaling to be imperfect. But with the number of pixels of the display, does it show any distortion whatsoever?
4) How does it perform at 1920x1200? Does it in anyway affect performance? Slowdowns, lag, heat?

Those are my questions for now. I hope someone can shed light on this - I'm very curious on how it plays out.

Cheers,
Greg
 
HiDPI is not available for 1920x1200. The resolution itself is really small and the fonts look a little bit blurred (but just a little bit) because of the scaling. Performance is absolutely good in my opinion, no lag or anything else. In fact it may be faster than the 1680x1050 HiDPI resolution.
 
I personally use 1920x1200 for my everyday resolution and i do not find it blurry and it looks sharp to me.

i find it runs at a great speed with no issues.



CARABAO said:
Hi 13" rMBP owners, do anyone of you run / try to run your computer at 1920x1200? I know it's not in the stock resolution options, but I was just wondering if anyone has tried it for daily use. The stores in my area do not allow installing 3rd party apps - so I can't try it firsthand.

Some questions:
1) Have you tried running it in 1920x1200 (HiDPI or not)
2) Is it usable?
3) Does it leave any scaling artifacts / distortion? Using a non-Apple app for setting the resolution, I'd expect the scaling to be imperfect. But with the number of pixels of the display, does it show any distortion whatsoever?
4) How does it perform at 1920x1200? Does it in anyway affect performance? Slowdowns, lag, heat?

Those are my questions for now. I hope someone can shed light on this - I'm very curious on how it plays out.

Cheers,
Greg
Click to expand...
 
Under OS X, It runs GREAT. You'll have to use SwitchResX or something to enable it. I ran 1920x1200 HiDPI for a while with no problems.

However, under Windows 7, it looks blurry, crappy without HiDPI. It actually gave me a headache from it. 1680x1050 Non HiDPI is the best, at least for me, under Windows.
 
Hey guys, thank you for your responses! It's nice to know it can handle 1920x1200 with no problem. Now I'm just curious on how it looks like from a 13" screen.

----------
MacModMachine said:
I personally use 1920x1200 for my everyday resolution and i do not find it blurry and it looks sharp to me.

i find it runs at a great speed with no issues.
Click to expand...

Great! What software are you using? So is it comparable to the sharpness of the 15" rMBP running 1920x1200?

I hope I'm not asking much, but can you take a photo (not a screenshot) of the laptop screen at 1920x1200? I wanna see if it's workable.. Much appreciated :)

Cheers,
Greg
 
Why on earth would you want your fonts so damn small?? I really don't see the point.
 
I just switched to 1920x1200 to try it out. It's surprisingly usable, if I had to have a big spreadsheet open or something I would toggle to this resolution. But not for anything graphical since it's not as sharp as any HiDPI mode.

Most of the time I'm just running in native retina resolution (1280x800) with a hotkey toggle to 1680x1050 if I need some immediate screen real estate. But native is the most comfortable for web, email, Aperture, etc.
 
ayeying said:
Under OS X, It runs GREAT. You'll have to use SwitchResX or something to enable it. I ran 1920x1200 HiDPI for a while with no problems.

However, under Windows 7, it looks blurry, crappy without HiDPI. It actually gave me a headache from it. 1680x1050 Non HiDPI is the best, at least for me, under Windows.
Click to expand...

Hi, I have noticed that for a Macbook Pro Retina 13" Display, 1920X1200 HiDPI is not an option under all of these softwares:

SwitchResX, Retina DisplayMenu, QuickRes

Instead, there is an option for 1920X1080 HiDPI. However, there are black bars on the top and bottom of the display when using such mode.

Were you running non-HiDPI (known as scaling mode)?

Thanks.
 
I never use it at 1280x800 (late 2013 13"). Minimum is 1680x1050 (HiDPI), I only really use this as its the best balance between single page browsing (browser occupying a space) and real estate on my main multi window/App work space. I often use it at 1080/1200/native without issue. Given the pixel density on the display IMO its more then capable of scaling to higher resolutions without compromising text/UI clarity significantly (as opposed to using a small font on a low density display).

If we could set resolution independently for each space, my main desktop would stay at native. As this would solve my problem where a space occupied by safari leads to the web page being too narrow.
 
CARABAO said:
Hi 13" rMBP owners, do anyone of you run / try to run your computer at 1920x1200? I know it's not in the stock resolution options, but I was just wondering if anyone has tried it for daily use. The stores in my area do not allow installing 3rd party apps - so I can't try it firsthand.

Some questions:
1) Have you tried running it in 1920x1200 (HiDPI or not)
2) Is it usable?
3) Does it leave any scaling artifacts / distortion? Using a non-Apple app for setting the resolution, I'd expect the scaling to be imperfect. But with the number of pixels of the display, does it show any distortion whatsoever?
4) How does it perform at 1920x1200? Does it in anyway affect performance? Slowdowns, lag, heat?

Those are my questions for now. I hope someone can shed light on this - I'm very curious on how it plays out.

Cheers,
Greg
Click to expand...


I almost always use 1920x1200.
The retina resolutions have alot of lag and I only use them sometimes when showing images.
I find it actually more useable than the retina resolutions.
Of course, it does not look as nice as retina resolutions but the loss in image quality is not so bad from a normal viewing distance and the performance increase is good.

My advice, wait about 1 year to buy a "retina" notebook. Till then the performance issues should be resolved. Otherwise there are fine non-retina options perhaps.
 
aeroxy said:
Hi, I have noticed that for a Macbook Pro Retina 13" Display, 1920X1200 HiDPI is not an option under all of these softwares:

SwitchResX, Retina DisplayMenu, QuickRes

Instead, there is an option for 1920X1080 HiDPI. However, there are black bars on the top and bottom of the display when using such mode.

Were you running non-HiDPI (known as scaling mode)?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

No. You have to add the 1920x1200 mode.
 
ayeying said:
No. You have to add the 1920x1200 mode.
Click to expand...

Thanks for replying!

Can you write an instruction on adding 1920X1200 HiDPI mode to the system? If not, can you do a screen shot on how we can accomplish this task?

I have experiment with adding 1920X1200 HiDPI mode from SwitchResX, and it only allows me to add non-HiDPI mode (scaling).

Do I need to override system files? If so, where do I modify these files?
 
aeroxy said:
Thanks for replying!

Can you write an instruction on adding 1920X1200 HiDPI mode to the system? If not, can you do a screen shot on how we can accomplish this task?

I have experiment with adding 1920X1200 HiDPI mode from SwitchResX, and it only allows me to add non-HiDPI mode (scaling).

Do I need to override system files? If so, where do I modify these files?
Click to expand...

I don't have the 13" Retina MacBook Pro anymore. All you need to do is add 3840x2400 in SwitchResX. This automatically enables 1920x1200 HiDPI
 
Crazy that anyone would want to have to peer at something that miniature. I have good vision and for me, running at 1440x900 gives a nice combination of screen size and clarity. Although the vast majority of the time my laptop serves as my desktop at home running dual 23" widescreen 1080 monitors. Anything smaller than 1440x900 on a 13" screen makes my eyes hurt from having to squint. If you want to have all that real estate on your laptop, the 15" would be a much more compelling choice.
 
I don't know about others but I certainly don't have some sort of sado masachistic fetish which involves torturing my eyes :D

I imagine most people would quickly lower the resolution if they found it uncomfortable to use. And we're obviously not running at those res to look at large portions of empty desktop, so 1440x900 doesn't cut it for a lot of us.

Also a 15" has a significantly larger footprint and that becomes an issue across two perpendicular planes when you flip it open to use it. So if I'm comfortable using the 13" at native, how can that possibly be a more compelling choice (other then the possibility of even more DTR, but then you'd accuse me of torturing my eyes again :D)?
 
Last edited:
Absolutely useable. Gives a little more restate to work with, everything looks sharp and scales well. Doesn't up my temps and certainly doesn't create any lag.
 
I've been running @ 2560x1600 for the past few weeks. I have Chrome zoomed to 110% but everything else is fine. I like having lots of windows open. :D
 
Have had my Retina 13 for just under a week. 1680x1050 seems to be my favorite most of the time, but 1920x1200 works fine. No problems with either resolution in Windows, using VMWare Fusion 6.

1440x900 is too big for me, so I'm certainly glad I didn't get an Air!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back