QHD or Ultra HD 4K monitor better for the SP4?

[Jesse Segovia]

I'm loving my Surface Pro 4 but at my age (55) the small screen is really tough for lots of things, especially some programs (Lotus Notes, WebEx, etc.) that for some reason display in extremely small fonts on the SP4. So this week I'm definitely going to get an external monitor for my home office. I need something that will make tiny fonts very legible and will allow me to do advanced image and video editing.

My question is which monitor will be the best as far as font and image display and for the shape of the Surface screen, QHD or Ultra 4K HD? Right now my two choices are the Dell Ultra HD 4K P2415Q at 3840 x 2160 pixels or the Dell U2515H QHD at 2560 x 1440. I know the Surface Pro 4 screen resolution is 2736x1824 so the Ultra HD is actually better than the Surface. But which one is going to faithfully reproduce what the actual Surface screen displays?

Thanks very much!

Jesse

 

[kundas1]

set your scaling to 150% and that should help with the small fonts and icons....

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

I'm loving my Surface Pro 4 but at my age (55) the small screen is really tough for lots of things, especially some programs (Lotus Notes, WebEx, etc.) that for some reason display in extremely small fonts on the SP4. So this week I'm definitely going to get an external monitor for my home office. I need something that will make tiny fonts very legible and will allow me to do advanced image and video editing.

My question is which monitor will be the best as far as font and image display and for the shape of the Surface screen, QHD or Ultra 4K HD? Right now my two choices are the Dell Ultra HD 4K P2415Q at 3840 x 2160 pixels or the Dell U2515H QHD at 2560 x 1440. I know the Surface Pro 4 screen resolution is 2736x1824 so the Ultra HD is actually better than the Surface. But which one is going to faithfully reproduce what the actual Surface screen displays?

Thanks very much!

Jesse

If you have the desk real estate I'd tell you to pop from 24", 25" to 27" or 28", even higher if you can, then set your Surface to 200% and the monitor to 100% or 150%.

 

[Jesse Segovia]

If you have the desk real estate I'd tell you to pop from 24", 25" to 27" or 28", even higher if you can, then set your Surface to 200% and the monitor to 100% or 150%.

So newer monitors like these have their own scaling, and you can set the SP4 to one level of scaling and the monitor to another?

 

[Jesse Segovia]

set your scaling to 150% and that should help with the small fonts and icons....

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually found I could increase the size of the items in the screen if I increased scaling to 250 and even 300%.

 

[kundas1]

I think 250-300% is overkill but if you think it helps....

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

So newer monitors like these have their own scaling, and you can set the SP4 to one level of scaling and the monitor to another?

Yes, that was, is one of the primary appeals. They really didn't get it right 'til somewhere around build 9926, but it works well for most apps moving, snapping them back and forth across monitors.