MacBook – Poor quality font when connecting MBP 2016 to external 27 inch full HD monitor

displayhdmimacbook pro

I have bought a Samsung 27" Full HD (LC27R500FHNXZA) monitor and have connected my MacBook Pro 2016 (macOS 10.13 "High Sierra") to it via HDMI.

This is the image I see:
enter image description here

And this is the image I see on my own display:
enter image description here

I still see individual pixels clearly. I tried to follow this guide to copy the generated file in the Overrides folder and restarted my MacBook Pro, but it didn't work. Any idea?

Maybe full hd is too small a resolution for a 27 inch monitor?

Best Answer

The quality of the image is dependent (among other things) on the density of the pixels -- how small they are.

A 27" display of 1920 x 1080 pixels will have a pixel density of around 82 pixels per inch.

To give some perspective, your MacBook Pro's display has a pixel density of 219 pixels per inch. The very first iPhone had a density twice that of your screen.

When buying a monitor, it's not just how big it is, but how many pixels it has. The Apple Thunderbolt Display, for example, is 27" but with 2560 x 1440 pixels, so 109dpi. There are plenty of 27" displays with 3840 x 2160 pixels ("4K"), so c. 164 ppi.

The higher the pixel density, the sharper the image and text. You can't really expect great quality from a 1080p 27" display.

Note that some manufacturers specify 'pixel pitch' rather than PPI. Pitch is the size of one pixel, so 109ppi is 0.233mm pitch; 219ppi is 0.116mm.