Cary Wolfson wrote:
I just traded in my old iMac for a Mac Mini M4. There was no easy way to use the retina display on the iMac with the Mini, so I had to buy a third-party 2560 x 1440 monitor. Now much of the text is too small for my old eyes. I've made what changes I could find in Accessibilty, but the text in the Menu Bar, all the Safari tabs and in the Music app is still way too tiny. Even in the few apps where I can change the text size, the sidebars are way too small. Reducing the screen resolution does not seem like a valid answer. Using the Zoom command does make everything bigger but it distorts the text.
I've seen complaints on this subject going back at least 10 years. Is my only option to get an Apple Studio Monitor which is way expensive and way too much for my real world needs?
Three possibilities:
27" 1920x1080 monitor
A 27" 1920x1080 monitor has only 81.6 PPI. So everything will be 33% larger, in each direction, than it is in your current monitor. Unfortunately, the low PPI and the fact that 27" 1920x1080 monitors are usually rather low-end ones mean that picture quality will be very poor. I'd recommend a 27" 4K monitor run in "like 1920x1080" mode over an actual 27" 1920x1080 monitor any day.
27" 3840x2160 (4K) monitor
32" 3840x2160 (4K) monitor
These monitors have 163.2 and 137.7 PPI, respectively. The pixel density is not Retina-level, but the resolution is high enough that if your M4 Mac mini is anything like my M1 Max Mac Studio, it will likely offer you a choice of:
- looks like 1920x1080 (Larger Text)
- looks like 2560x1440
- looks like 3008x1692
- looks like 3360x1890
- 3840x2160 (More Space)
Note that in the first four modes, the Mac draws on a canvas that has twice as many pixels in each direction as the nominal Displays Settings "resolution". So it isn't "wasting" the resolution of the 4K monitor. It's simply using the resolution to draw in greater detail, instead of to cram more and more, tinier and tinier, stuff, onto the screen.
Compared to a 27" 2560x1440 monitor,
- "looks like 1920x1080" would produce text that is 58% larger (32" monitor) or 33% larger (27" monitor) in each direction. This setting would entail a loss of workspace.
- "looks like 2560x1440" would produce text that is 19% larger in each direction on a 32" monitor. You would not see any increase in text size on a 27" one.
