Hi,
I have some confusion regarding 4k displays. Can someone who own any 4k monitor share his experience for below points -
1. How does a lower resolution like 1080p looks on 4k monitor. For example movies. As 240p or 360p looks bad on 1080p monitor ?
2. In future if my graphics card (gtx 1070) is not able to play games on 4k, then switching to 1080p or 1440p resolution in game will this look bad?
3. How about the ppi on 4k. Is it really worth to upgrade from a 1080p as the texts are not as crisp in my current monitor. Will the texts be crisp on 4k?
1. Anything other than native resolution would bad on any monitor. This is because of repositioning and extrapolating of pixels when trying to run a resolution less than native. This makes the picture a little blurry depending on the resolution. It depends on your taste about how it would look
TO YOU. Blurriness won't be that noticeable for 1080p or 720p. Anything lower will start looking blocky. For some people the difference would be too noticeable. But if you are not too nitpicky, then it would be fine.
2. Same thing applies to games, however, again the change in image quality won't be noticeable. However for resolutions that are proportional to 4k like 1080p or 560p, the pixel arrangement will be proper(1:4 ratio and 1:8 ratio respectively) hence a 4k display will show a 1080p image properly however, there will be slight misalignment when displaying 1440p since that is not proportional to 4k. Again, this misalignment will not be too noticeable. You can game on 1080p or 1440p on a 4k display and it will still look much better than your current 1080p display.
3. It is definitely worth it. More pixels means there is reduced jaggies and hence better antialiasing, and hence better image quality. You will definitely be able to notice the improvement image quality moving from 1080p to 4k since resolution is figuratively 4 times. Text will be smoother, icons will look better, games and movies will look better. Also for gaming, you can turn down some settings like Antialiasing and supersampling or completely turn it off since you are already rendering at a high resolution.
Don't be alarmed by the review benchmarks on 4k having such low numbers since they normally review with all settings cranked up for the sake of proper and fair comparison. You can safely get 60 fps @ 4k by turning down a few settings and it would still look better than 1080p @ ultra.
However, my suggestion to you is go for 1440p monitor instead of 4k if budget is a concern. 1070 is a powerful card but you will get a proper kick out of it on 1440p. It is cheaper and looks much better than 1080p. Plus you can game on ultra at 1440p easily with a 1070. Good 4k monitors are still expensive.
For 40k, you will get a more than decent 1440p monitor. Another good option is a 144hz 1080p monitor. If you are an FPS gamer, 144hz with GSync is a heavenly experience. If you are more concerned about image quality, 1440@60Hz is a more viable option. Get a 4k only if you have money to spare otherwise hold on to your cash for now and wait for gsync 1440p/4k monitors to become cheaper.
EDIT: I noticed you want a display less than 28 inches. Another reason to consider 1440p instead of 4k. IMO 4k would be more enjoyable on a 27inch+ display. For 27 inches or below, you would be more than happy with 1440p.
