4K related questions (laptops with 4K screens and external 4K displays)

[modeonoff]

Hello, there were some issues of scaling in 4K. I read that the UI and text of some programs got screwed up and text were not clear. Have all those issues been resolved? Is scaling in 4K laptop screens and 4K external displays working perfectly fine now? Can I easily have different resolutions on the two screens without messing things up?

Given three laptops (everything the same but one has a 1080 display, the other has a 4K display, and the 3rd one has a 4K touch display), about the battery life (in terms of hours) can the batter of these three laptops last? In general, how much heavier is laptop with 4K display compared with its lower res counterparts?

 

[InvalidError]

Resolution has negligible impact on display weight. However, a more powerful GPU to drive that display if you are going to do gaming or intensive 3D work on it could add substantial weight for thermal management and murder the battery.

UI scaling is an OS/software function, not a monitor or even GPU/driver function. If scaling is messed up on your external 4k display, it will still be messed up on a laptop display. Results will vary from application to application, depending on how they handle the OS' UI scaling setting. Some software simply ignore it.

 

[modeonoff]

Resolution has negligible impact on display weight. However, a more powerful GPU to drive that display if you are going to do gaming or intensive 3D work on it could add substantial weight for thermal management and murder the battery.

UI scaling is an OS/software function, not a monitor or even GPU/driver function. If scaling is messed up on your external 4k display, it will still be messed up on a laptop display. Results will vary from application to application, depending on how they handle the OS' UI scaling setting. Some software simply ignore it.

Thanks. Do you mean that depending on the applications, under Windows 10 there are still issues with scaling related to 4K displays (be it the LCD that come with the laptops of external ones)?

 

[InvalidError]

What I wrote is that different applications handle Windows' UI scaling differently (quite common in applications or games that use custom UIs instead of Windows Forms/MFC UIs) or ignore it altogether. For those, "4k scaling" will be broken or non-existent until the application gets fixed - if ever.

If you already own a 4k monitor/TV, try scaling on it and see if it works as you expect it to work on a laptop in the applications that are most important to you.

 

[modeonoff]

What I wrote is that different applications handle Windows' UI scaling differently (quite common in applications or games that use custom UIs instead of Windows Forms/MFC UIs) or ignore it altogether. For those, "4k scaling" will be broken or non-existent until the application gets fixed - if ever.

If you already own a 4k monitor/TV, try scaling on it and see if it works as you expect it to work on a laptop in the applications that are most important to you.

I have a 4K TV but I don't have a Windows 10 laptop for testing.

 

[InvalidError]

I have a 4K TV but I don't have a Windows 10 laptop for testing.

If you have a PC with Windows 10, scaling on it should work exactly the same way. The only difference is that the laptop's display is 14-17" instead of 40+.

 

[modeonoff]

Do different resolutions between the laptop LCD and external 4K display work well? Read that there were some issues.

 

[InvalidError]

It works the same way as multi-monitor on a regular desktop PC. A laptop display is nothing more than an integrated monitor, it makes no difference to the OS, GPU and GPU drivers.

 

[modeonoff]

On the MacBook Pro, we can have different resolutions on the LCD screen and external monitor. Unplugging the display and plugging it back work without issue. How about in Windows 10?

Another case is when both the laptop LCD and external display are in 4K but the scaling of font size are different for different displays. Will UI and words get messed up?

 

[InvalidError]

Another case is when both the laptop LCD and external display are in 4K but the scaling of font size are different for different displays. Will UI and words get messed up?

As I have already written, different applications/games handle scaling differently. Especially those that use custom UIs instead of MFC/Forms framework UIs. Asking the same question 100 more times won't change the answer - it depends on an applicatin/game-by-application/game basis.

 

[modeonoff]

So, with the MacBook Pro, I can guarantee that there is no scaling issue but for Windows laptops, I may run into issues depending on the applications.

 

[InvalidError]

I bet there is no shortage of Mac software that uses custom UI and ignore UI scaling too - it is extremely unlikely that all software is managing scaling perfectly, you either haven't personally used Mac software with broken scaling or the broken software you have used wasn't broken badly enough to register as broken with you.