Review of Eizo CG318-4K and problem of small type

[alan a]

In his review of the Eizo 4K display, Joshua Holko did comment on the problem of tiny type at these huge resolutions --  "In Real world use here in my studio the first thing you notice on turning on the display is the incredible resolution that a true 4K screen provides and the subsequent desktop real estate that this resolution enables. I had been concerned that text may be rendered to fine to read but have found that (even though it is small) it is actually quite legible in daily use to my eyes. I suspect your mileage may vary depending on the quality of your vision and viewing distance. In my studio I sit quite close to the monitor and have (as of last test 20/20 vision) no problem reading text on screen without the need for any software scaling. Daily life in a true 4K environment under MAC OS X just works provided you have good enough eye sight to read the small text."

I wonder how close Joshua must sit to such a huge display to read the "small text?"  What is "quite close?"  With any large display you naturally sit further back to be able to more easily see the entire display and take advantage of the size.  But if you must sit pretty close to be able to read the text, then it is a self-defeating problem.  For those of us who use a monitor for a variety of purposes such as business correspondence and docs, reading the NY Times on the web, and other uses -- and not just for graphics -- this could still be the achilles heel of these 4K displays.

In an earlier thread on these topics, I argued that type and fonts would be tiny on a 4K display, due to its huge resolution, and noted that Apple never provided a means to increase fonts on a system-wide basis, as Windows has since at least 1995.  I was partially corrected on that point in the same thread.  The rebuttal to my assertions was that Apple addressed these problems using their own proprietary methods when it designed the retina display.  See the below links and reviews that cover those points and explain how the retina display does, in fact, address some of these issues:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macbook-pro-retina-display-analysis

What I'm wondering is whether Apple will ever offer a Mac Pro that includes a version of the OS software, that incorporates their solution for retina displays,  but that could be used to drive external monitors like the Eizo and really solve the problem of small type.  I suppose Apple's proprietary way of doing this would be a three-way combination of the Mac Pro, their own new 4k or 5k monitor (when they finally release one), coupled with new OS changes to drive that combination.  And result in the the same retina solution that they implemented on the iPad and iMac.  Such a proprietary solution would be to shut out using that solution with non-Apple displays however.

However, it should be noted that the Eizo monitor is both larger than the external thunderbolt Apple monitor (31" vs 27") and is superior in other ways described in the review.  (Eizo is not a glossy surface and includes superior built in hardware calibration, among others.)

The ideal solution would be a new Mac Pro along with changes to the Mac OS that would enable the Mac Pro to drive ANY external 4K monitor and would incorporate the solutions for the small type problem that they implemented with retina displays.  See the reviews referenced above.

It would also be nice if Apple finally included the ability to increase fonts on a system-wide basis the way that Windows has done since 1995.  Apple is 20 years behind Windows and Microsoft on that feature.  I have never understood why the engineers of Apple couldn't see and address this obvious deficiency in the Apple OS.

I am still using a non-retina iMac as I didn't think the retina display alone was enough of a reason to buy a new Mac.  (I previously posted on the results of my head-to-head comparison of a non-retina iMac versus a retina Mac in two different Apple stores, using the same identical video material.  Such comparisons are no longer possible as all Apple sells today are retina displays in the 27" size.  But when it was possible to do such a comparison, even the Apple sales staff admitted that the difference,and improvement in the retina display, was quite small.  That was the conclusion of all the customers who gathered around to watch, resulting in some customers who were there solely to buy a new retina iMac walking out of the stores. See my previous post on that.) 

So I am waiting for the next release of the Mac Pro and will see what Apple does on 4K displays and tiny type.  Apple clearly knows how to at least partially fix this problem, as they did with the retina displays.  But will they do it on the Mac Pro for non-Apple external displays like the Eizo?

And will they ever allow us to increase the size of fonts on a system wide basis as Microsoft has since Windows 95 or earlier?

[Josh-H]

I wonder how close Joshua must sit to such a huge display to read the "small text?"  What is "quite close?"

Alan, not sure when you posted this and apologies if it has sat for a while. I have been in Antarctica for the last two months and only just returned home yesterday.

To address your query - "Quite Close" is in my case, quite close at 55cm from the monitor to my eyes. At that distance I have no problems reading the text. But as I noted, your mileage may vary depending on your eye sight. Now.. if you are going to use this monitor for more than image editing (which is where I spend 99% of my time with this display) then the small text might wear a bit thin.. especially if you were reading newspapers online often.

software scaling is an option as you note.. but comes with various trade offs. I recommend you ask to try one of these monitors and see how you go with the text size if you are at all concerned. On product such as this your local reseller should be able to help you make the right choice.

[alan a]

Joshua,

Thanks very much for the very informative review, and for your response.  Did you ever try the Eizo with a Windows OS and utilize the Windows setting to increase the size of fonts on a system-wide basis?  Until Apple gets its act together, that combination might be the best approach for large 4K monitors like the Eizo.

My current plan is to wait, and see if Apple incorporates the same technology used in their retina iMacs in a future release of the Mac Pro.  A Mac Pro could then either drive non-Apple 4K monitors or an external Apple 5K monitor that incorporates retina technology, if they ever release one.  My assumption is that it makes no sense for Apple to only utilize their solution for retina displays on the iMac, but not on their top of the line unit.  Unfortunately any future free standing Mac 5K display will not be as advanced as the Eizo and will suffer from the mirror surface.

 In his review, Anand Lal Shimpi provided an excellent summary of how Apple solved the problem of small text on the iMac.  I have taken the liberty of quoting from it here because it provides an excellent explanation for why 5k works on an iMac, but 4k did not work, with regards to tiny fonts, when you plugged an external 4k monitor into a Mac Pro.  The link to that review is in my first posting but here are the key paragraphs --

>>"Moving to Sharp’s 32” 4K PN-K321 brought back memories of my 30” days. The display is absolutely huge. OS X (and Windows 8.1) running at 3840 x 2160 is incredible, but I find that text, menus and UI elements can be too small. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be and 3840 x 2160 on a 32” panel is just past the borderline of comfortable for me. For editing photos and videos it’s great, but for everything else the ~30% increase in pixel density was just too much."

>> "Apple actually created a solution to this problem with the MacBook Pro’s Retina Display. On a 13 or 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display Apple renders the screen at full panel resolution (e.g. 2880 x 1800), but renders things like text, menus and UI elements at 4x their normal resolution (2x in each dimension). In supported apps, photos and videos are rendered at a 1:1 ratio with pixels on screen. The combination of the two results in a display that’s both incredibly high res and usable. In the case of the 15-inch MacBook Pro, you get the screen real estate (and corresponding text/widget size) of a 1440 x 900 panel, with the exception of any photo/video/other-special content that can treat the display like a full 2880 x 1800 panel."

>> "For those users who still need more screen real estate and don’t mind trading off UI element size, Apple offers scaling modes that render the screen at an even higher resolution and then scale it down to fit the 2880 x 1800 panel. For example you can select a 1920 x 1200 equivalency mode, which gets rendered at 3840 x 2400 with text/menus/UI elements at 4x res and then scaled down to 2880 x 1800. Apple even wrote their own scaling and filtering algorithms to ensure a consistent user experience regardless of what GPU was active at the time (Intel and NVIDIA scaling/filtering algorithms apparently produce slightly different quality output)."

>> "I was fully expecting all of this to be available on the Mac Pro when connected to a 32” 4K display. By default, there’s only a single supported scaled resolution: 2560 x 1440. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Apple is running the same supersampling routines when you pick this resolution, instead you get a 2560 x 1440 desktop scaled up to 3840 x 2160 (rather than a 5120 x 2880 screen scaled down). The result is a bit of a blurry mess."

[Josh-H]

Did you ever try the Eizo with a Windows OS and utilize the Windows setting to increase the size of fonts on a system-wide basis?

Hi Alan - No. Im strictly a mac person these days... the last windows computer I owned was a Vista machine and that go drop kicked down the stairs before it finished its life in the same vain as the printer from the movie Office Space.....