Full-HD or HD-ready in a Cheap Desktop monitor?

The title could just as well say ‘Are there benefits to the latter?’ And the answer would be a yes. Full-HD is not always better than a lower resolution, especially when price, and the money you’re about to pay for a display is of great importance. This article walks you through the key implications the higher resolution has on your user experience.

Price

Everyone knows that the higher the resolution, the more information you can see on the screen at any given one time. The higher the resolution of the monitor, the smaller pixels generally get, which makes them more expensive to produce. Price can vary a lot depending on resolution, and can add $30 to $50 to the price of a monitor that costs $100 to begin with.

In some cases a 50 per-cent increase in cost can not be justified, for instance when you have to fill an office with fifty monitors. If those displays are only to be used for text editing or tasks that don’t involve heavy graphics related work, an extra 50% in cost is not a viable option.

Strain on Components

Where components mean everything from the CPU of your computer through the video card to your eyes. The higher the resolution, the higher the strain on the accessories of your computer.

Let’s say you’re into gaming, but don’t yet have an expensive PC that can breeze through the latest and greatest gaming titles at Full-HD. If this is the case, a 1366 by 768 monitor can literally halve the number of pixels your video card needs to pump out, which usually doubles the frame rate. In games response time is king, frame rate is queen, and the resolution is just a perk.

Readability

As mentioned earlier, strain on components is a key factor. A lower resolution screen is generally easier to read than a higher resolution one, because letters in a text are bigger on the former. If you work with text a lot, you may even benefit from choosing a monitor with a lower native resolution. Elderly people, or those who’re unlucky enough to need glasses to read usually are able to read 1366 by 768 pixels 22 inch monitors more easily than they are a 1920 by 1080 resolution on the same screen size.

Wrapping up the article, let’s skim through what we learn about the importance of choosing the right resolution. First, higher resolution is not always better, because it can significantly boost the price. Second, it’s not necessarily better because it can actually hurt the performance of components in your computer, and finally, it can even hurt readability.

That said, I put my vote in Full-HD, such as the Acer S211HL, because I believe it to be a more future proof technology than anything else on the market today. Again, I’m lucky enough to have better than perfect eyesight, which somewhat skims my ability to fully comprehend health implications (and benefits) of a lower resolution.