1920x1080 monitor looks blurry, any idea why?

Question

I'm trying out a new 1920x1080 monitor is a secondary monitor, my main monitor is a 4k. I'm well aware of how Mac scaling works, and that my 4k being at 3008x1692 means it's being outputted at 4k and then scaled down, which is why my main monitor looks slightly blurry.

However, my 1080p monitor looks way worse, even though its displaying at 1920x1080 which is the native resolution of the monitor. Any idea why it would look so bad? I installed betterdisplay, and enabling HiDPI makes the text smoother but doesn't get rid of the blurriness. With HiDPI off, I can see the pixels fairly well, but even so, they're not 'sharp' at all.

Answer 1

You don't mention the physical size of your displays. As has been repeated repeatedly, the pixel density is important in how MacOS renders the display.

MacOS is designed for high-density displays, and will look blurry on a low-density display.

A 1080p display at 24 inches is 92ppi. That's not high-density at all. A MacBook Pro display is between 218 ppi and 256 ppi.

A 1080p display that is even larger (27 inch, 32 inch) will have an even lower density and look even worse. You say you can see the pixels fairly well, which suggests that they are big (i.e. low-density).

Ideally, you want a display with pixels small enough that you can't see them. (This is what "Retina display" means: the pixels are so small that your retina cannot resolve them at normal distances.)

Your main monitor does not look blurry "because it is scaled down", but because it is (presumably) a 3008 x 1692 display at a physically large size.