Mac Mini and Dell 4K Monitor: Resolution Question

Generally, digital displays will look best when viewed at full resolution

or at integer fractions of the full resolutions. This is because each pixel

can be mapped precisely. At resolutions in between, the pixels need

to be interpolated and as a result will not look all that good. Depending

on how the mapping is done, it can be blurry or at the other extreme

pixelated. It is just the nature of digital imaging and nothing can really

be done to change that without defying the laws of physics.

This is why 1920x1080 looks good on a 3840x2160 because it is an

exact factor of 2 scaling.

Years ago Apple had the goal of making the user interface resolution independent but that hasn't happened. Microsoft has done a slightly better job in allowing users to set different font sizes for for the user interface. For those of us with 'older' eyes we have to make do with some work arounds and one is accepting a lower resolution in some instances. Ugh. A second is looking for external displays that have multiple acceptable resolutions. A third is taking advantage of zooming features for applications that utilities it. For example on my MBAir which has fonts that are a little uncomfortably small, in MS Office I can set the view to between 125% and 150% depending on how tired my eyes are. My browser offers a similar feature but of course this doesn't work for all applications which is why I spent a long time searching for a monitor for my 2018 mini.