Unsatisfied with the sharpness in your new QHD monitor? Thanks to the power of economics, that display of yours might actually have a downscaled 4K panel, one that isn’t doing your image quality or refresh rate any favours. The worst part? You can’t even upscale them.
Photo: Joe Scarnici (Getty)
A report from display review site PRAD ProAdviser claims certain unnamed manufacturers are using 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) panels instead of the proper QHD (2560 x 1440) panels to outfit monitors advertised as QHD-resolution displays.
In order to pose as lower-resolution displays, the 4K monitors must be downscaled. That’s leading to a loss of image sharpness thanks to the dissonance between the desired resolution and the native resolution of the panel.
The reason? Manufacturing shortages. According to panel manufacturers who spoke to PRAD, it’s sometimes cheaper to use and downscale UHD panels instead of the lower-resolution QHD panel.
Normally, discovering a secret superpower in your gadget is pretty cool, but in this case, using a 4K panel can cause more problems than you’d expect. For one, there’s no way to actually access that potential 4K resolution if it’s being sold as a QHD display. Thanks to firmware preventing you from upscaling, screens are reportedly locked to a “maximum” QHD resolution.
Not everyone needs a 4K monitor, even though the increased image resolution is nice. QHD monitors have incredibly fast refresh rates, and are perfect for gaming when rendering scenes in 4K would be too intensive on a graphics card.
Figuring out what kind of monitor you have requires a trip to your monitor’s spec sheet. Proper QHD monitors have a larger pixel pitch or pixel width (the distance between the centre of two sequential pixels) compared to 4K UHD monitors. If your QHD monitor has a pixel pitch of 0.233mm or so, then you’re working with the real deal. If it has a 0.16mm pixel pitch, the same as a UHD monitor, you’re probably working with a downscaled display.
Eagle-eyed owners can likely confirm their suspicions by looking at text or small icons, but you should probably contact your manufacturer to get some clarification.