Do I need a 2K or 4K Monitor for sharper fonts on MacBook Air M3?

mklmkwn wrote:

I have bought m3 air, when i connect with lg external full jd monitor font dont look crisp and shar as it does on m3 air display

That's to be expected.

Your M3 MacBook Air has a 13.6" screen with 2560x1664 pixels, and a pixel density of 224 pixels per inch. A 24" 1920x1080 display has a pixel density of approximately 91.8 pixels per inch. That means that if you take a square inch area out of each screen, the area on the M3 MacBook Air screen will be drawn with about 6x as many pixels.

should i buy 4k or 2k monitor will it support any 2k or 4k monitor for sharp ans crisp resolution

If you want a display that is as sharp as the one on your M3 MacBook Air, you're going to need to match, or come close to, the M3 MacBook Air's pixel density. Pixel density is a function of both resolution and screen size.

So we'd be talking about something like

• A 24" 4K (3840x2160 pixel) display with a pixel density of 183.6 pixels per inch
• A 27" 5K (5120x2880 pixel) display with a pixel density of 218 pixels per inch
• A 32" 6K (6016x3384 pixel) display with a pixel density of 218 pixels per inch

That leaves the problem of finding one. If you have the money, the 27" 5K Apple Studio Display is a pretty good choice,

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I only know of two 24" 4K displays that are still on the market.

• The LG 24UD58-B 24" Class 4K UHD IPS LED Monitor, which lists for $300 – but whose specifications do not mention coverage of sRGB, suggesting that it might not have very good color accuracy.
• The ASUS ProArt Display PA24US Professional Monitor, which has high-end color accuracy features aimed at professional photographers, but goes for $1300.

LG once had 24" 4K monitors that attached via Thunderbolt, cost around $700 (?), and that if I am not mistaken, had better color accuracy specifications than the 24UD58-B. But those are all discontinued.

For a long time, Apple and LG were the only companies making 27" 5K displays, but you can now find (or will soon be able to find) 27" 5K displays from Apple, LG, Samsung, Asus, BenQ, and ViewSonic. (The Asus one relies upon versions of DisplayPort and HDMI that your Mac might not support.). The Apple one is $1600+, but I think that the street prices for the LG and Samsung ones are more in the $800 to $950 range.

Given this, a lot of people settle for 27" or 32" 4K monitors. You give up some sharpness. On the other hand, you can get 27" 4K monitors with IPS panels and 100% or near-100% coverage of sRGB for as little as $300 – $350.

I suggest that you start by reviewing the M3 MacBook Air specs to see what external display resolutions that it can support, by going to Apple Specifications.

For reference: Full HD (FHD) resolution is 1920 × 1080 pixels, commonly referred to as 1080p.

There you should find the following information:

Display Support

• Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:
• One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
• Close the MacBook Air lid to use a second external display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz

mklmkwn wrote:

Thanks, its helpfull,

i tried the hidpi resolution one but it made font more oversharp and fonts look fuzzy, the same monitor on ubuntu looks good than mac os

A Full HD monitor is not a "HiDPI" monitor. It is a low PPI one.

Once upon a time, macOS used sub-pixel anti-aliasing to make fonts look better on low PPI monitors like 21.5" – 24" Full HD monitors. However, from what I've read, that introduced messy, non-modular dependencies into the code. Monitors with Retina pixel density had enough pixels to allow drawing letter shapes in more detail without the use of that trick. So some time after built-in Retina screens became common on Mac notebooks, and iMacs, Apple removed the code for the sub-pixel anti-aliasing feature.

Even if it was still there, a 24" 1920x1080 monitor would not look as sharp as the 13" MacBook Air screen, for the simple reason that the MacBook Air's screen is a much-higher-PPI screen.

Ubuntu might display better text on a 24" Full HD monitor than macOS does – but there is no way that Ubuntu on a 24" monitor beats macOS on a M3 MacBook Air's built-in screen or on a 27" 5K Apple Studio Display.

This would be the 27" 5K Apple display.

Studio Display - Apple

Trivia: I see that Apple is advertising that it is "powered by … [an] A13 Bionic chip." That's the same chip that you'd find in an iPhone 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, or SE (2nd generation).