External monitor = blurry fonts

Hi guys,

Just got myself a external monitor (Dell 24" UltraSharp u2417h) and plugged in my MacBook Pro Retina 15" Late-2013 using DP. To my great disappointment text and fonts look extremely blurred and not with a good definition, I can't stand reading anything on it.

I tried doing some research but I didn't get to any conclusions.

Space in set RGB in my Color Profile, so I guess running that script would not have any effect. I'm running Sierra.

Is this kind of monitor not compatible with Retina?

Can someone please let me know what should I do?

thanks

Thomas

The solution I found was to set the underscan on your Mac settings to Off. Then, on the monitor settings (on the front panel) turn the underscan to off as well. You will find the image quality is much better. Keep the sharpness to a 3 or 4 and you'll be set!

I found this link: http://ireckon.net/2013/03/force-rgb-mode-in-mac-os-x-to-fix-the-picture-quality -of-an-external-monitor which fixed the issue for me. Hope it helps.

Hi,

I'm facing the same problem. The fonts on an external monitor are very blurry. Graphics and icons are displayed crystal sharp. I can rule out any issue with the monitor or cable (mini DisplayPort to DVI) whatsoever, because if I run Ubuntu in VirtualBox, then within the VM the fonts are displayed sharp. Also no font issues on the notebook display itself.

So it all comes down to a font issue on external displays, as can be read in several forums. The font smoothing tweaks didn't show an effect.

Macbook Air 13" mid-2012

OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion (10.8 pre-installed)

External Display: Benq G2222HDL connected via miniDisplayPort to DVI Adapter on the Thunderbolt connection

Can anyone reproduce the correct font display in a virtual machine?

Thanks,

sal_manilla

I too am having this same issue with my new Macbook Air 13". My external monitor via HDMI can't handle the fonts but it can handle media/graphics.

I hope someone has insight into this.

i am having the exact problem. i tried a few differnet cables as well. bought the original thunderbolt to hdmi from apple store and still the same issue. the fonts are pretty blurred and i have do have a professional grade monitor. the Asus Proart. Incidentally the windows laptop which i used previously gave crisper fonts. anyone who has same problem please help. This is on a macbok air 13" bought 2 weeks back.

Hello,

This could be an issue with font anti-aliasing and external third party displays. To get good results with my external monitor I had to set the correct AA setting. Pre Snow Leopard you could do this via preferences but Apple "simplified" it. They try to detect it automatically but this apparently only works with Apple displays.

Open a terminal and C&P

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

Then logout of your account and back in. The fonts should look less fuzzy now.

System: MacBook Air

Display: Asus PA248q

Connection: Mini DisplayPort HDMI female adapter to HDMI

Thanks for the tip, Michael. It's helped make the fonts on my new display look better. However, it's still slightly off (no matter what level of font smoothing) when you do a side by side comparison with my MacBook Air screen.

Is there anyway to make it more seamless?

Hi,

Well looking at my two displays they are also not completely the same but I think this is more or less because they are two different displays.

So I (finally) got my monitor to look great. It seams like HDMI was the culprit. I bout a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable and fonts and colors look great.

J

Same problem here and there are 27 pages someplace here of other people reporting the issue. Please report a bug fix. What people have discovered is that it's probably an OS issue because someone said when they booted in Windows, it was fine. I bought 2 new monitors, 2 different brands, same problem. I tried HDMI and DVI cables. Same problem. @BigTrouble, by DispalyPort cable, do you mean DVI??

My fonts look as if they were written in fuzzy chalk. It's really bad.

Is this Apple's way of forcing us to buy their monitors? If they were affordable I would.

@katndmouse - By DisplayPort I mean DisplayPort. DVI is a totally separate thing.

My Asus PA248Q supports both DVI and DisplayPort inputs. Here's the cable that I bought. It supports both audio and video. So I'm able to connect my speakers to my monitor and get audio from one cable.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TSTDI0/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

I've tried it now on a Dell U2412M with DisplayPort cable and with DVI+Adapter and still the same blurry text - unbearable for reading more than a couple of minutes.

Absolutely annoying that there is still no fix and workaround whatsoever for a show stopper like this!

I had this problem on a Dell Ultrasharp U2312HM 23 inch IPS LED with DVI <-> DVI.

Showstopper, monitor returned. I want to recommend a Mac Mini to people, but can't unless I know they're going to be able to use it without blurry fonts!

I have the same problem with a 2012 retina MBP. I wasted 2 weeks trying to fix Apple's Mountain Lion OSX. The display on external monitors is pathetic, and Mountain Lion won't let the user change the settings to something that might work. Apple Support even suggested I spring for SwitchResX ($20) to "patch" the problem until Apple fixes it. What?!

I returned the nice new retina MBP for a refund. No way am I going to shell out over $3K for a computer that can't even play nice with external monitors. And don't even get me started on the whole "wake from sleep" issue!