system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
It's the same difference between 1440p and 4k. Just like back in the day there was the same debate about why 1080p wasn't necessary because 720p was good enough.

Higher resolution is always better. Higher framerate is always better. People just haven't admitted that the future inevitably moves to both.

I'd imagine there will be a limit at some point beyond which there won't be any tangible clarity benefits for 99% of people. Maybe 4k or 5k will even reach it. Same as there will be a limit on framerate in the 165-240 range.
gpt
&gt; back in the day there was the same debate about why 1080p wasn't necessary because 720p was good enough.

No one with a professional understanding ever believed this to be true. This was a result of technologies shifting at the time from CRT to LCD flat screens, where an often smaller 720p-adjacent CRT was being directly compared by consumers to LCD's operating at similar resolutions. The first 1080p, 16:9 flat screens were often **much** larger than what the average consumer was using from the prior generations of displays, and featured similar or worse pixel density. In the case of CRTs, who did not *have* pixel densities, lower resolutions even resulted in arguably superior image quality, further muddying the waters.

&gt; Higher resolution is always better.

As briefly touched upon above, this is not always the case. A consumer should also be observant of their distance from the display, and the size of the display. The size of the display has the most dramatic impact on whether a gain in resolution is particularly worthwhile, while most of the gain in newer display technology is actually a result of improvements in contrast and image processing.

When the average consumer saw an increase in the average size of displays, the differences became far more apparent. Blind studies had shown that when presented a lower-size display, around 17 inches, there were no perceptible gains in a similar model of display from increasing resolutions from 1080p to 1440p *when seated an average, recommended distance from the display.* This generally held true for most consumers until the 21 inch mark, where some who were more comfortable being closer, or had more acute eyesight, reported slight improvements in perceptible image quality.

The most interesting range for 1440p displays, that serves the greatest number of consumers with maximum image quality, tops out in the 27 inch range, where there is a clear and definite improvement over 1080p. This is the range in which 1440p is **nearly always** perceptibly superior to lower standard resolutions, and where 4k should begin to be considered as an option for consumers who prefer to sit much closer than recommended.

I can even dig up some of the mathematical equations that relate the perceptible resolution of the human eye to distance and pixel density of a given display, if you're interested, to present a number that can exactly match your own comfortable distance.