I purchased my first desktop computer when I was in school. It had a dual-core processor with 2 GB RAM and a 15-inch monitor with 720p LCD display. Back in 2010, when CRT monitors weren’t extinct yet, having an LCD display at home meant you had something that’s truly next-gen.
As pretty as that monitor looked on my desk, everything else on the web didn’t look as nice. The internet connection was painfully slow, web pages were full of bmp icons and low-resolution images. The web simply didn’t look good.
A few years later, I was using Windows laptops that still had 720p displays. It didn’t make the web look any better, but the web did start to look better. Average internet connections became faster, so the web developers increased the quality of the icons and pictures they put on their websites.
However, the windows laptops were still stuck in all 720p displays. And because of that, the beautification of the web largely went unnoticed.
And then, Apple dropped the bomb with its MacBook Pros with Retina Display. The web suddenly took a downfall in terms of how good it looked. Of course, I couldn’t afford a Mac at that time, so I only read about how the web suddenly became ugly. But it didn’t take long for websites to start using ‘retina-ready’ icons and images.
Fast forward to the present day, the web now looks glamorously beautiful. Icons have taken a flatter yet modern look. Images are high resolution. Text is crisp. But you will miss out on all of that unless you have access to the web with a high-resolution display.
Displays are the windows to the web
Pun unintended.
After I got my first MacBook Pro with retina display in mid-2015, which I recently bade farewell to, I was surprised at how great everything suddenly started to look. The all too familiar design of Facebook suddenly looked gorgeous. Google and the search result pages looked like they had a makeover and became a lot shinier. Every website, except a few that weren’t ‘retina-ready,’ made me glued to the screen.
If you think about it, a big part of your experience of browsing the web comes from the display. If you have two displays — a low-resolution CRT monitor and a high-resolution full HD monitor — which one would you want to browse the web? Sure, you would still see the same information regardless of the display, but when speaking about experience, a better display gives the mundane task of browsing the web a glamorous feeling.
To me, that happened more than once. The first time I got a MacBook Pro, the first time I got an iPhone 6s, the first time I got a Nexus 5x, the first time I got a OnePlus 5T, the first time I got a 5K iMac, and most recently, the first time I got an iPhone 8 Plus.
Granted, each of those devices gave me different levels of experience. But there was one common feeling I experienced after unboxing all of those devices: The web just looked a little better.
You deserve a better display
Shortly after getting my 27-inch 5K iMac, which is currently my favorite gadget, I started thinking, it’s 2018, and everyone deserves a better display. I’m not oblivious to the fact that all of these are extremely costly products. But there are other devices with better displays that won’t break your bank.
If you are planning to buy a new device or upgrade from your current one, be that a phone, a laptop, or a desktop computer, I strongly, strongly encourage you to think twice about the display you’re getting.
If you’re getting a budget laptop with a 720p display, please give it a second thought. Can you wait a few more weeks to save some more and get another display that has a 1080p full HD display?
If you’re getting a phone or a tablet device, please make sure it has a high enough resolution and ppi (pixel-per-inch) according to the size of the display.
You may think that the display resolution doesn’t really matter that much. But trust me, you’ll thank me later once you experience the web in a high-resolution display. I don’t mean you have to go for a 2K or 4K display on a smartphone. In fact, iPhones still don’t have full HD display except on the Plus models, and that is fine. It’s a smartphone. For the size of the iPhone 6/6s/7/8, it doesn’t really need a full HD display.
But if you’re getting a budget Android phone, make sure it has at least 720p display. If it packs 1080p, awesome. But don’t get anything below 720p. You deserve better.
The web has become a lot prettier. It’s high time you experienced the beauty of it.