Do I need to test my applications on 4K monitor?

[Mike Torrettinni 199]

None of the customer complained, yet, but I have a suspicion that my desktop applications will not be displayed correctly on 4K monitors... either the menu icons or 3rd party controls.

I'm not interested in using 4K monitor as development monitor, but I saw a cheap 4K monitor ($180) that I would only use to see how my applications would look like. So, I don't need high end monitor, just the cheapest 4K option.

 

Is that good enough, can I assume my applications will look good on all 4K monitors, if it looks good on my cheap one? Or are there other things to be careful of, with high dpi/high resolution monitors?

I've seen many resources how to prepare applications for high dpi resolutions, so I'm not looking that content right now, just if it makes sense buying this monitor or not.

I use Delphi 10.2.3.

 

Thanks!

[Guest]

IMHO, *absolutely*!

 

Compile your project, take care to set "manifest" options so that Windows do not scale your application.

Test on a 4K display scaled to an "odd" number (250%, not just 200%).

Test on a dual monitor setup where the two monitors are differently scaled (ona at 100% and the other at 250%).

 

Be ware that if windows is scaling your application to 200% or 300% it will look rather ok. However as soon as it's 225%, 250% et. cetera anti-aliasing will be very visible).

 

Do you persist sizes of windows, positions of dialogs and such? Test that too under all viable situations.

What i mean is, do your users have laptops (at 4K) and docking stations at the office. If you persist "at home" on 250% scaling what happens back at work?

 

And so on and so forth....

 

HTH,

 

/Dany

[Mike Torrettinni 199]

Hm, if I understand correctly, then the whole issues is about DPI and not the resolution? I can switch DPI on my 21" 1920x1200 and test different DPI settings... is that any different than on 4K monitor?

[dummzeuch 1664]

6 hours ago, Mike Torrettinni said:

Hm, if I understand correctly, then the whole issues is about DPI and not the resolution? I can switch DPI on my 21" 1920x1200 and test different DPI settings... is that any different than on 4K monitor?

You won't notice if the text gets too small to read.

[David Heffernan 2456]

1 hour ago, dummzeuch said:

You won't notice if the text gets too small to read.

No. But then the user with such a monitor will notice and increase the DPI. Such a problem will affect all programs. 

 

You certainly don't need a 4k monitor to test DPI scaling but you do need multiple monitors to test per monitor DPI scaling. 

[Mike Torrettinni 199]

Great, thanks for advice!