Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel Density: Explained!”.
Hey what’s up guys mkbhd here and today we’re going to be talking about pixel densities, everything you could possibly want to know about pixel densities. In the last video in case you missed it. I mentioned that the ipad 3 might possibly have a retina display, and a lot of you guys were thinking that that’s a little bit unnecessary. I mean it’s just a tablet.
Why would it need a retina display things like that? So today i hope to be able to address that. Let’S go ahead and get started with this video. Well, the start. Individual pixels on a display contain a certain number of sub pixels for each color and there are different display technologies like pentile displays that have less sub pixels per pixel and therefore tend to look a little bit worse when displaying the color that they’re missing. But, for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that all displays are made up with pixels with red, green and blue sub pixels.
Now, when we’re talking about resolution, we tend to refer to it in its simplest form. The x by y form, where x, is the number of pixels in the horizontal direction and y is the number of pixels in the vertical direction. A full hd display, for example, would measure 1920 pixels across by 1080 pixels down or 1920 by 1080.. So when i want to talk about pixel density, we need to measure the number of pixels on the display and divide it by the size of the display, the area.
So here in america, we use pixels per inch as silly as inches are. So we multiply the horizontal resolution by the vertical resolution to get the total number of pixels on the display, then multiply the horizontal size by the vertical size of the display to get the total area in square inches, divide the two numbers and that’s how we calculate Pixel density, so retina display a term dubbed by apple, is really any display with a pixel density so high that the retina of the human eye cannot detect individual pixels from a typical viewing distance. The iphone has a resolution of 960×540 on a three and a half inch screen, giving it a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch and you’re, typically using an iphone less than two feet away from your eyeball.
So again, the higher pixel density, the better when it’s that close to your face now just about any phone display with a pixel density of around 250 ppi or higher, will look excellent from such a close range. But not every phone has such a high pixel density. As you can see here, there are quite a few that come nowhere near that now moving on to tablets now, when you’re, using a tablet, you’re using it from a little bit further away, so pixels can be a bit bigger before your retina can detect them. People use a tablet from roughly three feet away from their eyes, so the average pixel density for tablets drops off a bit. The ipad 2 comes in at 132 ppi and the motorola zoom and asus transformer prime at 150..
You can occasionally see pixels at this density, but usually not, but this is why people are looking forward to a high resolution ipad 3. and then we move on to computer displays which have stuck around the same resolution for years. The typical 24 inch monitor has a resolution of 1920×1080, which gives it a pixel density of just 91 ppi and it doesn’t stop there. Take a lower end 19 inch monitor with a resolution of 1280×1024 86 ppi, and while you may be inclined to believe that your precious apple thunderbolt display is superior in clarity seems very sharp.
It’S really not. This 27 inch monitor comes in at 2560 by 1440, giving it a pixel density of 109, putting it right in line with other displays in that size and that price range. Of course, we use desktop monitors from a little bit further away, maybe four feet from our eyes, so we typically don’t notice so much lower pixel density. Then, of course there are tvs. Now we sit much further away from tvs, so pixel density drops off again here. A 42 inch 1080p tv has a pixel density of just 52 ppi, i’m sure when you were young.
You looked up at the tv up close and noticed the red, green and blue dots that made up the picture yeah. You were looking at subpixels there, so there have been rumors about a retina display macbook pro, but i wouldn’t put any money on it. The real bet here is in high resolution tablets. Next, in fact, the asus transformer prime tf 700t tablet has already been announced and will be available later this year, with a 1920×1200 display and samsung has rumored 11 inch tablet in the works with a resolution of 2560 by 1600, the same resolution we see on a Lot of 30 inch monitors today.
The ipad 3, like i mentioned in my last video, is rumored to have a resolution of 2048 by 1536 on that 10.1 inch display bringing it to a pixel density of 528 ppi overkill. Probably, but will it be beautiful absolutely so? This has been an mkbhd video. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up, as that really does help out a lot and i’ll talk to you guys in the next article.
Thanks for watching peace, you .