What should resolution be on my screen

What is my screen resolution? For some of us, understanding screen resolution and how it affects our user experience can be confusing. A pixel is a tiny dot. Thousands and millions of these dots make up the image on your screen. The resolution of your screen is how many dots your screen can display, horizontally and vertically. This is not determined by the size of the screen.

When you see your screen resolution it will look like a multiplication equation. For example, x Use the steps in the previous section and try out a few lower resolutions to see which one works best for you. What resolution should I set my monitor to? What is the monitor's native resolution? How to set your monitor to its native resolution in Windows How to set your monitor to its native resolution in Windows 7 and 8. Performance demand. His writing has appeared on CrunchGear.

He currently resides in Harrisburg, Pa. By Shawn Farner. In this guide, we'll explain why screen resolution is so important for designers and how it can affect your results, how to check the screen resolution of your current monitor, and how to buy the best monitor for your needs.

See our guide to monitor calibration if you want to optimise your monitor's performance, and if you're thinking of upgrading your monitor, check out our guides to the best ultrawide monitor and the best 4k monitors. If you want to skip to purchasing a better computer, see our guide to the best laptops for photo editing.

What do we mean when we talk about screen resolution? The monitor that's connected to your PC — or built into your laptop — displays images using pixels, which are essentially small squares of light that change colour. Computer screens are made up of thousands of pixels.

By changing the colours of those pixels in certain patterns, screens can show images, photos, text and all kinds of graphics. The numbers that we use when we talk about screen resolution are the number of pixels a screen can show horizontally and vertically. A screen that has a resolution of x a popular resolution often known as p or Full HD , can display 1, pixels vertically, and 1, pixels horizontally. The higher the number of pixels a screen can show, the sharper and more detailed the image quality.

But, the number of pixels that a screen can show isn't the only factor involved when it comes to image quality. There's also pixel density. Monitors come in all kinds of sizes, as well as resolutions. You'll often find monitors of different sizes that have the same number of pixels, for example a inch monitor and a inch monitor both with a screen resolution of x The image quality on the smaller monitor can often look sharper and more vivid because of its pixel density.

The smaller screen will have a higher number of pixels per inch than the larger screen. The higher the PPI, the better the image quality, so while it might be tempting to choose the largest screen possible, if you're looking for the best image quality, consider getting a smaller monitor with a higher resolution rather than a larger monitor with a lower resolution. It's worth bearing in mind that the screen resolution that your monitor advertises isn't the only resolution it can display.