Windows 10: 4k laptop display set to 1920x1080 res looks blurry - possible fix?

Hello, I just purchased my first 4k display 14'' laptop, x1 yoga 5th gen. I usually work with this connected to an external 1080p monitor.When I set the resolution to 4k scaled 100%, things are of course unreadable, and given that battery life was kind of a bummer with 4k res, I thought I would give the 1080p resolution a try. I discovered that the laptop display set to a different resolution than the native looks seriously blurry, to a point that it's straining my eyes watching it for prolonged time. Performance are awesome though, every software seems able to run at double speed.At the sam

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1920x1080 is blurry on a 4K monitor

I recently bought a new laptop with a 4K display, which runs Windows 10. I had assumed the display wouldn't be an issue, but it has been in regards to how images show up (with 200% zoom on so I can actually read things), so I thought I'd try to change my
display resolution to 1920x1080. This is exactly half the size of 4K, which is 3840x2160 - so I assumed that 1 pixel would take up 4 pixels on my monitor. As it turns out, I was quickly proven wrong, as that resolution displays TERRIBLY on this monitor. Everything
is blurry, as if it was upscaled using "bilinear" rather than "nearest neighbor" - which is not at all what I was hoping for.

So, my question here is relatively simple. Is it possible for Windows 10 to display 1920x1080 on a 4K monitor with crisp, clean pixels and no blur?

I am a pixel artist, and one can probably imagine that blur is exactly what I DON'T want when doing stuff like that. It seems like I can't escape it with this monitor, though - at 4K images display incorrectly on most programs, and at 1920x1080 EVERYTHING
displays incorrectly. This isn't the most imperative issue ever, but I'd really love to find a solution for it, as I've been trying to tinker with this since I bought the laptop to no avail.

(As a side note, this resolution has given me issues outside of pixel art as well, mainly with gaming. Overall it's really just super impractical and difficult to work with, and I'd rather just be able to use 1920x1080 for a multitude of reasons.)

 

1920x1080 is blurry on a 4K monitor

Pixel art is described by Wikipedia as "a form of digital art ... where images
are edited on the pixel level." Think of the graphics of video game consoles like the SNES - that's what pixel artists do.

It's easiest and looks the best in a setting where everything is aliased, which is why this is such an issue for me.

This is an example of how pixel art is displayed in most programs in 4K (top) versus its actual appearance (bottom). It might not be too visible, but the top image is a bit fuzzy with soft edges, while the bottom image is clean and aliased.





This was not an issue for me on my old laptop with a 1920x1080 display. If I change my scaling to 100% in the Windows settings, the issue goes away, but everything is virtually impossible to see as it's
so small. This is why I was curious if it's at all possible get clean 1920x1080 on this monitor, but if it isn't, I guess there's nothing I can do.

Thanks for your response.

 

Scaling 1920x1080 to 4K screen

Hello everyone!

I have a question that I have not been able to find a proper answer to, and I'm starting to think it's impossible to do.

I recently bought a Dell XPS 15 with a 4K screen. I normally don't care for 4K but I thought it would be useful to futureproof my investment as much as possible, and I believe the 4K screen to be far brighter and more color accurate according to all the research I did prior.

Now to the issue: Windows 10 scaling is a bit wonky and I don't really care for the added pixel density at this present time. I tried to set the computer to 1920x1080 on the display settings and it works fine, but it looks blurry. It appears to scale the pixels in a "soft" way. I'm looking for a way to scale the pixels in a "hard" way, jagged edges and all. Is it possible?

Photoshop users might understand better if I describe it as follows: I want "nearest neighbor" scaling, not "bicubic" or "bilinear".

Any idea how I can do this?