Win 8.1 Screen resolution too big for text

[JonesL]

I have a Dell XPS with 15.6" screen. The resolution is set to 3200 x 1800 which is the recommended size, however the text seems to be tiny even when it is set to 'larger'. I have changed settings within the desktop which has increased the size of the text but only for certain text areas. For example, in Outlook the ribbon text is large but the message content and message pane has stayed quite small. The text is readable but seems to small to be the largest setting I can possibly choose. I also have a surface and I compared the app name text on my surface to my laptop and the text size is exactly the same! Surely with the larger resolution on my Dell it would make the text slightly larger? Please don't ask me to only change the settings in desktop as this will only apply to the desktop and not the whole device. Another issue I'm having is in each of the browsers, the writing is tiny and this is when the zoom is on 100% so I don't expect to have to zoom in when my eye-sight is perfectly fine! It wastes the space of the screen as its all tiny in the middle! Please help.

[Norphy]

3200x1800 is a pixel doubled 1600x900. 1600x900 on a 15" screen is about 120dpi which some people might find small if they're used to the roughly 100dpi that you get on a lot of screens. The scaling factor for 240dpi on the pixel doubled screen would need to be 240% to get a similar text size. Can you manually set scaling factors or does it use arbitrary labels?

[JonesL]

Thank you for your response Norphy. You're dead right the problem is that my laptop is capable of 3200 x 1800 but on the 15" screen it is really small. In Windows 8.1 there are several opportunities to increase font size but this only seems to be for menus, application headers etc. but we still find some applications have fixed font size in their dialog boxes and things like windows messages and even the apps menu in windows 8.1 have small fonts. This size can be set but the options are either large or small, when set on small it is virtually unreadable on my screen. I think this is simply a combination of high resolution on a small screen size that Microsoft have not thought about.

[Arthur]

This size can be set but the options are either large or small

You should be able to choose between Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large or Custom.

 

 

I think this is simply a combination of high resolution on a small screen size that Microsoft have not thought about.

It's not all Microsoft's fault.

 

Living a High-DPI desktop lifestyle can be painful

 

You can say all this talk of High-DPI is a problem with Windows, but I think it's a problem with the app developers. The documentation is clear on High-DPI and developers need to test, include appropriate resources or don't claim to support high-dpi. I have a number of older Windows apps that look great on this display. They are simply scaled at 2x. Sure, they may be a little blurry (they have been scaled 2x) but they are all 100% useable.