Is a 24-inch 1440p monitor sharp? PPI and fractional scaling guide

How this is calculated

Retina distance works out to 28 inches (71 cm), which is roughly where most people sit at a desk. The flip side of the high density is that native UI elements become small. Windows uses a 96-DPI logical baseline, and 125% scaling can make menus and buttons more comfortable at this density. macOS uses points mapped to backing pixels and offers display modes that change the apparent workspace size. Choose a mode that keeps text readable rather than treating Windows percentages and macOS scaling as equivalent.

Verdict

A 24-inch 1440p panel packs 3.69 million pixels into a smaller chassis than its 27-inch sibling, hitting 122.41 PPI with a Retina distance of about 28 inches (71 cm), which is roughly the typical desk viewing distance. At that density text starts to look print-quality and sub-pixel rendering artifacts become essentially invisible, which is the draw at this size. The cost is that native 1440p UI elements at 122 PPI are small enough that 125% Windows scaling gets the workspace back to a comfortable size, which is the operating-system tax for the higher density. The 24-inch 1440p is the niche pick for tight desks and high-density preferences against the 27-inch 1440p alternative, which delivers the same 1440p workspace at 109 PPI without needing scaling.