Getting the best display on your monitor

Windows chooses the best display settings, including screen resolution, refresh rate, and color, based on your monitor. These settings differ depending on whether you have an LCD or a CRT monitor. If you want to adjust your display settings, or if these settings were changed and you want to restore default settings, use the following recommendations.

LCD monitors, also called flat-panel displays, have largely replaced CRT monitors. They are far lighter and thinner than bulky CRT monitors, which contain heavy glass tubes. LCD monitors also come in a wider range of shapes and sizes, which include widescreen screens and standard-width screens, with ratios of 16:9 or 16:10 width-to-height for widescreen models and 4:3 for standard-width models. Laptops also use flat-panel displays.

LCD monitors are much slimmer and lighter than older-style CRT monitors.

For both LCD and CRT monitors, it's typical that the higher the dots per inch (DPI) you set to display on your screen, the better the fonts will look. When you increase the DPI, you are increasing the screen resolution. The resolution you use depends on the resolutions your monitor supports. At higher resolutions, such as 1900 x 1200 pixels, items appear sharper. They also appear smaller, so more items fit on the screen. At lower resolutions, such as 800 x 600 pixels, fewer items fit on the screen, but they are larger.

Windows allows you to increase or decrease the size of text and other items on your screen while keeping your monitor set to its optimal resolution. For more information, see Make the text on your screen larger or smaller.

The best display settings for an LCD monitor

If you have an LCD monitor, check your screen resolution. This helps to determine the clarity of on-screen images. It's a good practice to set an LCD monitor to its native resolution—the resolution a monitor was designed to display based on its size. To see your monitor's native resolution, check the display settings in Control Panel.

1. Click to open Screen Resolution.
2. Click the drop-down list next to Resolution. Check for the resolution marked (recommended). This is your LCD monitor's native resolution—usually the highest resolution your monitor can support.

The monitor's manufacturer or reseller should also be able to tell you the native resolution for your LCD monitor. (CRT monitors don't have a native resolution.)

Screen Resolution in Control Panel shows the recommended resolution for your monitor.

An LCD monitor running at its native resolution usually displays text better than a CRT monitor. LCD monitors can technically support lower resolutions than their native resolution, but text won't look as sharp and the image might be small, centered on the screen, edged with black, or look stretched. For more information, see Change screen resolution.

Because stand-alone monitors are usually larger than laptop screens, they typically support higher resolutions than laptops.

Resolution based on LCD monitor size

Monitor size	Recommended resolution (in pixels)
19-inch standard ratio LCD monitor	1280 × 1024
20-inch standard ratio LCD monitor	1600 × 1200
20- and 22-inch widescreen LCD monitors	1680 × 1050
24-inch widescreen LCD monitor	1920 × 1200

Laptop screen size	Recommended resolution (in pixels)
13- to 15-inch standard ratio laptop screen	1400 × 1050
13- to 15-inch widescreen laptop screen	1280 × 800
17-inch widescreen laptop screen	1680 × 1050

Set the color for an LCD monitor

To get the best color displayed on your LCD monitor, make sure to set it to 32-bit color. This measurement refers to color depth, which is the number of color values that can be assigned to a single pixel in an image. Color depth can range from 1 bit (black-and-white) to 32 bits (over 16.7 million colors). For more information, see Change color management settings.
1. Click to open Screen Resolution.
2. Click Advanced settings, and then click the Monitor tab.
3. Under Colors, select True Color (32 bit), and then click OK.

The best display settings for a CRT monitor

For a CRT monitor, it's important to change the screen resolution to the highest resolution available that provides 32-bit color and at least a 72-Hertz refresh rate. For more information, see Change screen resolution.

If the screen is flickering, or viewing the screen is uncomfortable, increase the refresh rate until you are comfortable with it. The higher the refresh rate, the less likely there will be any noticeable flicker. (Because LCD monitors don't create flicker, they don't need to be set at high refresh rates.) For more information, see Correct monitor flicker (refresh rate).

Resolution based on CRT monitor size

Monitor size	Recommended resolution (in pixels)
15-inch CRT monitor	1024 × 768
17- to 19-inch CRT monitor	1280 × 1024
20-inch and larger CRT monitor	1600 × 1200

Note

• Unlike LCD monitors, CRT monitors generally don't come in widescreen sizes. Almost all have a standard 4:3 screen ratio, with resolutions in the same 4:3 ratio of width to height.

Set the color for a CRT monitor

Windows colors and themes work best when you have your monitor set to 32-bit color. You can set your monitor to 24-bit color, but you won't see all the visual effects. If you set your monitor to 16-bit color, images that should be smooth might not appear correctly.

1. Click to open Screen Resolution.
2. Click Advanced settings, and then click the Monitor tab.
3. Under Colors, select True Color (32 bit), and then click OK. (If you can't select 32-bit color, check that your resolution is as high as possible, and then try again.)