Monitor :: Resolution

Imagine lying in the grass with your nose pressed deep into the roof. Your field of vision will not be very great, and all want to see some big blades of grass, some grains of dirt, and maybe an ant or two. This is a 14-inch 640 x 480 monitor. Now, get up on your hands and knees, and your field of vision is better too: you'll see a lot more grass. This is a 15-inch 800 x 640 monitor. For a 1280 x 1024 perspective (in a 19-inch monitor), stand and look at the ground. Some monitors can handle higher resolutions like 1600 x 1200 or even 1920 x 1440-somewhat akin to a look from up a tree.


Monitors are measured in inches, diagonally from side to side (the screen). However, be a big difference between the measurement and the actual visible area. A 14-inch monitor only has a 13.2-inch viewable area, a 15-inch visible only 13.8 inches, and a 20-inch will give you 18.8 inches (85.7% to see more than a 15 -inch screen).

A computer monitor is made of pixels (short for "picture element"). Monitor resolution is measured in pixels, width by height. 640 x 480 resolution means the screen is 640 pixels wide by 480 height, an aspect of ratio of 4:3. Except for a combination of resolution (1280 x 1024 uses a ratio of 5:4), all aspects ratios are the same.

From The PC Guide, by Charles M. Kozierok:

Pixel is the smallest element of a video image, but not the smallest elements of a monitor screen. Since each pixel must be made up of three separate colors, a smaller red, green, and blue dots on the screen to make images. The term period is used to the small elements that make up the image displayed on the screen. To use different resolutions on a monitor, monitor should help automatically changing the resolution mode. Originally, monitors were assigned to a particular resolution, but most monitors today have the ability to change their display resolution under software control. This allows for higher resolution or lower depending on the needs of the application. The higher resolution display shows more on screen at a time, and the maximum resolution that a monitor can display is limited by the size of the monitor and the nature of the crt (cathode-ray tube ). In addition, the monitor must have sufficient input bandwidth to allow for refresh of the screen, which becomes more difficult at higher resolution because there is so much information sent to the monitor.