Paul is kinda wrong to praise Edge’s text rendering

I noticed Paul always speaks highly of Edge’s text rendering and it made me give Edge a try on several occasions but I would not see this great text rendering he would always speak of, but I finally realized why: on a HiDPI (“Retina” in Apple speak) display, Edge does indeed have the best text rendering of all the browsers, but on a low/normal DPI display, text in Edge looks pretty bad, really ugly and rough, especially for smaller text, and as we know, the VAST majority of people have low/normal DPI displays. Edge really does require a very hi res display in order to make text look good: I was comparing Edge to Firefox on a 15″ 1080p laptop and they were even but smaller text looked better in Firefox. On a Surface Book though, text looked better in Edge compared to Firefox but the difference wasn’t dramatic

Conversation 8 comments

  • Shane

    Premium Member
    16 March, 2017 - 8:57 am

    <p>Is this just something to do with the fact the Paul uses an iPhone. Its seems a strange comparison that you only mention an iPhone for phones then go straight to laptops.</p><p><br></p><p>I prefer edge to chrome as it renders two online newspapers better than chrome. I prefer the swipe features in edge too.</p><p><br></p><p>Just because Paul has an opinion doesn't make him wrong. Just as you what you like doesn't.</p>

    • Bdsrev

      16 March, 2017 - 9:07 am

      <blockquote><a href="#90878"><em>In reply to Shane:</em></a></blockquote><p>What I'm saying is, I think all of Pauls computers have HiDPI displays, he doesn't realize how awful Edge renders text for people that don't have HiDPI displays. He's absolutely right that Edge has far better text rendering than Chrome on something like a Surface Book though</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        16 March, 2017 - 10:06 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#90880">In reply to Bdsrev:</a></em></blockquote><p>I typically use a 1080p display each day, actually. But my laptops are indeed higher DPI.</p>

      • Polycrastinator

        16 March, 2017 - 10:09 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#90880">In reply to Bdsrev:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'd disagree with your assessment, though. I use Edge on 20" 1080p monitors at work, and I like the text rendering just fine. I do have a Surface Book and 4K at home, so I do agree it's particularly good on High DPI monitors, but I still like it well enough at a "typical" resolution.</p>

      • jimchamplin

        Premium Member
        16 March, 2017 - 5:59 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#90880"><em>In reply to Bdsrev:</em></a></blockquote><p>Looks good to me. Perhaps you should run the ClearType Tuner that's in Control Panel.</p>

  • lordbaal1

    16 March, 2017 - 6:52 pm

    <p>To me, the text looks the same in both of them.</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    17 March, 2017 - 12:51 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"VAST majority of people have low/normal DPI displays" I think that is changing very, very quickly. Most people are on mobile computers of some kind, and literally every single one of them on sale today has a mid/high-res screen.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You are right though, on low("normal")-DPI displays, Edge's text rendering doesn't exactly shine. In fact, Chrome would probably be better, but that's because of a holdover from Chrome's older Windows XP days. Chrome is heading down the same road as Edge as well, it's only a matter of time. For a sneek peek, enable the "Distance field text" flag in Chrome.</span></p><p>Paul is still not wrong to praise Edge's text rendering. From what I can tell, on high-DPI displays, it's the other way around, Chrome gives me blurry text, and Edge is sharp; flawless. The difference is in the details, so of course it isn't dramatic at first glance, but give it a few days. Everything that Firefox/Chrome renders will look sub-par to you. Once you see it, you cannot unsee.</p>

    • Bdsrev

      19 March, 2017 - 8:59 am

      <blockquote><a href="#91271"><em>In reply to rameshthanikodi:</em></a></blockquote><p>Ya, Chrome renders text really poorly on every type of display, I'm surprised browser makers and tech websites don't talk about this more, text is very important. Paul is the only tech writer I have seen that's mentioned this. At least you can give Edge a break for having poor text rendering on low/normal DPI screens though: they had to ditch Cleartype because it doesn't work when you rotate tablets (Cleartype only works in one direction), and apparently it isn't as friendly for scrolling and touchscreen zooming. What's Chrome's excuse? They are still using RGB subpixel rendering as far as I know and yet it's still bad</p>

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