|
Higher resolutions are a marketing technique more than anything. There comes a point where higher resolutions are totally wasted, because the human eye cannot resolve them. Of course, there are many humans who claim they can (???).
A parallel example is TV sets. We have a 4K 70" set. I would have been perfectly happy buying a 720 one, because our couch is 12.5 feet from the screen. At that distance (for a 70" screen) the human eye is just starting to be able to barely resolve the difference between 720 and 1080. Totally forget about 4K. But finding even a 1080 large screen set is getting tougher these days since marketing is all about 4K. Yeah, I can tell a major difference with 4K if I feed the TV with a high resolution video source, AND position myself about one foot from the screen. But that's not the way I normally watch TV. The couch is much more comfortable.
Another example: Several years ago my wife bought a high end professional Nikon. I believe the sensor has only 8 (10?) megapixels. But that camera absolutely blows away the consumer and budget grade offerings that come in 12, 16 and probably even 20 megapixels these days. It totally annihilates them - the differences in picture quality are truly laughable.
After a point, higher resolutions are meaningless, unless you are marketing your devices to hawks, eagles and other raptors. Is that point 300dpi (or even less?) for eReaders - I don't know. I have not tried to research resolution, screen size, normal reading distance, and human eye limitations yet. But my gut tells me we are moving away from a practical/functional discussion into a marketing discussion.
|