Which budget 27-inch 1440p monitor has the clearest text for coding?

I would pick the SANSUI. For coding it has the cleanest looking text of the bunch because the panel is IPS with a standard RGB subpixel layout, so ClearType on Windows and macOS font rendering both line up and you avoid the color fringes you saw on VA. Sharpness is sensible out of the box, so small monospace fonts stay crisp without halos.

After you set it up, run the ClearType wizard on Windows and choose RGB, and on macOS enable font smoothing if text looks a bit light. Stick to native scaling for best edge contrast. That combo has been very comfortable for long coding days without blowing the budget.

For text work I lean toward office oriented IPS monitors over gaming models in this price range but then... the office ones usually have lighter matte coatings, better default sharpness, and height adjustable stands with VESA, which all help with eye comfort but then gaming parts can be great for motion but sometimes ship with aggressive edge enhancement or overshoot that adds halos around glyphs.

When shopping, scan reviews for macro photos of the subpixel layout and comments on text clarity. If you cannot find that, buy from a place with painless returns and test immediately with a one pixel grid pattern and your editor at typical font sizes. You are looking for clean verticals with no colored ticks on the sides. Simple but effective.

On a 27 inch 1440p screen some systems that rely on grayscale antialiasing will look a bit softer than others. Enable font smoothing, use a slightly heavier editor font, keep default scaling, sit a touch farther back, and lower brightness to reduce fringing.

Two things matter most for crisp code on budget 1440p IPS. Correct subpixel alignment and correct signal format. For the first confirm the panel is RGB in landscape mode and run the ClearType wizard on Windows choosing samples that look darkest and least colored. On macOS, you can try font smoothing by running this in Terminal then logging out and in again

defaults write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

For the second, make sure the GPU is outputting full RGB 4 4 4. If you see any hint of color bleed on one pixel checkerboards, the connection might have fallen back to YCbCr subsampling. DisplayPort is the easy button here. Once those two are locked in, 27 inch 1440p is totally workable for long coding days.

I went down the same rabbit hole. Two VA panels in a row gave me rainbow edges on slashes and curly braces and no amount of tweaking fixed it. What finally worked was confirming the subpixel layout before buying and avoiding anything that flips to BGR in landscape.

If you get stuck with BGR, Windows ClearType can be switched to compensate, but then the Mac will still look a bit off. Better to start with an IPS that is standard RGB, keep sharpness at the factory neutral point, and disable super resolution tricks in the OSD. After that it is mostly about distance and brightness. A touch dimmer than you think. Eyes thank you.

One thing people miss is the panel coating and the monitor processing itself. Heavy matte can add a grainy sparkle to white backgrounds and any extra sharpness processing can outline characters in a way that looks like clarity at first but causes halos over time. Look for a light matte finish and turn off sharpening and super resolution. Neutral sharpness usually lands at 50 on a 0 to 100 scale or 5 on a 0 to 10 scale.

Refresh rate is not a clarity knob. Nice to have at 75 to 100 for smoother scrolling but do not sacrifice signal quality to hit the top headline number. If 144 Hz over HDMI forces a subsampled mode, take 100 or 75 over full RGB instead. Your eyes will notice the text quality more than the extra Hertz.

If text clarity is the priority and you bounce between a Mac and Windows PC, the safest path is a 27 inch IPS panel with a standard RGB stripe and no fancy sharpening so yeah macOS does not do subpixel rendering on modern versions, so 1440p at 27 inches can look a touch softer than you might expect compared to a Retina setup — can compensate by enabling font smoothing on the Mac and sticking to native scaling on Windows with ClearType tuned for RGB.

Before you commit, check the subpixel layout with a phone macro or a cheap loupe. You want straight RGB left to right, not BGR or a chevron pattern. Then set monitor sharpness to neutral and turn off any super resolution or edge enhancement. That combo keeps code crisp without the color fringes that VA panels often show.

Short version.

Pick IPS with a standard RGB stripe and a light matte coating avoid VA if text clarity is the main goal.

Use DisplayPort, set the monitor to default sharpness, run ClearType on Windows, and enable font smoothing on macOS if the weight looks too light.

Done.

If you need height adjust and VESA, the business lines are more reliable than budget gaming ones.

Works great.

Blur is often from chroma subsampling or limited range rather than the panel, so try the other input type or lower the refresh and check the OSD for RGB and full range. If a one pixel RGB pattern or a zoomed checkerboard looks crisp the signal is right and if not fix that before blaming the screen.