16x10 second screen reports itself as 16x9. Nothing I change overrides it.

[vagari]

I've been struggling with a "no-name" monitor I got cheap on Amazon years ago. There's even an old review where someone was having a similar issue. Problem is, it's very obviously a 16x10 screen when you change the resolution to something lower in that ratio. Which is what I've been doing. And the image is distorted in the 16x9 default. But I thought maybe I can find a way to force something else... And saw someone mention BetterDisplay on reddit.

I've tried manually changing the native resolution. Adjusting the current default. And adding a custom scaled resolution. No matter what I do, all I get is 1920x1080 as the max/native resolution.

Is there anything else I can try, or is this a lost cause? It's a fairly small screen, so at native resolution text is pretty tiny. I'm just frustrated the screen is not configured correctly. And I believe I've only ever got it to show up correctly on an old computer that's long gone.

For reference, it's currently connected to my 2023 16" MacBook Pro through a Thunderbolt 3 cable (grabbed from my CalDigit dock). And I've also tried with a random HDMI cable I had nearby. I can try some others if anyone thinks that could help. Thanks!

[waydabber]

Hi there - adding a custom resolution will be a scaled resolution. If you have the panel's native resolution in the resolution list but it is not set as native resolution, you should override the native resolution under Configuration Editing. If the native resolution is not listed, you probably need to do is to download the display's EDID via the app, change the default timing to reflect the proper native resolution (use the free AW EDID Editor for that) of the display panel and then apply an EDID override using the app.

[vagari]

Thanks @waydabber, the panel's native resolution is only listed as 1920x1080. 1920x1200 is not listed anywhere. It does look like the EDID editing worked, though I didn't dig super deep on that. Just jumped into the "Detailed Descriptor" panel and used the CVT format wizard. Correct resolution shows up, and looks like it's working. Fingers crossed I didn't break anything else. Too bad this won't fix the issue on other sources. I'm not brave enough to try and even see if writing the profile back to the hardware is possible...

[waydabber]

Nice, congrats for the successful EDID edit! :)