Sans-serif fonts are clearer on low-resolution displays. This includes both conventional desktop displays, with a low pixel density (96 dpi was the standard for CRTs and LCDs until Apple disrupted the field with "Retina" at ~200 dpi+, though in colour, which reduces effective density by 1/3.
For mobile devices, DPI is typically high, but the overall display is small, and hence, individual glyphs tend to be small.
On a large e-ink display, with monochrome density of 200--300 DPI, serif fonts are far easier and more comfortable to read for me, as the serifs provide additional cues as to the glyph shape and form. In particular, difficult-to-distinguish ASCII glyphs, such as O0, lI1, 5S, gq t+, ji, 4A, are much easier to distinguish. That describes my principle mobile device of the past 2+ years.
I literally cannot see the individual pixels without a high-power magnifying glass. Though at lower-quality settings, font rendering remains somewhat glitchy. Those settings offer higher refresh rates and less flicker, so it's a bit of a trade-off.
For DTP, the end result was almost always paper, and so long as you were using a laserprinter at 300+ dpi, serif would have been a preferred font choice. The turn to the Web saw a huge increase in use of sans fonts. Including, inexplicably and to my great annoyance, in published books, I suspect because the font carried connotations of "online" or "modern".
Myself I set a lot of posters, but when I was thinking about this I found a book printed in the 1990s that claimed to be set in “Palatino” and the kerning was so good I could swear the serif on the lowercase “r” was making love to the curve of an “s” next to it. That inspired me to take a look at the “Palatino” font on my PC and, sure enough, the “Palatino” on my PC looks nothing like that “Palatino” on that book.
For mobile devices, DPI is typically high, but the overall display is small, and hence, individual glyphs tend to be small.
On a large e-ink display, with monochrome density of 200--300 DPI, serif fonts are far easier and more comfortable to read for me, as the serifs provide additional cues as to the glyph shape and form. In particular, difficult-to-distinguish ASCII glyphs, such as O0, lI1, 5S, gq t+, ji, 4A, are much easier to distinguish. That describes my principle mobile device of the past 2+ years.
I literally cannot see the individual pixels without a high-power magnifying glass. Though at lower-quality settings, font rendering remains somewhat glitchy. Those settings offer higher refresh rates and less flicker, so it's a bit of a trade-off.
For DTP, the end result was almost always paper, and so long as you were using a laserprinter at 300+ dpi, serif would have been a preferred font choice. The turn to the Web saw a huge increase in use of sans fonts. Including, inexplicably and to my great annoyance, in published books, I suspect because the font carried connotations of "online" or "modern".