Monitor Assistant

Note: Monitor Assistant is no longer supported, so it is now impossible to purchase the application. Nonetheless, you can still download it from Softpedia and use it with the limitations listed on this page

Running Windows 10 on a high-density display might result in a pixelated screen that is anything but comfortably viewable. You can try experimenting with the display settings your OS offers and set a custom DPI scaling level to make icons larger and text readable, as well as remove blurry content. However, an application such as Monitor Assistant can make it all seem much easier.

Monitor Assistant features a single window that comprises a summary of your screen’s configuration (width and height, current DPI scale), the monitor model, the device name, and the operating system version.

Alongside this hardware configuration overview, there are options for cleaning the monitor and detect bad pixels on the screen. To do so, Monitor Assistant runs a standard dead pixel test. To be more specific, it displays solid test backgrounds in red, green and blue covering the entire display area. Dead pixels of a particular color will appear as black dots that are easy to notice.

Monitor Assistant also encases a few buttons that can help you manage DPI scaling in Windows 10. There are two available buttons, one to use the Windows 10 default DPI scaling settings and the other to switch to the DPI scaling method used in Windows 8.1. No matter what you choose, note that a system reboot is mandatory for the changes to take effect.

This application is particularly useful to those who use a widescreen with resolutions higher than 1920x1080, who might be experiencing issues when enlarging or shrinking screen content. In this case, Icons and text in some windows might become blurry when configuring the DPI scaling to 125% or more. Monitor Assistant is a straightforward solution to this issue, shifting the DPI scaling method from the Windows 10 default to the one used in Windows 8.1.

As shown above, Monitor Assistant comes with two major functions: one to find dead pixels and the other to repair DPI scaling problems. It succeeds in doing both, but having to restart your computer over and over again to see the results is quite annoying. Let’s not forget that changes you do in the ‘Display Settings’ section of the Control Panel require the user to sign out, at the most.