Video Quality Explained: 480p, 720p, 1080p and 4K
Every download page offers a list of resolutions, and most people either always take the biggest or always take the smallest. Neither is right.
What the numbers mean
The number is the height of the picture in pixels. A 1080p video is 1080 pixels tall, usually 1920 wide. More pixels means more detail and a larger file.
- 480p — roughly DVD quality. Fine on a phone held at arm's length, soft on anything bigger.
- 720p — the usual sweet spot for phones and tablets.
- 1080p — the standard for laptops and most televisions.
- 1440p and 4K — worth it on a large, high-resolution display, or if you intend to crop and zoom while editing.
Roughly what you pay in storage
As a rule of thumb, each step up roughly doubles the file. A ten-minute clip might be around 50 MB at 480p, 100 MB at 720p, 200 MB at 1080p and well over 600 MB at 4K. Exact sizes vary a lot with how much movement is in the picture.
Resolution is not the whole story
Bitrate — how much data is spent per second — matters as much as the pixel count. A 1080p video squeezed into a tiny file will look worse than a well-encoded 720p one. This is why two downloads at the same resolution can look completely different.
When the list shows file sizes, use them. If the 1080p option is barely larger than the 720p one, it has been compressed hard and the extra pixels will not buy you much.
Upscaling cannot be undone
If a video was filmed at 720p and the uploader exported it at 4K, you get a 4K file that contains 720p worth of real detail and a very large file size. No download tool can recover detail that was never recorded.
A practical rule
Watching on a phone? Take 720p. Watching on a laptop or TV? Take 1080p. Editing, or projecting on something large? Take the highest on offer. Short of storage? Drop one step — you will rarely notice.
