Screen Size Comparison: iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and TV in One Chart

People buy phones by megapixels, laptops by GHz, and TVs by inches — but those numbers tell you almost nothing about how big the screen actually is in your hands or on your wall. A "16-inch" laptop is bigger than a "14-inch" tablet, sure, but how much bigger? Is a 6.7-inch phone close to half the height of an 11-inch iPad, or much smaller? Does a 27-inch 4K monitor really compare to a 75-inch TV at the right viewing distance?

The diagonal-inches number alone is misleading because it bundles aspect ratio into a single value. A 21:9 ultrawide and a 16:9 monitor with the same diagonal have very different widths and heights. This cheat sheet pulls the actual physical dimensions — width and height in both inches and centimeters — for the popular phones, tablets, laptops, monitors, and TVs people compare most often. If you want to plug in your own numbers, the free screen size calculator does the diagonal-to-dimensions math instantly, including a Compare mode that overlays two screens side by side.

Phones

Modern flagship phones cluster around 6 to 7 inches diagonal, with tall 19.5:9 or 19.3:9 aspect ratios that emphasize portrait reading.

• iPhone 16 Pro — 6.27 in diagonal, 19.5:9 aspect → 5.69 × 2.63 in / 14.45 × 6.68 cm
• iPhone 15 Pro Max — 6.7 in diagonal, 19.5:9 aspect → 6.08 × 2.81 in / 15.45 × 7.14 cm
• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra — 6.8 in diagonal, 19.3:9 aspect → 6.16 × 2.87 in / 15.65 × 7.30 cm

Notice that even a 6.8-inch flagship is only about 6.16 inches tall in landscape orientation. The "diagonal inch" number is bigger than either the width or the height because of the diagonal geometry. Most phone usage is portrait, so the 6.16 in (or ~15.6 cm) "tall" dimension is what your thumb actually has to traverse during a scroll.

Tablets

Tablets favor a 4.3:3 aspect ratio that's much closer to a sheet of paper, which is why they feel right for reading PDFs, sketching, and split-screen work.

• iPad Pro 11" — 11.0 in diagonal, 4.3:3 aspect → 8.85 × 6.49 in / 22.49 × 16.49 cm
• iPad Pro 13" — 13.0 in diagonal, 4.3:3 aspect → 10.46 × 7.68 in / 26.57 × 19.50 cm

The 4.3:3 ratio matters a lot in side-by-side comparisons. A 13-inch iPad is 10.46 inches wide and 7.68 inches tall — distinctly boxier than a 13-inch laptop screen, which is wider but shorter. For document work or split-view multitasking, that extra vertical room is what makes tablets feel "more page-like" than laptops at the same diagonal.

Laptops

Apple's MacBook line standardized on 16:10 in 2020, and most premium Windows laptops have followed. 16:10 is taller than the older 16:9 standard, which meaningfully helps with code, documents, and spreadsheets.

• MacBook Air 13" — 13.6 in diagonal, 16:10 aspect → 11.53 × 7.21 in / 29.30 × 18.30 cm
• MacBook Pro 14" — 14.2 in diagonal, 16:10 aspect → 12.04 × 7.53 in / 30.59 × 19.12 cm
• MacBook Pro 16" — 16.2 in diagonal, 16:10 aspect → 13.74 × 8.59 in / 34.91 × 21.81 cm

The jump from a 14-inch to a 16-inch MacBook adds about 1.7 inches of width and 1.06 inches of height — roughly 30% more screen area, not 14% as the diagonal jump implies. Diagonal numbers compress how dramatic the size difference actually feels at the desk.

Monitors

Standalone monitors mostly stick to 16:9, with 21:9 ultrawides as the second major category. Diagonal alone hides big shape differences here.

• 24" 1080p (16:9) — 20.92 × 11.77 in / 53.13 × 29.89 cm
• 27" 4K (16:9) — 23.53 × 13.24 in / 59.77 × 33.62 cm
• 32" 4K (16:9) — 27.89 × 15.69 in / 70.84 × 39.85 cm
• 34" Ultrawide (21:9) — 31.36 × 13.44 in / 79.66 × 34.13 cm

A 34-inch ultrawide is wider than a 32-inch 4K (31.36 vs 27.89 in) but actually shorter (13.44 vs 15.69 in). If your workflow is "more horizontal panels," ultrawide wins. If it's "more vertical room per panel," a tall 4K wins. They're not interchangeable just because the diagonals are close.

TVs

TV screen sizes scale much faster than the diagonal suggests because area grows with the square of the linear dimension.

• 55" 4K (16:9) — 47.94 × 26.97 in / 121.77 × 68.49 cm
• 65" 4K (16:9) — 56.65 × 31.86 in / 143.86 × 80.92 cm
• 75" 4K (16:9) — 65.37 × 36.77 in / 166.04 × 93.40 cm

A 75-inch TV is about 22% larger in area than a 65-inch, and roughly 80% larger than a 55-inch — even though "75" sounds like it's only about 36% bigger than "55." If you've ever wondered why moving up two TV sizes makes the room feel completely different, that's the math behind it.

Surprising comparisons

Once you have all five categories on the same scale, some side-by-sides are genuinely counter-intuitive.

• A 65-inch 4K TV is bigger in area than four iPad Pro 13" tablets combined. The TV's surface is roughly 4,576 sq cm versus the iPad's 518 sq cm, so 4× iPads ≈ 2,072 sq cm — less than half the TV.
• A MacBook Pro 14" and an iPad Pro 11" have nearly the same screen height. The MacBook is 7.53 in tall, the iPad 6.49 in. So the laptop is wider but only ~1 inch taller — much closer than their "14" vs "11"" labels imply.
• A 27-inch 4K monitor at desk distance has roughly the same visual angle as a 75-inch TV at 8 feet of viewing distance. Both subtend about a 40-degree horizontal field of view. This is why a "small" monitor feels enormous up close while a "huge" TV feels normal across the room.
• Six iPhone 15 Pro Max units laid flat barely cover an iPad Pro 13"'s footprint. Each phone is ~6.08 × 2.81 in (~17 sq in); the iPad Pro 13" is 10.46 × 7.68 in (~80 sq in). So 6 phones ≈ 102 sq in, just barely covering the iPad — and only if you tile them perfectly with no gaps.
• A 21:9 ultrawide is about 32% wider than a 16:9 4K monitor at the same diagonal, but ~17% shorter. Same nominal "size," totally different shape — and totally different content workflows.

Wrap up — and how to compute your own

Diagonal inches are a marketing convenience, not a useful comparison number on their own. Once you convert to width and height (and ideally to area), the differences between categories become much more legible: a 75-inch TV isn't "a bigger TV," it's an entirely different room presence. A 14-inch MacBook isn't "almost the same as" a 13-inch iPad — it's wider, shorter, and a different aspect ratio entirely.

The free Screen Ruler screen size calculator does this conversion in both directions: enter a diagonal plus aspect ratio to get width and height, or enter width and height to get the diagonal back. The Compare mode is the most useful for the kind of cross-category comparisons in this article — you can lay an iPad Pro 13" next to a MacBook Pro 14" or a 27-inch monitor next to a 65-inch TV and see the rectangles overlaid at scale.

If your real question is "but how sharp is each one," that's a pixel-density problem, and the PPI calculator is the tool for that — diagonal plus resolution gives you pixels-per-inch, which determines how crisp text looks at typical viewing distance. And if you want the deeper theory of how diagonal, aspect ratio, and viewing distance all interact to determine perceived size, Understanding screen size, aspect ratio, and viewing distance walks through the geometry from first principles.