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Stadia begins rolling out 1440p quality setting, exclusive to Pro members [Update: Official]

Google Stadia is gaining a dedicated 1440p streaming option, available now for some players, but it will remain exclusive to Stadia Pro subscribers.

Stadia has actually offered 1440p streaming for over two years now, picking it up as a feature for desktops back in 2020. However, it’s been more of a secret feature of the platform, only triggering when you’ve set your preferred resolution to 4K while using a monitor that’s greater than 1080p, but smaller than 4K.

In recent months, our APK Insight team has shown that Stadia has been working to make 1440p streaming its own separate option in the Performance menu. Now the option has begun to roll out to Stadia players, and as spotted by Stadia Source, at least one player already has the new setting live.

Stadia’s new quality setting is listed as “Up to 1440p” and is noted to use as much as 14.4 GB per hour of gameplay, versus 12.6 GB for 1080p or 20 GB for 4K streaming. For now, it’s only been spotted in the desktop app, and it’s not known if 1440p streaming will soon become available on Android, Google TV, Chromecast, and other Stadia platforms.


Update: Stadia has now made its support for 1440p streaming official, announcing the feature on the Community Blog. For now, the higher resolutions still seem to be limited to web and TV apps, as our Android devices with native 1440p resolution still don’t have the option available.

Image: Google

Just as you’d expect, the new setting is exclusive to Stadia Pro members, with non-subscribers limited to 1080p and lower. Other benefits of the Stadia Pro subscription, besides the library of claimable games, include 5.1 surround sound and HDR streaming in compatible titles. Thankfully, there are community resources that share which games are compatible with Stadia Pro’s exclusive features.

Full support for 1440p streaming comes over three years after the Stadia team first shared that additional resolutions were planned. The addition will hopefully make for a good compromise for those looking for something crisper than 1080p, without also nearly doubling their bandwidth usage.

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Avatar for Kyle Bradshaw Kyle Bradshaw

Kyle is an author and researcher for 9to5Google, with special interests in Made by Google products, Fuchsia, and uncovering new features.

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