Oh, this is super-fun to do and you’re a lucky duck if it becomes your job. How do you change an old 4:3 deck to the new 16:9 format? The 16:9 format gives you a lot of slide real estate to play around with! The legacy 4:3 aspect ratio, while still used, creates smaller slides and doesn’t look that great on newer screens. What size should you choose?įrom boardrooms to computer monitors to smartphone screens, 16:9 is the default screen aspect ratio so that’s the slide size I always go with. So the 16:9 aspect ratio (1920 x 1080 pixels or 13.3″ x 7.5″) became the new standard.

But as more and more high-definition screens were manufactured, it became clear that screens with a 16:9 aspect ratio were cheaper to manufacture. When high-definition screens came on the scene in the early 2000s, they were built in a 16:10 aspect ratio. Why? Because that’s the aspect ratio of actual slides, pictured above, television screens, and early computer monitors. Back in the Ye Olde Days of PowerPoint, it was your only choice. The above notation is called the “aspect ratio,” or the ratio of the width to the height of the slide. In the 4:3 aspect ratio, the dimensions are 1024 x 768 pixels (10.67″ x 8″) the height is 3/4 of the width.

What do these numbers mean and which size should you choose for your presentations? What the numbers mean Nowadays, you can choose between 4:3 format or 16:9. Deciding on a slide format used to be easy when there was only one choice.

Size of a powerpoint slide in inches