Resolution alone does not determine video quality. A 1080p stream at 1 Mbps will look noticeably worse than a 720p stream at 6 Mbps because the bits-per-pixel ratio is much lower. The "best" resolution to download is the highest one your display can show natively — going higher wastes bytes that get scaled back down at playback.
YouTube's standard ladder is 144p → 240p → 360p → 480p → 720p → 1080p → 1440p → 2160p (4K) → 4320p (8K). Each step roughly doubles the pixel count and roughly doubles the bitrate (give or take, depending on codec).
For phones, 720p is the sweet spot — 1080p screens are ~5-6 inches and the extra pixels are imperceptible. For laptops, 1080p. For 4K monitors and TVs, 2160p. 8K downloads are mostly archival; almost no consumer display benefits today.
Common questions
Is 4K always better than 1080p?
Related terms
Bitrate
Bitrate is the amount of data a video or audio stream carries per second, measured in bits per second (bps) or kilobits (kbps) and megabits (Mbps).
Codec
A codec is the algorithm that encodes (compresses) and decodes raw audio or video into a smaller stream.
FPS (frames per second)
FPS (frames per second) is the number of distinct still images displayed per second of video.
Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is the proportion of a video frame's width to its height.
VidPickr is a free, browser-based YouTube downloader. Every term in this glossary either describes how YouTube delivers video or why your downloads behave the way they do. Try the downloader →