When I got my Macbook Pro with Retina display I knew it has 2560x1600 resolution and I was aware of that OSX scales this resolution and it looks like 1650x1050, which seems such a waste, almost 2 times less than native resolution can provide. Good part of that is- things like typography and images are shown in native resolution, they are rerendered and looks smooth and sharp, so that doesn't mess up how things look. But still having more space would be awesome, so I searched how I can improve rosolution on my 13" Macbook Pro, and I found this program, which allows to change default resolutions up to native resolution.

So I tested 3 largest resolutions available- 1650x1050, 2048x1280 and 2560x1600, as comparision I will use web browser with twitter in it, as twitter is almost 900px wide, which is less than regular website, which usually is 100px wider, but twitter is widely used and will give great comparision, a spotify player, terminal window and finder file manager.

1650x1050 is best resolution you can get by default, for someone that will be more than enough, but I prefer small text sizes with huge amount of visible area rather than large font sizes with little visible work area. This resolution isn't bad, 300px more than regular laptop can offer, can comfortably browse web, work with text, you can allways read text regardless of your position or light, you can take laptop in bed comfortably and don't worry about how readable text will be in that position. You can easily multitask, there is left some space near resized web browser to place something next to it, for regular websites (~1000px wide) you will have about 600px free space which is 1/3 of screen. I was able to put Twitter, spotify and 1 terminal window in 1 workspace comfortably, Spotify is little bit resized smaller, but not so much, I can still use it comfortably.

2048x1280 resolution I found the best for me. on 13" display that is a lot, I can comfortably multitask on 1 workspace without any problems reading text regardless of my location- desk or in bed or in couch, text is well visible, but it may cause problems for those, who have small issues reading small text. Regular webpage takes half of the screen, I can put Spotify player and terminal next to it. Spotify is almost full size.

2560x1600 is the maximum available resolution, which is way too much for 13" display. I was able to work at computer almost comfortably while sitting at a desk, but text was way too small to be readable when I took laptop in bed or in my lap. Regular webpage takes only ~40% of the screen which leaves me with planty of free space for multitasking, I have times when I feel more comfortably using this resolution, but mainly I choose 2048x1280 resolution. At 2560x1600 I was able to put fully sized twitter, full sized Spotify, Finder file manager and 2 terminal windows in just 1 workplace which is awesome for such a small laptop.