When comparing Google Noto Sans Mono vs Microsoft Verdana, the Slant community recommends Google Noto Sans Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Google Noto Sans Mono is ranked 102nd while Microsoft Verdana is ranked 105th. The most important reason people chose Google Noto Sans Mono is:
Unicode uses 16 bits per character, meaning that it can represent more than 65,000 unique characters.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent support for Unicode characters
Unicode uses 16 bits per character, meaning that it can represent more than 65,000 unique characters.
Pro Free with Windows
Pro Compact while light
Packs lots of information into your screen space while remaining clear and never looking crowded.
Pro Renders perfectly at all sizes
Again, particularly in Windows
Pro Looks absolutely gorgeous in Windows
Looks good elsewhere as well, but the world-class hinting here really comes out with the windows rasterizer (probably optimized for it).
Cons
Con Zero is difficult to identify
As it's not dotted or slashed, "0" is more difficult to distinguish.
Con Non-monospace ligature replacements for 'fl', 'fi', 'ffl', 'ffi'
By default, the substrings 'fl', 'fi', 'ffl', and 'ffi' are each crammed into one character width, making it not a truly monospace font. For example, the word 'flag' is rendered as three characters wide.
Con Letters capital 'i' and lowercase 'L' are too similar
The only difference is almost unnoticable.
Con Difficult to distinguish between a period and acomma as well as a colon and a semi-colon
Comma has very small tail, making it difficult to distinguish from a period (full stop). Same applies to colon and semi-colon.
Con Not monospaced
-if that is an absolute must for you. But don't assume it is until you've tried without...