> There was even a double-high, double-width mode for easier reading
I'd forgotten that; now that waa a fugly font. I don't think anyone ever used it (aside from the "Setup" banner on the settings screen)
I think the low pixel count was rather mitigated by the persistence of phospher though - there's reproductions of the fonts that had to take this into account; see the stuff about font stretching here: https://vt100.net/dec/vt220/glyphs
Interesting here perhaps is that even back then it was recognized, that for different situations, different display modes were of advantage.