typical ultrawide - 34" 3440x1440. that's 110ppi, regular density. (owning one, perfect size IMO, filling field of view almost exactly)
if you wish retina (220ppi), that'll be 7K - which is alot of pixels. Nothing like this on market though
Postgres? Seriously, for one-off playing around? Just use Airtable and you can do all the filtering and nesting you want. Plus then you can share it with us and we can collaboratively contribute.
Yes, the Pro plan allows 50k rows per Airtable base. Arbitrary JSON can't be imported easily though, you'll have to convert it to CSV or use the API to dump data.
I have one of the LG Ultrafine 5K on my 14" M1 Max Macbook Pro - it is far more reliable with that Mac than with the 2018 15" I was using it with before. It's also worth swapping the TB3 cable if you still have issues.
After both of those I find it works absolutely flawlessly for me now, and it is comfortably the best external display I have ever used.
I would adore any option that is even remotely as good.
When I’m using the laptop as a standalone unit, the built-in screen resolution makes a difference. When it’s docked on my desk surrounded by two 24” monitors, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference except, perhaps, by very subtle cues in text rendering.
I can, however, see clear artifacts on the two 100-dpi ish screens. A 150-dpi screen would work perfectly for me.
Every time I buy the LG 5K I feel a little sad (it's overpriced for what it is, outdated, and limited with non-Macs), but every time I use it, I'm happy with the purchase.
Biggest downside (aside from the price) is extending the Apple lock-in.
As mentioned elsewhere, it and my mac are sensitive to the cable, so it's worth trying a couple if they give problems. (More apple idiocy: what if we put the same connector everywhere, but made devices super sensitive to some qualities of the cables, connectors, or who knows what -- there's definitely no way this will be super confusing for users!)
I’ve got a pair of the ultrafine 5ks. I’d happily trade them in on something that I can plug into and know that it will power up the display reliably.
Right now if I take my laptop off somewhere and come back, who knows if they’ll both power up. I’m frequently stuck on one display and no amount of unplugging and reconnecting or swearing helps.
One of them goes to a thunderbolt3 dock. When they display refuses to power up, it doesn’t matter if it’s plugged in direct or into the dock.
Also, I can see the display in the system report in the thunderbolt section, and devices daisy chained off of them work. It’s just the panel that’s being a bitch.
I found the USB-C connector wears down over time and causes display and power issues. I've reflowed the connector itself, and am looking at doing a complete connector swap soon. The mechanicals of an active USB-C cable puts stress on the joints and causes them to crack and create unreliable connections. I wish there was a way to lock the connector in and use something else as strain relief.
I have an LG Ultrafine 5K and suffer from random display disconnections. I was wondering if I was just unlucky, but this kind of explains everything now. Is there any guide that you know of for doing the reflowing? It's at the point now where I need to spend up to an hour carefully tweaking the connector into the right position to provide a signal so I don't mind hacking away at it with the risk of it breaking.
How is the contrast and BLB on that panel? The other LG panels in this area seem to have sacrificed basically everything for low reaction times. Also, just one input, and that being Thunderbolt on top, won't work for a lot of people.
Edit: Oh I see, that's one of the LG-but-really-for-Apple-only displays.
The 5K monitor model number and presumably the actual monitor has been updated a couple of times. Any chance the most recently updated design actually has corrected those issues?
I've been researching this for a couple days before this post and am close to pulling the trigger on the LG 5K. The consensus from Googling and Twitter seems like with the M1 and newer at least people are saying the issues have been resolved. I'm still torn though because if they are coming out with a new monitor in the next few months that also has some dedicated graphics processing and better display, that will be really tempting. The resell value of the 5K will go down pretty quickly as a result after purchasing (< 6 months).
So I have a 28" 4K display (USB-C, ethernet, the whole shebang) and I don't notice a massive difference between that one and the MacBook one. Those displays are widely available and pretty cheap too.
Is there something wrong with me that I don't see a massive improvement between that PPI and the MBP one? To the point where I'd lose my mind about it and demand 5K there?
You probably sit farther away from your screen than most people. At least for me there's a pretty binary threshold where you can either see pixels or not, which makes a huge difference for text smoothness.
Same here. If I get up really close, I can tell the difference, but not the way I normally sit in my seat. It probably helps that I have a fairly deep desk and monitor arms, for maximum eye-monitor distance.
Retina is 326 PPI+ on iPhones. It’s 220 PPI+ on MacBooks. I have to say that my 170 PPI or so is plenty on my 4k 28” desktop monitors. Though I would be very very happy to upgrade to 120hz (without turning my laptop into a jet engine) and maybe 5k as well for perfect 2:1 1440p scaling.
The computer monitor market is at the mercy of gamers who want 1080p-1440p if it means getting 600fps in a game rather than 150fps at higher resolutions. It's why since 2015 there has been an arms race of refresh rates rather than of resolution. We had 4-5k panels at retina in 2015, market conditions could have had us with much higher quality panels if the entire thing wasn't catered to young, cash-strapped gamers whose opportunity cost when putting money towards a monitor is to put money towards a GPU.
Thankfully, as more and more public figures begin using OLED TVs instead of computer monitors, and as the monitor market takes after the larger consumer TV market, we will start to see better technologies compete with each other like OLED and FALD/miniLED.
It's a horrible time to buy a monitor right now, if you could wait even a year you should do so.
But keep in mind the relativity of "retina". It depends just as much on viewing distance as it does PPI. There are several handy charts you can view online relating the minimum noticeable viewing distance based on PPI.
Although you make an ok point, you're greatly exaggerating FPS. I'm on a beautiful 1440p 144hz LG and I really only need 150fps. This still often requires less-than-ultra video settings even with a 3080 ti. There is a very small niche of competitive gamers who want 240hz at 1080p and the fps that justifies it.
edit: This was intended to be a serious question. I thought the esports folks were mostly interested with minimizing input latency and maximizing framerate, to the exclusion of most other concerns. ESPN covers esports tournaments now, sometimes on the front page of espn.com, so I thought it was more popular than perhaps it is.
Being a small niche really not mutually exclusive with the eSports community, unless you extend the eSports community to everyone who has ever played LoL or CS:GO. I think more people max out settings on those games than minimise them for the extra FPS still.
there are 360Hz monitors, now, and they are likely to sell well as soon as the silicon shortage eases, if they aren't already.
the real problem is that a 1080p monitor at 360Hz requires six times the bandwidth of a standard 1080p60 monitor, while a 120Hz 4k UHD monitor requires eight times the bandwidth of a 1080p60 monitor.
it's easier to reach the FPS targets incrementally than it is to reach the resolution targets in larger jumps.
The driver is really what manufacturers want to sell. We saw this with those awful 13xx by 768 screens no one wanted. They made loads of them and then had to sell them.
What I suspect is really going on is it's easier to overclock screens than it is to increase yield on high resolutions.
As some of them have found (e.g. Linus window snapping burn in, in under six months), OLEDs have real drawbacks for use as standard desktop use displays. It's why even Apple don't use OLEDs on their Macs yet, who you would expect to do so if it was just a matter of "more money = more premium" with no deference to the gaming use case.
But I can get a $1000 4k, 120hz OLED screen. Sure, it might be 42-48", but I could just as easily buy a deeper desk, wall mount it 4-5 feet away for the same effect. I'm currently sitting 3.5 feet from a 24" monitor. In this instance, the TV becomes "retina" past 3 feet.
Let's assume when used as a monitor without excessive amounts of care, irreparable burn-in takes 2 years. I could buy two of these TVs and wait out the whole nonsense the market is going through right now. Re: Linus, Keep in mind that window snap burn in was fixed with the pixel refresh function. And the conclusion he and Wendell came to in that video was that it isn't perfect, and it's often wasteful, but you can just get another monitor.
For many many people, 2 years is not a reasonable life expectancy for a $1000 monitor. My current home monitors are 1 (€400 27" 1440p165 IPS), 4 (€500 27" 1440p144 IPS) and 7 (€250 21" 1080p60 IPS) years old
27" Ultrafine 5K - bought in 2018, so 3+ years old, $1000+.
27" LG 4K - bought in 2019, so 2+ years old, $600+.
27" Dell Ultrasharp 1440p - bought in 2016, $800+.
24" Dell Ultrasharp 1920x1200 - bought in 2013, $400+.
All of these are in active use still - even the 8 year old 24" is still a solid AH-IPS monitor with decent wide-gamut colour support and LED backlighting.
I'd be very disappointed in a $1k display that was showing irreparable issues after 2 years. I'd be positively angry at a $1k display with issues after 6 months.
Whilst true, it's more accurate to say the monitor market is hostage to the economics of LED panel manufacturing.
LEDs are normally produced as very large panels on production lines where every panel is made to a given PPI (and upper bound on the refresh rate).
Of course the technology mix is the technology mix, but the industry is built around reasonably large investments in these production lines, amortized across the entire screen industry.
A 27 inch 1080p monitor and a 24 inc 1080p monitor are produced on distinctly different production lines as it were, as they have a different PPI. But a tiny screen with the same PPI as said 27 inch 1080p likely came from the same factory in Korea.
Apple's panels are actually produced under contract by LG in Apple specific production lines, hence they can obtain exotic PPIs. Because they promise to use the line's capacity for multiple years.
Can confirm that I've had more than a decade of very satisfying experience of using Dell displays. They have a very predictable menu and just work. Soundbar is a very good solution if you don't want speakers messing your desktop.
I just picked up a pair of P3222QE monitors. Kind of pricey but hands down the best monitors I've owned. I think it's too big to be "Retina" at 4K, but I really can't see any pixels.
I still find it hard to believe though that I can't change the brightness via the keyboard though in state of the art monitors. Does anyone know of any monitors where this is possible, or do they mostly require you to go through the terrible built in controls?
I have a couple of these and I used to be a fan, but they just shit the bed constantly with macOS over a Thunderbolt dock for some reason. Needs constant power cycling, almost every time the laptop is plugged in.
Why do you need so much brightness in an indoor environment? Personally I've more frequently had the opposite problem, i.e. minimum brightness only going down to the 30-50 nits level, which is quite bright in dark-ish environments.
People are different? I found it very straining on my eyes when I worked at a job where people liked to keep most of the lights off and the monitor brightness low.
One field that needs it is editing 4k+ HDR content that has 16 steps or more of dynamic range. All of the blacks would blend together on lower output monitors like 400nits. Really need like 1000.
Here's a decent 18.4", but it costs $14k[1], or you could get the 32" for $30k.
Having an open window near your desk it’s pretty easy to want a brighter display depending on the time of day. If you don’t have natural light it is a much smaller concern.
Not the person you’re replying to, but better speed of thought at higher brightness levels. Sounds ridiculous, but it is so apparent in me that I even have a 20ms delta in simple response time between 300 nits and 200 nits in a moderately lit room - the same delta between me being fresh awake and being tired after being awake for 20 hours.
Additionally I’ve anecdotally observed that the dimmer the screen is relative to the background, the more disconnected I feel.
That's funny, because I've found something similar to be true for me. I wonder if that's a function of some measurement of interactive visual information.
For instance, I have a green screen CRT that I can work on at any nit as long as the contrast is basically infinite (text dim or bright), but as soon as the rest of the screen becomes illuminated, it's like I'm peering through a literal fog.
Contrast that to a dimmed 4k 10-bit panel, and I find myself dropping out of focus or losing my place. I'm looking for a particular OLED panel right now on AliExpress to test with.
I have no brand loyalty whatsoever, but all my monitors have been Eizo's Since I bought Eizo Nanao Trinitron CRT monitors in 1990s. I'm a lazy shopper and those things are high quality every way. I still have FlexScan EV2303W's from 2009 or 2010 and use them daily.
While that looks like a great monitor, it's a 21.6" 4K OLED monitor that seems to retail for over $3000. It's less of a ridiculous option than the $6000 Apple 32" display, but for most of us (including, I'm fairly confident, original article author Casey Liss), it still falls into the "if you aren't sure you need this, you don't need this" category.
I have been waiting for good external Retina displays for years. That the situation has not improved after all this time is incredibly frustrating. Why is no display manufacturer [0] interested in setting itself apart by producing and marketing a lineup of reasonably priced external pixel-doubled (~200 ppi) displays? For some reason everything must be 16:9 and 4K with no regards to display size, resulting in some very awkward pixel densities. The fact that Apple is able to mass-manufacture a 5k display with a whole computer in it for just a little bit more than an UltraFine 5k is to me an indication that at least it’s technically feasible.
[0] There is LG, but these displays have their issues as the article explains.
it's a matter of connectors and display bandwidth. Apple's extra-expensive display doesn't use HDMI or DisplayPort connectors, it uses a proprietary connector.
edit: I'm wrong on that. oops. apparently that invalidates my entire point. (it doesn't)
display bandwidth matters, and connectors are where display bandwidth goes to die. apple had to design a special one for the bandwidth requirements of that display.
it's not so much a matter of panels, but display protocol bandwidth and connectors that allow it.
even Microsoft have the Surface Studio, and it's excellent 4500x3000 display, and it's only available as part of the Surface Studio because that's the cheapest way they can get the display bandwidth all the way to the screen. eliminate the connectors and hardwire it.
this is also why laptops (especially apple laptops) have such good displays. they don't have to destroy the signal integrity with connectors, and they can use more wires to carry the signal than HDMI or DisplayPort allow.
high resolution, high framerate monitors just won't happen over DisplayPort or HDMI without serious advances. I expect a new connector to appear before that.
You mean Intel - older Thunderbolt displays don't support USB-C alt-mode because Intel didn't support it as input until Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers.
I believe the reason, IIRC, is it's actually doing two DP streams because one isn't enough bandwidth for the full resolution, which you can't do in alt mode where the PC is literally using the pins of the connection as though it were a single DP cable (although this may be more viable with newer DP specs these days, not sure).
the proof is that video cards and monitors and TVs either simply don't support that bandwidth, or they're so expensive that they're essentially hand made.
That's how you know, you look at the market and see what's available, and what it costs. People would buy the heck out of this stuff if it were possible to make it work with common, sloppy, reusable connectors like HDMI or DisplayPort. The fact of the matter is that it isn't possible to make this stuff with removable connectors, yet.
That's why you see very high DPI displays in applications where there isn't any need for high cycle-count connectors, or only single-use connectors well before you see the same displays with high-cycle count connectors.
I think at the time the 5k Mac screens arrived only DisplayPort 1.2 was available, and probably some of the chips they use still only support that. But indeed - since time moved on and DisplayPort can now do 8k/60Hz it would be nice to see more screens going beyond 4K and supporting it.
The "serious advances" is DSC, which the XDR is already using to support 6k over a single DisplayPort HBR2 link. Which, as others mentioned, can be carried via USB-C alt-mode in addition to Thunderbolt.
6k 120Hz and 5k 144Hz are both possible over a single HBR3 link with DSC. Such monitors don't exist because the panels don't exist; rather the closest panel for sale is perhaps the 5120x1440 at 240Hz in the Samsung G9. Which has the same bandwidth requirements as a hypothetical 5120x2880 at 120Hz.
If you want 240Hz at >4k, or 8k 120Hz, then sure that exceeds existing DisplayPort 1.4 and ThunderBolt 4 bandwidth capabilities even with DSC, and you'll need the upcoming DisplayPort 2.0 link rates. (or DSC+chroma subsampling)
Focus is on 1) gaming, where response time and high frame rate is more important than high resolution, and 2) regular offices, where price is more important than any other feature.
Add to this fact that manufacturing displays is a costly affair, so there are no "artisinal" choices.
Personally, I'm hanging out for a 5120x2880 display larger than 27". We've had 27" 5120x2880 displays for 6 or 7 years now, you'd think someone would have taken that res to a larger panel by now. But nope, still waiting.
I'm aware of all of these monitors, but most are discontinued or unavailable. Luckily I've recently been able to acquire a used LG 5K monitor and it's pretty great most of the time, but my model has some display quality problems.
If a 5120x2880 display were larger than 27", then it wouldn't have a good pixel density. In my experience, either slightly above 100 or 200 ppi are the sweet spots for screen resolution, because you get along well with an integer scaling factor.
Why is <220 ppi a dealbreaker? 27 inch 4k displays seem fine to me for retina and they are quite abundant. Though I've tried 32 inches 4k, and there the resolution is not enough for text work.
Dell has a 32 inch 8k display which is ~280 ppi in stock.
If you're on macOS, your choice for a 27" 4K is realistically either the 'looks like 1080p' high DPI mode, or the 'looks like 1440p' high DPI mode. The 'looks like 1080p' mode makes all of the UI elements huge. The 'looks like 1440p' mode makes text slightly fuzzy as it's being downscaled from 5120x2880 to 3840x2160.
It's not terrible, but it's nowhere near as nice as the 27" 5K.
This specific issue is definitely a macOS problem - instead of doing proper resolution independent rendering, macOS just renders at 2x the 'looks like' resolution, and then scales the result to fit the panel.
But even on Windows, the choices at 27" 4K aren't great. 100% is too small. 200% is too large. 150% is quite nice, but I find apps regularly don't scale properly, and text still isn't as nice as 200% on a 5K display.
edit: and on Linux, it's similarly not great - integer scaling works quite well on most modern DEs. Fractional scaling is a mixed bag and a lot of apps have broken or compromised UI when it's in use.
I use a triple monitor setup with the LG 24UD58-B. 24", 4K, $300. 2X scaling is absolutely perfect on it. 27" is not a good monitor size for this, I agree.
As an aside, a user here recommended putting the outside monitors in vertical mode with the middle monitor in horizontal mode. It works extremely well for reading websites/documentation/terminal output while coding in the middle panel.
It's cheap enough that I've been tempted to pick up one of these to try, but I think going back to 24" would be a little frustrating for side-by-side editing in an IDE.
> Fractional scaling is a mixed bag and a lot of apps have broken or compromised UI when it's in use.
I use 1.5× scaling in Sway, and haven’t observed even the slightest problem in any Wayland app. (I also use the high-DPI patches for XWayland, and run it at 3×, so that it’s an integer multiple of my scaling factor, a minor visual improvement on the very few X11 things I use that is probably not worth it.) I will note, however, that Firefox is rendering content at 2× and downscaling; setting the experimental widget.wayland.fractional_buffer_scale to 1.5 distinctly improves rendering, but had some very annoying bugs when I tried it several months ago which became debilitating maybe a couple of months ago, so I gave up on it.
The one that sticks in my memory the most was a bunch of issues with Qt-based apps in particular where UI would scale in 1x, 2x, 3x steps, but font size would scale with the fractional size specified.
I have a few Qt apps and haven’t observed anything like this; most likely that’s been fixed. I’ve been using Wayland since April.
(One thing that is comically broken about Sway and I think Wayland in general is cursor sizes. Specifying `seat seat0 xcursor_theme Adwaita 96` nets me at least four or I think five different cursor sizes, varying by app, and at least one of the dodgy sizes is actually a fractional scaling bug, scaling by ceil(1.5) rather than 1.5.)
Ummm, I think 274K on 200% is definitely fine? I just use it as 1080p with better text rendering and graphic. I don't even use it at 150% because that at a 50 ~ 60 viewing distance isn't really a pleasure experience. Did you place the monitor very close to your eyes?
I'm using a 28" 4K (with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS) — used to use 1.5x with downscaling but switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)
> switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)
There's always a balance and trade-off here.
2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.
In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p display at 1x. I still consider going from 1080p to 1440p one of the biggest quality of life upgrades I've encountered when I made the switch 7 years ago. It's the same level of "wow this is great" as going from a HDD to SSD.
Before there were shortages you could get a high quality IPS panel monitor from a reputable brand (Dell, ViewSonic) with low input latency for around $300. 4k at 1.5x also gives you the same real estate as 1440p but with higher PPI but I don't know how crisp that will be given the scaling ratio.
>2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.
Yes and no. With much clearer looking text, I can use smaller fonts (13 -> 11 in IntelliJ) than on regular 1080p displays, so there's _some_ difference.
> you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.
Is that even a problem? I am not buying better screen to torture my eyes. IMO. A smaller sharper text won't really be easier to see compared to a larger but blurrer text.
I wear glasses and 25" at 1440p has very clear text. I feel no strain. Even the grey text on HN is very readable from about 32" (81 cm) away which is my normal viewing distance. It's readable without much strain from 45" (114 cm) but I wouldn't want to use things that far away.
For reference my work issued laptop is a 13" 2020 MBP so I have experienced retina. I would take the 1440p screen real estate at ~120 PPI (24"/25") 10 out of 10 times vs going back to 1080p but with higher PPI. There's also the added benefit of never having to think or worry about poor UI scaling since not all apps handle scaling well, but that's not a deciding factor in my mind, more of a nice to have.
I never need to run app and editor side by side on same screen. I always have 2+ screen in any setup. So I just threw it to another if I want ever want to run it side by side. And besides, I seldom codes with my 27 4K screens.
They ares used mostly on browsing web/gaming. which you can't use something side by side isn't even a issue.
Yes, for developers screen real estate is everything. You want crisp fonts and lots of space. Both for just code editing and of course for testing, where you often run your application side by side with your code window. At work I still use my old 30" 2560x1600 screen (basically the old cinema display) and its just gorgeous. My iMac is way sharper, that is also great for image processing, but already noticeable smaller. You can squeeze a bit more onto the screen due to the higher resolution. My 24" 4k screen works with a scaled resolution (2300 horizontal resolution) but its considerably worse. A hidpi 30" screen would be a dream.
For reference I'm at 25" 1440p with a font size of 9 using Consolas. Things look pretty crisp at native scaling and also very comfortable to read with no strain.
In terms of viewing space this fits (4) side by side code windows at 80 characters with a little bit of breathing room.
Yep, 27" 4k at 1.5x (plasma) I can have 50/50 or 60/40 with font size 14 and get 110+ characters, not just 80. 60/40 would be for an IDE with a bar or two on the side and still get almost 110 columns in the editor/console comfortably without eye strain. With 144 DPI fonts on plasma (using Hack), fonts seem plenty crisp to me down to size 5.
For screen size, I think there is some screen size that's most comfortable to view, and I want to say that's like ~40% of the human FOV... so, I think a 24" monitor and 15" laptop are most comfortable for me, but 27" might be a bit nicer if you're using it for media as well.
I miss read a bit when replying in the other comment, for 4 side-by-side 80 column windows, you'd need to bring the font size to 9, which isn't as comfortable as 14 for me in my side-by-side setup, but then 1.25x is also an option.
No, Sway supports downscaling. Augmenting downscaling with exact fractional scales is still in discussion: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i... (And Firefox has a prototype implementation using wp_viewporter but you have to set the scale manually.)
Of course, independent of the desktop environment, you could just tell supporting applications to just manually render bigger UI (exactly how you would on X11 with some TOOLKIT_DPI variable thing per UI toolkit) and keep the monitor scale in the compositor at 1x. That's probably what you've been doing. That doesn't support multiple monitors with varying scale.
I have been using Dell P2415Q (24" 180ppi) for a few years side-by-side with a Retina MacBook, and the difference is visible: I can see pixels on 180ppi text if I lean forward, but not on the 220ppi. Not a deal breaker, of course, but the "retina" marketing pitch isn't lying.
BTW, LG 24UD58 mentioned in the article is also only 180ppi.
I am using the same, as I needed an external screen for my MacBook. I use it in scaled resolution for screen estate (2300 horizontal pixels), which works, but isn't as sharp as my iMac.
> Why is <220 ppi a dealbreaker? 27 inch 4k displays seem fine to me for retina and they are quite abundant.
I regret buying a 27 inch 4K monitor each and every day.
Sure, the PPI is much better than my 24 inch 1200p Dell Ultrasharp but a 27 inch 4K needs wither fractional scaling, which is a mess, or scaling fonts, which makes UI elements look weird.
24 inch 4K and 27 inch 5K should be a standard but all monitor OEMs are interested in making shitty gaming monitors.
Thank Apple for fucking up the term Retina Display. It used to mean something very specific until the marketing department at Apple overheard it. Same happened earlier to "real time".
If you care about HDR, ironically enough there are only 4 options for a decent monitor as well- And almost all of them are nearly impossible to buy new. Some of these monitors are also years old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCcSK3R8HcM
*
27" 3840x2160 ASUS PG27UQ / ACER PREDATOR X27 (same panel in both monitors)
I have a PG27UQ and a X27 side by side and it's bliss. They're on a custom built PC (so Mac Retina scaling issues are moot.) On Windows 11 I run at 125% and it's comfortable for me. (I Bought both new within 6 months of each other when they were about half off before the supply chain crunch.)
An iPad Pro is only 12.9” and you’re stuck with one resolution. You’re better off buying the 24” LG 4K (I think. Don’t remember it being configurable.)
That said, it makes a very good external monitor for mobile use.
By defining Retina as 220PPI most options are excluded as 4K at 27" or 32" is common but more isn't. A look at what Apple calls Retina though shows that angular density is a much better definition. The initial presentation by Jobs was about angular resolution and the actual screens follow it. PPI ranges from 218 to 476 but angular density only between 57 to 92.
So if you set a 27" or 32" screen at a decent distance you get "Retina" quality. If you want the screen closer maybe not. Unfortunately the market for more than 4K isn't really yet here for various reasons. Maybe if 8K catches on as a media format we take the next step. At that point only if you want to set the screen so close you can't view it all at once will it be worth it to go higher.
In a "logical pixel" system (macOS, Wayland, …Android??) the scale is the relationship between logical and physical pixels. In an "app go draw bigger stuff" system like Windows, it's just the factor of how much bigger the UI elements should be. E.g. in Windows settings you can set 150% scale and all UI elements will be 1.5X as large.
And the "good" scale depends mostly on PPI of the monitor, as well as user preference. On a 27" 4K monitor, 1x scale is near unusable: the UI elements would be microscopic. Windows defaults to 150%, but 175% and 200% are fine as well (here's the user preference aspect).
WPF and some other windows APIs support resolution independence, so you don’t have an arbitrary size defined set as 1X. It seems weird that Apple hasn’t been able to do resolution independence yet, and there is some arbitrary 1X that is based on monitor tech that was popular this decade (and definitely not resolutions like 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 resolutions that we used in the 90s).
Eventually, we should at least rename 2X to 1X and move on like we did before.
Directly using physical PPI has basically never taken off anywhere. Everyone is using "arbitrary 1x" because designers and developers have never started using physical dimensions for digital UI elements. Most people speak in "96-dpi-ish logical pixels" because it's much more convenient. Everyone knows what 128px approximately looks like. No one measures UI elements with a physical ruler in millimeters.
My constraints were proper 4k (no compromised height resolution) -- the 4:3 ratio is nice but I was happy with most ratios. Overall at 43 inches it's big probably more suited for console gaming than PC but the 165Hz refresh rate makes it suitable for gaming.
Not knowing too much about monitors and trying to search for "I want a 24in monitor that looks somewhat similar to my macbook" has been kind of challenging. Especially when you're shopping online. So many variables to tweak, and I have no idea which matter and which don't. I just want something that looks good.
I would add LG CX/C1 48 inch. The lowest price has come down to 1000 usd + tax around recent month. It has all the features and packs a top tier oled panel.
That's double the PPI compared to 27" 1080p ;) Granted, the usual "non-retina" 27-inch resolution was 1440p, but it's still a monitor you could use 2x scaling on. Yeah 1.75x or even 1.5x would be kinda preferable if you want more screen space but I like the huge UI elements.
Exactly - 27" 1080p is too large, 27" 1440p is nice for UI size for me, and then it's about extra pixels for sharpness & clarity.
Unfortunately the OSes I want to use don't do fractional scaling well - macOS or Linux, but Linux can work here, it's getting better. Windows does fractional scaling well in theory, but I find it works poorly in practice as app support for it is really patchy.
I really wanted the 27-inch LG UltraFine 5K (https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27md5kl-b-5k-uhd-led-monit...), but I heard many complains about it not being as reliable as you'd expect, then I decided to get the LG UltraFine 4K (https://amzn.to/3qs2pFW) a little over a year ago, and I don't regret at all spending so much more for a display, than I'd normally expect to.
Now, I want to update to Apple's Pro Display XDR, but can't justify paying ~7 times more on it for now. Although 24-inch and 4K was a huge improvement for someone like me, used to only using a MacBook display (I spend the workday programming, and love photography), I still feel like 4K isn't enough.
I can't comfortably open my editor/browser, while also watching a video, for example. For some time I've tried to use my MacBook 15 Pro as a second display, but that didn't work either. I hate the fact that there're small differences in color/brightness, even though the quality of either individually is superb (the external is slightly better)... The only thing that helped a little bit with regards to using multiple displays was using the iPad to play videos thanks to AirPlay, but this is suboptimal.
I have owned the LG 5K UltraFine monitor for 6 months and it's the greatest thing ever. I will never go back to 4K.
I drive it with an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock with CalDigit Thunderbolt cables and a maxed out 13" 2020 MacBook Pro, and as of the latest version of macOS Big Sur it is rock solid.
It's mounted on a monitor arm, so I can't comment on the included stand.
The OWC is my primary dock, but I did try the CalDigit one for a bit (both TB3.) Why? Same problem you're having - the monitors would never wake from sleep.
At the time I was using a Dell P2415Q with macOS and this monitor would just refuse to wake up from sleep or when I swapped laptops on the dock. It "just worked" far less than half of the time. I would have to hard power cycle by unplugging the monitor power cable - power button recycle was rarely sufficient.
I could never find a fix for this, but after a lot of searching I was led to believe that it was a problem with EDID and macOS with this particular monitor. I never confirmed this though.
The problem was almost entirely fixed with the latest macOS Big Sur update. I have to power cycle the monitor only a couple times a month now. Huge difference, and seems to be the case with both docks.
Slight differences in white balance, even after calibration, preclude the use of multiple monitors for myself as well. Even if they are the same monitor, same model our nervous system is very good at detecting these differences.
I have no settled on a new monitor either, I'm using a 24" that is slightly too small for split screen use, but doable. 27" would be nice but 32" would likely be the best here.
There are a few good ones in the works. LG announced a new "IPS black" technology, which offers better contrast than your MacBook screen (claimed 2000:1, we'll see). As well, LG is manufacturing a few monitors for Apple this year. Some of these will be miniLED like the XDR display, but cheaper as manufacturing costs have likely reduced significantly.
The only monitor I'd even consider right now is the LGGN950 or one of the 5k2k displays, though the latter are notoriously finicky I've heard and currently not usable on Mac without a dedicated GPU.
The mount for the 4K display sucks. I don't know why the hell they designed it this way, but it's a rectangle that protrudes about 5cm in front of your display. This mean that it forces your keyboard to be placed closer than it should depending on the distance you use it.
A lot of this depends on the distance of the monitor to your face. High actual DPI matters more if the screen is close to your eyes. Do a 24" 4k is great at close range, but if you move the screen 8in-12in back, a 32in 4K can work just as well.
352 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadI'm sitting on a very large database of monitor data coming from Lunar's diagnostics and error reporting (https://lunar.fyi)
Maybe I should organize it into Postgres and then search for monitors with the PPI I want.
Or is there any easier solution than Postgres for fast ingesting some JSONs and filtering by arbitrarily nested fields?
I'd love to have something with an easy to use UI for filtering that can also be shared.
After both of those I find it works absolutely flawlessly for me now, and it is comfortably the best external display I have ever used.
I would adore any option that is even remotely as good.
I can, however, see clear artifacts on the two 100-dpi ish screens. A 150-dpi screen would work perfectly for me.
Biggest downside (aside from the price) is extending the Apple lock-in.
As mentioned elsewhere, it and my mac are sensitive to the cable, so it's worth trying a couple if they give problems. (More apple idiocy: what if we put the same connector everywhere, but made devices super sensitive to some qualities of the cables, connectors, or who knows what -- there's definitely no way this will be super confusing for users!)
I used to buy an iMac 27 so I could have a great first screen. I’d like to go back or have an apple monitor again.
Right now if I take my laptop off somewhere and come back, who knows if they’ll both power up. I’m frequently stuck on one display and no amount of unplugging and reconnecting or swearing helps.
edit: and they use too much bandwidth to daisy chain with anything else, too.
Also, I can see the display in the system report in the thunderbolt section, and devices daisy chained off of them work. It’s just the panel that’s being a bitch.
I found the USB-C connector wears down over time and causes display and power issues. I've reflowed the connector itself, and am looking at doing a complete connector swap soon. The mechanicals of an active USB-C cable puts stress on the joints and causes them to crack and create unreliable connections. I wish there was a way to lock the connector in and use something else as strain relief.
Sadly the firmware is flaky, the webcam sucks, it has huge bezels, and is very thick.
Rumor is apple might have a new consumer priced external display next year. Let’s hope it’s true.
Edit: Oh I see, that's one of the LG-but-really-for-Apple-only displays.
Is there something wrong with me that I don't see a massive improvement between that PPI and the MBP one? To the point where I'd lose my mind about it and demand 5K there?
Retina is 326 PPI+ on iPhones. It’s 220 PPI+ on MacBooks. I have to say that my 170 PPI or so is plenty on my 4k 28” desktop monitors. Though I would be very very happy to upgrade to 120hz (without turning my laptop into a jet engine) and maybe 5k as well for perfect 2:1 1440p scaling.
Thankfully, as more and more public figures begin using OLED TVs instead of computer monitors, and as the monitor market takes after the larger consumer TV market, we will start to see better technologies compete with each other like OLED and FALD/miniLED.
It's a horrible time to buy a monitor right now, if you could wait even a year you should do so.
But keep in mind the relativity of "retina". It depends just as much on viewing distance as it does PPI. There are several handy charts you can view online relating the minimum noticeable viewing distance based on PPI.
edit: This was intended to be a serious question. I thought the esports folks were mostly interested with minimizing input latency and maximizing framerate, to the exclusion of most other concerns. ESPN covers esports tournaments now, sometimes on the front page of espn.com, so I thought it was more popular than perhaps it is.
the real problem is that a 1080p monitor at 360Hz requires six times the bandwidth of a standard 1080p60 monitor, while a 120Hz 4k UHD monitor requires eight times the bandwidth of a 1080p60 monitor.
it's easier to reach the FPS targets incrementally than it is to reach the resolution targets in larger jumps.
What I suspect is really going on is it's easier to overclock screens than it is to increase yield on high resolutions.
But I can get a $1000 4k, 120hz OLED screen. Sure, it might be 42-48", but I could just as easily buy a deeper desk, wall mount it 4-5 feet away for the same effect. I'm currently sitting 3.5 feet from a 24" monitor. In this instance, the TV becomes "retina" past 3 feet.
https://www.designcompaniesranked.com/resources/is-this-reti...
Let's assume when used as a monitor without excessive amounts of care, irreparable burn-in takes 2 years. I could buy two of these TVs and wait out the whole nonsense the market is going through right now. Re: Linus, Keep in mind that window snap burn in was fixed with the pixel refresh function. And the conclusion he and Wendell came to in that video was that it isn't perfect, and it's often wasteful, but you can just get another monitor.
27" Ultrafine 5K - bought in 2018, so 3+ years old, $1000+. 27" LG 4K - bought in 2019, so 2+ years old, $600+. 27" Dell Ultrasharp 1440p - bought in 2016, $800+. 24" Dell Ultrasharp 1920x1200 - bought in 2013, $400+.
All of these are in active use still - even the 8 year old 24" is still a solid AH-IPS monitor with decent wide-gamut colour support and LED backlighting.
I'd be very disappointed in a $1k display that was showing irreparable issues after 2 years. I'd be positively angry at a $1k display with issues after 6 months.
LEDs are normally produced as very large panels on production lines where every panel is made to a given PPI (and upper bound on the refresh rate).
Of course the technology mix is the technology mix, but the industry is built around reasonably large investments in these production lines, amortized across the entire screen industry.
A 27 inch 1080p monitor and a 24 inc 1080p monitor are produced on distinctly different production lines as it were, as they have a different PPI. But a tiny screen with the same PPI as said 27 inch 1080p likely came from the same factory in Korea.
Apple's panels are actually produced under contract by LG in Apple specific production lines, hence they can obtain exotic PPIs. Because they promise to use the line's capacity for multiple years.
I still find it hard to believe though that I can't change the brightness via the keyboard though in state of the art monitors. Does anyone know of any monitors where this is possible, or do they mostly require you to go through the terrible built in controls?
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-32-4k-usb-c-hub-mo...
Here's a decent 18.4", but it costs $14k[1], or you could get the 32" for $30k.
[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1676872-REG/canon_560...
Additionally I’ve anecdotally observed that the dimmer the screen is relative to the background, the more disconnected I feel.
For instance, I have a green screen CRT that I can work on at any nit as long as the contrast is basically infinite (text dim or bright), but as soon as the rest of the screen becomes illuminated, it's like I'm peering through a literal fog.
Contrast that to a dimmed 4k 10-bit panel, and I find myself dropping out of focus or losing my place. I'm looking for a particular OLED panel right now on AliExpress to test with.
[0] There is LG, but these displays have their issues as the article explains.
edit: I'm wrong on that. oops. apparently that invalidates my entire point. (it doesn't)
display bandwidth matters, and connectors are where display bandwidth goes to die. apple had to design a special one for the bandwidth requirements of that display.
it's not so much a matter of panels, but display protocol bandwidth and connectors that allow it.
even Microsoft have the Surface Studio, and it's excellent 4500x3000 display, and it's only available as part of the Surface Studio because that's the cheapest way they can get the display bandwidth all the way to the screen. eliminate the connectors and hardwire it.
this is also why laptops (especially apple laptops) have such good displays. they don't have to destroy the signal integrity with connectors, and they can use more wires to carry the signal than HDMI or DisplayPort allow.
high resolution, high framerate monitors just won't happen over DisplayPort or HDMI without serious advances. I expect a new connector to appear before that.
edit: you can in fact get HBR3 working, what's not working at full rate with DP instead of thunderbolt is the USB3 hub on the display.
the proof is that video cards and monitors and TVs either simply don't support that bandwidth, or they're so expensive that they're essentially hand made.
That's how you know, you look at the market and see what's available, and what it costs. People would buy the heck out of this stuff if it were possible to make it work with common, sloppy, reusable connectors like HDMI or DisplayPort. The fact of the matter is that it isn't possible to make this stuff with removable connectors, yet.
That's why you see very high DPI displays in applications where there isn't any need for high cycle-count connectors, or only single-use connectors well before you see the same displays with high-cycle count connectors.
or they use display compression to fake it.
but what do I know? you did some google searches.
6k 120Hz and 5k 144Hz are both possible over a single HBR3 link with DSC. Such monitors don't exist because the panels don't exist; rather the closest panel for sale is perhaps the 5120x1440 at 240Hz in the Samsung G9. Which has the same bandwidth requirements as a hypothetical 5120x2880 at 120Hz.
If you want 240Hz at >4k, or 8k 120Hz, then sure that exceeds existing DisplayPort 1.4 and ThunderBolt 4 bandwidth capabilities even with DSC, and you'll need the upcoming DisplayPort 2.0 link rates. (or DSC+chroma subsampling)
TVs and mobile/portable devices get lots of attention. But pc monitor they are very far in manufactors priorities.
Add to this fact that manufacturing displays is a costly affair, so there are no "artisinal" choices.
Personally, I'm hanging out for a 5120x2880 display larger than 27". We've had 27" 5120x2880 displays for 6 or 7 years now, you'd think someone would have taken that res to a larger panel by now. But nope, still waiting.
Dell has a 32 inch 8k display which is ~280 ppi in stock.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-32-8k-m...
It's not terrible, but it's nowhere near as nice as the 27" 5K.
But even on Windows, the choices at 27" 4K aren't great. 100% is too small. 200% is too large. 150% is quite nice, but I find apps regularly don't scale properly, and text still isn't as nice as 200% on a 5K display.
edit: and on Linux, it's similarly not great - integer scaling works quite well on most modern DEs. Fractional scaling is a mixed bag and a lot of apps have broken or compromised UI when it's in use.
As an aside, a user here recommended putting the outside monitors in vertical mode with the middle monitor in horizontal mode. It works extremely well for reading websites/documentation/terminal output while coding in the middle panel.
I think it could make a great secondary though.
I use 1.5× scaling in Sway, and haven’t observed even the slightest problem in any Wayland app. (I also use the high-DPI patches for XWayland, and run it at 3×, so that it’s an integer multiple of my scaling factor, a minor visual improvement on the very few X11 things I use that is probably not worth it.) I will note, however, that Firefox is rendering content at 2× and downscaling; setting the experimental widget.wayland.fractional_buffer_scale to 1.5 distinctly improves rendering, but had some very annoying bugs when I tried it several months ago which became debilitating maybe a couple of months ago, so I gave up on it.
Led to some pretty broken looking UI.
(One thing that is comically broken about Sway and I think Wayland in general is cursor sizes. Specifying `seat seat0 xcursor_theme Adwaita 96` nets me at least four or I think five different cursor sizes, varying by app, and at least one of the dodgy sizes is actually a fractional scaling bug, scaling by ceil(1.5) rather than 1.5.)
There's always a balance and trade-off here.
2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.
In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p display at 1x. I still consider going from 1080p to 1440p one of the biggest quality of life upgrades I've encountered when I made the switch 7 years ago. It's the same level of "wow this is great" as going from a HDD to SSD.
Before there were shortages you could get a high quality IPS panel monitor from a reputable brand (Dell, ViewSonic) with low input latency for around $300. 4k at 1.5x also gives you the same real estate as 1440p but with higher PPI but I don't know how crisp that will be given the scaling ratio.
Yes and no. With much clearer looking text, I can use smaller fonts (13 -> 11 in IntelliJ) than on regular 1080p displays, so there's _some_ difference.
Is that even a problem? I am not buying better screen to torture my eyes. IMO. A smaller sharper text won't really be easier to see compared to a larger but blurrer text.
I wear glasses and 25" at 1440p has very clear text. I feel no strain. Even the grey text on HN is very readable from about 32" (81 cm) away which is my normal viewing distance. It's readable without much strain from 45" (114 cm) but I wouldn't want to use things that far away.
For reference my work issued laptop is a 13" 2020 MBP so I have experienced retina. I would take the 1440p screen real estate at ~120 PPI (24"/25") 10 out of 10 times vs going back to 1080p but with higher PPI. There's also the added benefit of never having to think or worry about poor UI scaling since not all apps handle scaling well, but that's not a deciding factor in my mind, more of a nice to have.
I never need to run app and editor side by side on same screen. I always have 2+ screen in any setup. So I just threw it to another if I want ever want to run it side by side. And besides, I seldom codes with my 27 4K screens.
They ares used mostly on browsing web/gaming. which you can't use something side by side isn't even a issue.
1.5x is nice on a 27 inch 4k with 14+ fonts. HiDPI monitors do seem to have bloom, so slightly bigger fonts with higher DPI are good to have.
In terms of viewing space this fits (4) side by side code windows at 80 characters with a little bit of breathing room.
For screen size, I think there is some screen size that's most comfortable to view, and I want to say that's like ~40% of the human FOV... so, I think a 24" monitor and 15" laptop are most comfortable for me, but 27" might be a bit nicer if you're using it for media as well.
I believe that depends entirely on the desktop environment. Sway does real fractional scaling rather than the idiotic downscaling way.
Of course, independent of the desktop environment, you could just tell supporting applications to just manually render bigger UI (exactly how you would on X11 with some TOOLKIT_DPI variable thing per UI toolkit) and keep the monitor scale in the compositor at 1x. That's probably what you've been doing. That doesn't support multiple monitors with varying scale.
Because it's very blocky and not pleasant to use.
BTW, LG 24UD58 mentioned in the article is also only 180ppi.
I regret buying a 27 inch 4K monitor each and every day.
Sure, the PPI is much better than my 24 inch 1200p Dell Ultrasharp but a 27 inch 4K needs wither fractional scaling, which is a mess, or scaling fonts, which makes UI elements look weird.
24 inch 4K and 27 inch 5K should be a standard but all monitor OEMs are interested in making shitty gaming monitors.
*
27" 3840x2160 ASUS PG27UQ / ACER PREDATOR X27 (same panel in both monitors)
32" 3840x2160 ASUS PG32UQX
35" 3440x1440 ASUS PG35VQ
49" 5120x1440 Samsung Neo G9
That said, it makes a very good external monitor for mobile use.
So if you set a 27" or 32" screen at a decent distance you get "Retina" quality. If you want the screen closer maybe not. Unfortunately the market for more than 4K isn't really yet here for various reasons. Maybe if 8K catches on as a media format we take the next step. At that point only if you want to set the screen so close you can't view it all at once will it be worth it to go higher.
The better definition of "retina" is far simpler: you render UI at >1x scale on it.
And the "good" scale depends mostly on PPI of the monitor, as well as user preference. On a 27" 4K monitor, 1x scale is near unusable: the UI elements would be microscopic. Windows defaults to 150%, but 175% and 200% are fine as well (here's the user preference aspect).
Eventually, we should at least rename 2X to 1X and move on like we did before.
My constraints were proper 4k (no compromised height resolution) -- the 4:3 ratio is nice but I was happy with most ratios. Overall at 43 inches it's big probably more suited for console gaming than PC but the 165Hz refresh rate makes it suitable for gaming.
https://evedevices.com/pages/spectrum
Unfortunately the OSes I want to use don't do fractional scaling well - macOS or Linux, but Linux can work here, it's getting better. Windows does fractional scaling well in theory, but I find it works poorly in practice as app support for it is really patchy.
Now, I want to update to Apple's Pro Display XDR, but can't justify paying ~7 times more on it for now. Although 24-inch and 4K was a huge improvement for someone like me, used to only using a MacBook display (I spend the workday programming, and love photography), I still feel like 4K isn't enough.
I can't comfortably open my editor/browser, while also watching a video, for example. For some time I've tried to use my MacBook 15 Pro as a second display, but that didn't work either. I hate the fact that there're small differences in color/brightness, even though the quality of either individually is superb (the external is slightly better)... The only thing that helped a little bit with regards to using multiple displays was using the iPad to play videos thanks to AirPlay, but this is suboptimal.
I drive it with an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock with CalDigit Thunderbolt cables and a maxed out 13" 2020 MacBook Pro, and as of the latest version of macOS Big Sur it is rock solid.
It's mounted on a monitor arm, so I can't comment on the included stand.
The OWC is my primary dock, but I did try the CalDigit one for a bit (both TB3.) Why? Same problem you're having - the monitors would never wake from sleep.
At the time I was using a Dell P2415Q with macOS and this monitor would just refuse to wake up from sleep or when I swapped laptops on the dock. It "just worked" far less than half of the time. I would have to hard power cycle by unplugging the monitor power cable - power button recycle was rarely sufficient.
I could never find a fix for this, but after a lot of searching I was led to believe that it was a problem with EDID and macOS with this particular monitor. I never confirmed this though.
The problem was almost entirely fixed with the latest macOS Big Sur update. I have to power cycle the monitor only a couple times a month now. Huge difference, and seems to be the case with both docks.
I have no settled on a new monitor either, I'm using a 24" that is slightly too small for split screen use, but doable. 27" would be nice but 32" would likely be the best here.
There are a few good ones in the works. LG announced a new "IPS black" technology, which offers better contrast than your MacBook screen (claimed 2000:1, we'll see). As well, LG is manufacturing a few monitors for Apple this year. Some of these will be miniLED like the XDR display, but cheaper as manufacturing costs have likely reduced significantly.
The only monitor I'd even consider right now is the LGGN950 or one of the 5k2k displays, though the latter are notoriously finicky I've heard and currently not usable on Mac without a dedicated GPU.