I don't think this is totally accurate. Apple lists several non-TB devices as compatible like the iPad Air 5th Gen. In the Ars Technica review of it the author mentions it worked just fine on the USB C ports of their Radeon RX 6800 just with the devices running at USB 2 speeds. Perhaps something else is at play with the Nvidia card/drivers?
It's accurate. The Studio Display connects the same way as the Apple XDR Display and the newer revisions of the LG 5k Ultrafine, and you can read dozens of pages of people trying different ways to get things working.
The problems are…
- Very, very few Nvidia or ATI cards have USB-C video out. They seemed to stop caring when VR failed to take off a couple years ago.
- So you're left using DisplayPort-to-USBC — but have to find a high-bandwidth DP 1.4 cable. Many of these are incorrectly marked or advertised.
- HDMI to DisplayPort/USB-C is a whole other game I won't cover here.
- even with the DisplayPort working, you cannot control screen brightness or get audio without a USB signal
- which can be solved with some very esoteric Wacom and Belkin VR devices
- but which appear to not run a fast enough USB spec to be useful with the new Studio Display due to all its A13-driven weirdness
- also some setups may require a USB signal to even turn on? I'm a little unclear on this mark.
I've been through several of these hoops trying to get the earlier, TB-only LG 5k working with anything beyond a MacBook, so I've been watching these discussions with interest.
Yes, but you don't need TB 3 on your PC. It's at least doable with some AMD cards as evidenced by the Ars review. Clearly something is up with how the USB C port on the 3090 interacts with the monitor. Whether that's on Apple's side or Nvidia's.
Must have last checked a while ago, because the Vive is #4 these days at 7.3%; 47% of the headsets used with SteamVR are Quest 2, with the original Quest making up another 3.8%.
This is the standard that was implemented into cards for a couple years in the hopes it would result in headsets that connected to a computer with single cable. Compatible headsets never materialized so the port disappeared
The Windows ecosystem mess is why Apple says capabilities may vary.
- Yes, plenty of people including USB-C advocates like Benson Leung really wish NVIDIA didn't drop it for the 30-series. Most new laptops have an appropriate port, however, and probably at least a quarter of new motherboards.
- A low bandwidth cable should work; if link training appropriately trains an HBR2 link then it should light up at 4k60 (or 5k60 if DSC is supported.) The more likely issue is that his original cable was one of the majority of USB-C -> DisplayPort cables that is unidirectional in the wrong direction. They only advertise USB-C -> DP, after all.
- The internal webcam and speakers are connected to the USB 2.0 bus; you can verify this in System Profiler on a Mac when connected via Thunderbolt. Whatever is going wrong with the Wacom link is not because USB 2.0 doesn't have enough bandwidth.
You mean the PC ecosystem. Microsoft did not design the specs for USB, TB and DisplayPort.
Still, I'd much rather have this ecosystem "mess" that's more or less open and has healthy competition with a variety of solid options, rather than an ecosystem where stuff mostly just works but is 100% proprietary and locks you into a walled garden designed for rent seeking, planned obsolescence and e-waste generation (i.e. Apple that sells monitors with non user removable power cables attached to them).
Yep, all your observations reflect what I've observed with the Studio Display. As for the last point, I also have seen the display fail to wake up if it doesn't get a signal it likes (alternatively requiring me to simply unplug/plug-in again, reboot my machine, or change cables). Now that I have an approach that successfully works on boot and supports display sleep, I'll probably never touch it again
This is just a general problem: The term "USB C" doesn't mean anything other than the shape of the cable. There are various ways to transport video and/or audio over that connect and a given port on your PC may support a subset of them or none. Some thunderbolt ports can be used to connect an external GPU, for example, but even if it's connected your motherboard or bios might not support actually talking to that external GPU. On windows there is often a thunderbolt app on the system that you can open to see which TB features your built-in ports support... but if you're trying to plug into your GPU's USB-C port, now it's up to that specific hardware revision and your drivers to control what can happen there in cooperation with your PC and maybe your bios.
It looks like it only has a 60hz refresh rate, interesting that someone would pay that premium for it as a gaming monitor. I would much rather have 120hz with a quarter of the resolution, personally. Guess it depends on what kind of games you play.
My guess is they got it for other purposes and they just want to be able to play games on that big monitor that's sitting on their desk when they're not using it for work.
Is it actually worth buying from that company? Arent they the ones with incredibly delayed crowdfunding projects? It looks like a great monitor spec wise, but what kind of company are you buying from?
The author appears to have bought a monitor that's advertised as requiring a Thunderbolt 3 connection, and being compatible with a limited number of Apple products, and is complaining that it doesn't integrate nicely with his gaming PC (which has neither Thunderbolt 3 graphics connectivity nor appears on the compatibility list).
I don't want to be the Apple apologist here, but ... really?
Yeah, but now they're internet famous being on the front page of HN! I'm actually surprised this is a mere blog instead of a YouTube video with a poster image of someone with a frustrated expression holding obviously incorrect cables.
I'm all for repurposing things, so I don't blame them for attempting something most rational people would not bother. Been there done that, will attempt it again on something different.
Hah, my other appearances on HN's front page have not resulted in a particularly long tail of fame.
But I actually really appreciate this comment. I'm just trying to have a decent monitor for work that I can also play games with sometimes in the evenings and would rather not have two monitors on my desk.
He updated the page to say basically "if you use a DisplayPort cable with the right connectors that's rated for the display resolution then the display part works".
Personally this reads more as an indictment of the USB-c style connector. The physical form used to tell users of basically all technical level what was supposed to work when connected to what. The current port is anything but "universal" and just about anything at all you could imagine can happen when you plug in two USB c devices together - your laptop could charge the phone, the phone could charge the laptop, the display could work without a USB hub, the display could work only as a USB hub, the cord could only deliver power, etc.
And my (limited) understanding is that this is all on-spec; in practice you also have stuff like the power supply could be expected to deliver an off-spec amount like the Nintendo switch chargers and not work, etc etc
Yes, it is absolutely an indictment on the connector. The story of USB-C is one of people peddling a story that they'd solve every power delivery and data protocol problem of all time by making every connector the same shape, when in truth, having a variety of shapes of connectors can communicate compatibility and that was lost in the push for USB-C
... which is "a statement that a situation is unsatisfactory or unacceptable", just in case you were looking for the dictionary definition of "complaint" and were unable to join the dots.
You'd typically expect that a monitor is a monitor is a monitor, and supports the same industry-standard connectors and protocols. Not doing so would be as absurd as trying to sell a phone without a USB port.
To be fair, it's a 60hz refresh rate monitor, which would be considered pretty meh for any modern gaming pc, especially when you look at the price tag. It would be pretty insane to buy this monitor for specifically gaming. Hundreds of far better options for significantly cheaper...
None the less, it's Apple. None of this sounds surprising, sadly.
It's a weird one. 60hz is pretty low refresh rate. Definitely not a gaming monitor.
But it's resolution is quite high. At this resolution, I think there's only one other monitor, the LG Ultra Fine 5k is which is like only $200 cheaper.
I think for people that care about resolution/pixel density, this monitor has basically zero competition? There's plenty of lower resolution monitors with higher refresh rates.
That’s the case. And it explains the 60Hz. TB3 can only support 5k@60 due to the amount of bandwidth it takes. So without a newer interconnect (delaying the Studio more) or some fancy custom dual TB setup they didn’t have a choice.
The LG has its problems. It’s kind of wobbly, cheap feeling, and the USB-C ports can fail over time from strain/use. The extra $200 for the quality and features of the Apple display sounds reasonable to me given that benchmark.
Is it expensive in absolute terms? Yeah. The LG is too. But it’s those two options or step up to the Pro Display at $5k.
5k60 requires 32.4 Gbps uncompressed, 120 Hz would be double that. TB3, TB4, and USB4 max out at 40 Gbps. The main difference between TB3 and TB4 is that TB4 requires every feature to be implemented (charging DisplayPort, etc.).
> the LG Ultra Fine 5k is which is like only $200 cheaper.
$300 cheaper and 8 years old now, so likely can find used examples if you wanted. It's pretty clear that 5k / 218ppi just has no significant market appeal at this point outside of the Apple ecosystem. There were a few other 5k displays, but they've all packed up since (including LG, they don't make that 5k Ultrafine anymore afaict)
Although arguably since the LG comes with a height adjustable stand it's $700 cheaper than the Studio Display 27"
Oh yeah - I mean the Studio Display panel is presumably exactly the same as the 27" Retina iMac they shipped in 2014. It's a 4 year old panel. Astonishing it took them until now to ship that as an external monitor.
One of the bad qualities of the LG UltraFine was it's stand was not very stable and prone to wobble. I had one.
It's pretty clear that 5k / 218ppi just has no significant market appeal at this point
This is apparently true, and it's baffling. I was able to pick up one of the now-discontinued 5k PC displays a few years ago, and it's fantastic in Linux and Windows with 2x scaling.
This was absolutely true five years ago but there's been so few recent attempts since GPUs, Windows/Linux, and fast connectors have improved that I think this has become an apparent axiom when it's really more of an untested hypothesis.
I’m trying to make a 32” 4K work for me, and Windows’ 125% scaling is hot garbage. Macos is slightly better, but it’s still obvious it’s not an integer multiple of native.
I think this is just because 4k has been settled on as the standard, and the difference between 4k and 5k is too small for most manufacturers to bother offering both.
You'll likely see 8k as the next common step up from that (it's already happening with TVs). Who knows, maybe we'll have this same conversation again then because Apple will release a 9k display at that point.
That is largely due to the manufacturers focusing on price and display size for their volume business. 4K displays are produced in high volume and can be a lot cheaper and can be larger in absolute display size terms. That means that 5K will be more expensive. For some people that additional resolution and sharpness matter more than a few hundred dollars in cost.
I would not expect any Windows users to chose this display unless they are the few who would make the same quality vs price choice that an Apple customer might.
> who would make the same quality vs price choice that an Apple customer might.
That's a pretty elitest take that doesn't really hold up to any scrunity at all. Other than the resolution, this is a pretty mediocre quality display. At this price point there are no shortage of displays with much better overall image quality, other than the resolution. You're paying for that 5k in more ways than just the price at checkout. Even within Apple's own ecosystem it's pretty weak. It's bigger than the display on the MacBook Pro you're probably docking to it, obviously, but it also looks way, way worse than the display on that MacBook Pro.
> Other than the resolution, this is a pretty mediocre quality display.
The resolution is the essential feature of this display. And it's an important one due to the way macOS handles scaling. You basically always want to use 2x scaling in macOS. On a 4k / 27" display (which are ubiquitous) that results in an effective screen real estate of 1080p which makes the UI feel too large and cramped.
The bandwidth for 4k at 60Hz (HDMI 2.0) has been around for a while. The bandwidth for 4k at 120Hz (HDMI 2.1/Displayport 1.4) is only now becoming mainstream.
It hasn't been mainstream. I have the X1C7, a flagship in 2019 and it only supports HDMI 1.4.
That means when I bought my current laptop, still under the 3-year warranty, I would have had to get something worse to get HDMI 2.0 support, since I compared everything available.
From th'internet, that laptop appears to have a thunderbolt port; you should presumably be able to use a DP1.2 adaptor and get 4k at 60hz. Or _maybe_ a Thunderbolt monitor like the above 60hz 5k one, though definitely check before buying.
That's why I said over HDMI. Sometimes it's all that available, either because it's a TV or due to a missing cable. I find those USB-C to DP cables pretty flaky.
I personally think the sweet spot is 1440p at 60hz. I find with my build, I can maintain that resolution and framerate with graphic settings pretty much maxed out. My friend with a similar build has same resolution, but targets 120hz. Usually gets there, but has a number of games where he is trading graphical fidelity for performance.
Everyone: Yeah, not particularly common, nor do they really add much.
PC gamers specifically (and series/ps5 now too, with those consoles supporting 120hz with compatible tvs and games): Quite popular, and they do significantly add to the gaming experience.
Xbox Series X and PS5 support high refresh gaming with lots of support in current titles. iPhones ship with high refresh displays as do iPad Pro's. High refresh rate displays are here in force in the mainstream.
There's plenty of high refresh rate 4k monitors though. I feel like the slightly lower resolution is going to be totally worth it for most people.
In fast paced games the difference between 4k and 5k is going to be barely noticeable, but the higher framerate will be pretty a pretty obvious improvement (both because of the higher refresh rate, and because the GPU can run the game faster at the lower resolution).
A lot of gamers who can perceive the difference between frame rates often refuse to believe it, but some people can't perceive the difference. Every time I try, I fail blind taste tests between 60hz and 120hz content. Meanwhile, I can easily perceive fine details in resolution & DPI and the subtlest blur or aliasing is probably as jarring to me as a low frame rate is to a gamer who prioritizes FPS counts
That's crazy. 60 and 120 are night and day. Moving the cursor around at 60 feels like of like waving your hand under one of those LED lights that "invisibly" strobe to save energy.
> That's crazy. 60 and 120 are night and day. Moving the cursor around at 60 feels like of like waving your hand under one of those LED lights that "invisibly" strobe to save energy.
Many people can't perceive that LED flicker either (or before that, fluorescent light flicker), while others can.
I'm a huge fan of the RTINGS monitor reviews, which measure backlight flicker and identify which monitors do and don't have it, because I can notice that flicker and it gives me a headache.
I find that hard to believe - most likely the tests you've done were not really exercising 120hz. It's easily noticeable side-by-side even by someone who has no idea how monitors work.
The easiest test: move the mouse cursor in a circle repeatedly. The trail at 60hz will complete the full circle, while it will be barely visible at 120/144hz.
I think even if you only have a 60hz monitor it'll compare 60 vs 30, you should be able to see a difference between them.
I have mine at 180hz and it's extremely easy to track horizontally moving objects at 180hz, and it's almost impossible to see anything in the 30hz content.
You should be able to build a monitor to pass that test with motion interpolation, like how TVs do it. I don't think anyone's done it, but not sure if that's from added cost or added latency.
That's absurd, unless you never watch films or shows.
Electronic ink has terrible refresh rates, but is great for reading.
Apple's displays can run at 24FPS, which is terrible for gaming, but perfect for editing 24FPS films and shows.
I spend most of my workday either writing code or editing video, for which this less-expensive (relative to Pro Display XDR) model is out-of-this-world PERFECT.
The sound is amazing and would be perfect if paired with a subwoofer. And despite terrible reviews, the built-in camera is just fine for video calls. I think a lot of people don't realize that people only look good on their own screen in video calls, because they are seeing their own video before it gets massively compressed to look just as bad as everyone else.
Depends on the type of game, IMHO. For FPS or other fast paced competitive, yes refresh rate is important, but for things like open world single player RPGs I could see someone trading higher pixel density for refresh rate — those extra frames don’t help a lot in that circumstance, but the extra clarity and detail does.
High res isn't very clear when the image is frequently blurry because of slow pixel response times. Higher performance monitors end up more immersive in practice because of their low latency and fast pixel response times. Gaming with high performance displays, even casually, is a much more fun experience.
I only play racing games/sims, and I have a hard time imaging that higher than 60fps would make things less blurry, because what I have doesn't seem to sacrifice image quality at all. Would I see the light if I tried 120hz? Or does it depend too much on the game type?
While often related, refresh rate is not inherently tied to blurriness. High resolutions improve sharpness while ULMB, Lightboost, or even using a CRT can reduce ghosting to improve motion clarity. High refresh rates primarily help with perceived smoothness and latency.
Plugging a Macbook into a normal high-end monitor requires a USB-C to DisplayPort cable. Doing the opposite requires...the exact same type of cable. The only weird part here is that it's 5K.
You should be able to send audio over DisplayPort too, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple doesn't support that.
It's getting read hard to find good displays with a Thunderbolt out port on them. I was interested in Apple's new display for about as long as it took to find the picture of the back of the display and only see one lightning bolt. Nope, not interested.
It's not a great experience having to plug multiple USB-C devices into my machine, especially in a WfH world. I'm going to end up damaging a laptop shuffling things around at some point.
The Studio Display carries all audio over USB Audio, FWIW. That's why I didn't just settle on high-bandwidth DP-to-USB-C cable—the speakers are actually quite good
I don't know why anyone would buy this goofy monitor, the LG 27GN950-B has a gorgeous 4K@144Hz HDR screen, works great for gaming and for reading text / coding, and is cheaper too. You could get this monitor, a pair of great AudioEngine A2 speakers and a webcam, and still have money left over
A 5K display offers about 1,000 extra horizontal and 700 extra vertical pixels.
When you're working with 4K images and video, that’s enough space for video editing tools on the side and timelines at the bottom, all while viewing "UltraHD" in its full, unscaled beauty.
Until you've experienced what it's like to use a 5K (or even 6K, which will really spoil you), it's hard to appreciate why 4K is insufficient for many professionals.
Since you're talking about video editing, the lack of HDR is very nearly a deal breaker for that professional market. Also this is an 8bit + FRC panel if you care about that sort of thing.
Regardless multi-monitor setups exist and are well supported, so it's not hard to get both a 4k preview at 1:1 scaling and have plenty of room for controls by just running 2 displays.
It'd be nice to have it all - 5k, >60hz, and a decent HDR support. Even just 90hz would be a good improvement, but 120hz gets you zero pulldown for 24fps video! But alas that display doesn't exist. This display doesn't seem to really strike a good balance of what's achievable, it feels like a stop gap placeholder for the now canceled 27" iMac
Remember all those 120hz and 240hz plasma TVs back in the day that couldn't take any >60hz input signal? Yeah that wasn't just pointless marketing. It was so they could show 24fps and 48fps video content smoothly, without 3:2 pulldown artifacts.
If you're working in a professional video studio, chances are you're probably going to encounter 24fps video. So yeah, still matters beyond gaming.
72Hz, 96Hz, 120Hz, 240Hz, all fix pulldown and will all look exactly the same side by side. 72Hz (75Hz is normally what's tested) is noticeably smoother than 60Hz. Most 60Hz monitors support 75Hz, but since we're talking about niche products here chances are they have a different set of hidden features than usual (perhaps higher perhaps lower).
This is why I have a comically large 43” 4k which I operate at 1x. It’s roughly the same density as a 27” at 1440. High DPI is nice and all, but I’ll take more space to work over pixel density any day.
I just have a 42in LG TV that I use as my main work monitor. It was around $220 a few years ago. After working out the kinks with using it (because a TV is not a monitor), it's been pretty good. I also position it further away from me than I would a normal monitor. In part, that is because I would otherwise see some dimming around the edges due to the viewing angle. And also because focusing further away works better (getting old can sometimes be inconvenient).
It is just 60Hz, so you might not want to use it for gaming, though there are higher refresh TVs out there these days. Of course you have to dig through the marketing fluff to see if they are a true 120Hz panel or not.
Yeah mine is actually an IPS panel. Also 60Hz, but the viewing angles are great. I do have mine set back a bit more than my previous 27", but the more important adjustment I needed to make was to set it 6-8" lower. Before that, I only felt comfortable working on the bottom half of the screen.
While I also prefer small UI and more real estate with more pixels, even without real estate change a high DPI "retina" 2x and a regular DPI has a difference of night and day for me.
But yes when I have the option I tend to choose the smaller UI settings too.
Personally I'm entirely uninterested in having enough real estate to have 100 different things on screen at once. I'm very interested in razor sharp, highly-detailed typography and image display. Image quality over quantity. That's the appeal. 4k is almost there, but not quite. 5k is perfect.
I've had the 5K LG 27" monitor for about 5 years now and 4K monitors just look blurry now. Feels like you can count the pixels even though you can't.
Reading VSCode off this monitor feels like reading analog text on paper. It's amazing for eye strain. Really doesn't feel like you're staring at a screen all day.
I experienced the same thing, even more abruptly, when I switched away from a 32 inch 4K monitor to a Samsung CRG9 49-inch monitor. Feels like I can count the pixels on the 49 inch monitor. I love the wider real estate, but now I want something with at least the vertical pixel density of the 4K monitor, but the same height as a 32 inch, and the same width as a 49 inch. Whatever that comes out to be.
IMHO 4k was the worst thing to ever happen to monitors. Now we have screens ranging from 24" to 43+" all using the same physical resoluton. This means that at all the most popular screen sizes you need to use some weird 1.5 or 1.25 scaling factor which results in all sorts of weird rendering quirks, like 1px gaps when rendering engines try to fit elements to pixel boundaries. Plus SVGs often rasterize to a blurry mess since there is no rendering magic that could make a 1px line rasterize nicely over one and a half pixel.
1080p was the same way. 1440p was almost exclusively an Apple thing. Monitor manufacturers want to sell size, not resolution.
I'm starting to wonder if vector formats and layout engines need pixel hinting capabilities, like font formats already do. As far as I'm aware browser engines already have to hack in these sorts of layout tweaks to avoid, say, float-based layouts collapsing into multiple lines at odd zoom percentages. Apple's insistence on integer scaling ratios is noble, but it also renders the display part of their hardware ecosystem an island.
Windows does fractional display scaling just fine. Most software these days supports it and renders perfectly. Yes, occasionally you run into some legacy pixel-based UI and get a blurry window. This will almost always be some utility software, not a program you interact with for long periods of time.
He happened to get it out without the connector cracking. Though it got pretty chewed up. This will no doubt void your warranty as Apple specifically says it isn't removable.
Is it phsyical possible to remove it yes. But it was not designed for it to be removed, it's non standard, it requires a significant amount of force to do so, and apples own support documentation says that it is not removable so you'd likely void the warranty by doing so.
https://support.apple.com/guide/studio-display/important-saf...
I've never had an AC power cable fail either, but I have had a pet chew on one and ruin it, or made it unsafe to use (Thankfully no injuries resulted).
Unfortunate but, frankly, not something that I care about at all. Yes, it might have been nice to be able to use a standard cable connector for some things, but that has very little material impact on use of the monitor.
This seems more like a moral panic than a true compromise of the functionality of the monitor.
I mean, pets chew on cables. Office chair wheels run over cables. Desk feet end up on a cable. Corners of things wear down cables. There's a reason all other monitors have removable cables. And not all are standard. Some have power bricks outside of them. But all are user replaceable. Having to service a $1,500-$2,000 monitor because the cable isn't easily replaceable is just stupid.
Sure it's inconvenient but if you have a damaged cable ring your local electrician. They will just cut it and put a little inline junction box on it. Won't be as elegant but will also probably cost $100. Or just repair it yourself.
That would void your warranty. And $100 is more a rural fee. In a major city, it's gonna run you more than that. Or, get any other monitor and replacing the cable is about 6 bucks.
You'd need a monitor, speakers, and a webcam. Each with their own connection cables to the computer and everything but the webcam needing wall warts for power. There's a value is reducing desk clutter. It may not be the main reason to pick one monitor over another but it definitely has a value to some people.
I recommended against the 27MD5KA; it has hardware RFI defects that break nearby Bluetooth.
When it was released, the 27MD5KB wouldn’t boot reliably as the Mac Mini’s only monitor on whatever macOS was out at the time, so I couldn’t consider it a valid display for a Mac. No doubt it’s fine for PCs though.
A 4K display at the same pixel density as this would be a 21” diagonal. MacOS does a relatively ok job of displaying a logical resolution of 1440p on a 4K display but windows just completely shits the bed with high dpi modes. Pixel-perfect logical 1440p on physical 5k looks better than the alternatives by a wide margin.
This used to be true, and I think is why we STILL don't see very many high resolution monitors targeting the PC market, but Windows 10 is actually quite good at resolution scaling now. It typically picks the right default and everything scales great IME
I'm using a 4k display at 1440p logical resolution as my secondary display, and there's a bunch of apps I won't run on it because they look like pants.
That monitor looks like the ugly run-of-the-mill gaming accessory, and the AudioEngine A2 are terrible speakers (I've owned them). Gaming gear has good specs in general, but aesthetically pleasing it is not.
That monitor only has 163dpi, which isn't "retina" or particularly tight to my eyes, whereas the Studio Display has 218dpi, which looks great at pixel-doubled (200%) rendering. Huge differentiation in my book
Sounds like it shipped with some last-minute firmware bug that degraded the image quality way below what it's capable of. Should be fixed by a firmware (iOS?) update.
Yes. To pile on, if you're playing a First Person Shooter (FPS), you want at least double the Hz. It makes a difference. Additionally, there are other factors that gaming monitors offer such as brightening darker areas that are around a brighter area.
But in general, this monitor, though it's impressive, does not have the features needed for gaming.
Lots of LCDs have exponentially more input lag when you drop them from their higher refresh rates to lower. For instance (from data sources like TFT Central or Rtings) it's common to see a 120Hz monitor have 2ms input lag but then at 60Hz it will have 30ms.
Saying 120Hz feels sluggish is also confounded since the mouse / keyboard have 8ms lag unless you use a gaming one or manually change the polling rate, and games and desktop implementations all have variable input lag up to 100ms or some crazy number. Whether your desktop has vsync is another variable.
None of this of course changes the fact that input lag on a monitor should be zero aside from the pixel transition period.
I am lifelong a gamer, have excellent vision, and routinely fail side-by-side tests comparing frame rates in excess of 60hz. Not everyone can perceive the difference. (One explanation is that some people may be able to essentially interpolate frames well enough that the information lost is not perceptible, in the same way that you might not be able to tell the difference between 144hz and 240hz).
That being the case, I'd much rather trade away frames in exchange for improved image quality, as I'm doing in this case.
This fascinates me. I hear it all the time that some people can see the difference and others can't. I was thinking maybe it's age related, like the degrading frequency response of the ear, but many people my age don't perceive it either. I'm in my twenties and the difference between 60hz and >=120hz is like day and night. My vision is not very good, though.
I even prefer using a high refresh-rate screen for office and coding use. I notice it a lot by dragging / moving stuff and scrolling.
If you're using a product in a manner inconsistent with the specs, you should only do a write-up if it works. Otherwise it's a lot of drivel about how an elephant can't fly.
User connects a premium low market share monitor not designed for gaming or for a PC really, despite some software supplied to the vendor, to a gaming PC and then complains about how difficult it is even though it eventually all works anyway.
I don't get these articles or why you'd even buy one of these monitors for this case, even though I own one. I'd grab a random 144Hz 4k jobby instead. But I'm not a fan of punching myself in the balls over and over again for the hell of it.
So far with this monitor I've read pages of whining from people who shouldn't have bought it or didn't buy it. Everyone who should have bought it and did buy it seems quite happy. I know I am!
Well you can't see much of it from the front so I'm not sure what the point is of doing that. I bought it because it's the only 27" 5k panel you can actually get that has any realistic chance of vendor support anywhere in the UK and will charge my laptop.
Back when the Thunderbolt display was a couple years old, I got it in my head that I wanted a very beautiful monitor with at least a casual gamer compatible response time.
When all was said and done, the monitor I found turned out to have similar specs to the Thunderbolt display. Color reproduction, pixel response rates. Basically the same panel and driver. It was $100 cheaper than the Thunderbolt display, at the outside. But made of plastic. So I said fuck it, $100 for an aluminum exterior isn't that crazy, and I can pick it up today instead of dealing with UPS.
I just unplugged that monitor a couple months ago, and I keep trying to figure out if I can squeeze it back on my desk by rearranging some things.
I wanted to replace it over a year ago but it was the last monitor I had with a camera, it was serving to daisychain for an old Thunderbolt2 laptop that to be honest I never plug in anymore, and with the pandemic, none of the big names had really produced anything new in a year.
So it was either get the big brother of my primary display (larger but lower ppi), or wait. Last fall they bumped that monitor to... I want to say better speakers and a uniform bezel (old model was fat at the bottom).
I really miss the speakers in the Thunderbolt display. Holy hell are people shipping bad speakers in some otherwise excellent monitors. I'm back to using external ones and dealing with the EM interference.
Reminds me of my 30" Dell Ultrasharp from ~2006 and the nightmare that thing is to drive if the situation isn't perfect. It only accepts dual-link DVI, even if the signal doesn't demand it.
Driving it on a modern device with anything other than a powered active adapter (near $100 until recently apparently) just doesn't work. I went through a lot of adapters before I stumbled on a USB-C to Dual Link DVI adapter that actually does the job.
I've tried and tried but hooking it to my Xbox has proven basically impossible.
Which model do you have? I have an old U3011 and you can get the native resolution if you use the display port. I've used a native display port cable as well as usb-c to display port and it all works fine.
The hdmi ports only do 1080p and despite having a newer Radeon card with a DVI port I haven't been able to get that to work either (It must not be a dual link port?)
Below is the one I've been using for the last 2 years on my 2019 MBP. It does cut out a couple times a day but usually comes back on it's own. Every adapter I've used has done that for some reason, I don't know why.
This seems to suggest that while the Studio Display can be driven at 5K by a raw DisplayPort signal (which is great) the audio signal is routed over USB rather than the Displayport audio channel. That is unfortunate, I was hoping to at least be able to get video+audio.
I have a LED Cinema Display (DisplayPort model) on Windows that surprisingly responds to Monitorian brightness control when I use current AMD drivers. I used to run a specific brightness control app for Apple displays, but have since ditched it.
This is correct and indeed unfortunate. Another thing I didn't mention in the post is that the driver for the XDR's USB bus is the same as the one for the Studio Display's ports+camera+audio. I imagine the only way they'd have support "spatial audio" is over USB so they just went that route from day one
It runs some kind of A13, so similar to an iPhone 11. But it may not be a fully capable version of that chip. All retail 'Apple Silicon' Macs use a version of M1, which is more of an enhanced A14.
It might be similar to the Apple Developer Transition Kit from two years ago, which was an A12 with extra GPU power. But until someone can get software actually running on it, will be hard to know.
Yeah, I almost referenced a similar Rube Goldberg machine I'd witnessed when I was writing this post, but I didn't want to get too mired in discussing how this is really just history repeating for the third time
He purchased a TB monitor to plug into a device that doesn't support TB and says "it shouldn't be this hard".
Commenters complain that it's 60 Hz but I don't know of an external interconnect that could drive that many pixels any faster.
HN is weird sometimes.
(I don't plan to buy this monitor either, but not for the reasons above. The LG 5K monitors are perfectly adequate for my needs. And like the post's author I was sorry to see target display go).
Samsung G9 is for sale now, and it pushes 5120x1440 at 240Hz without subsampling through DisplayPort 1.4, which is the exact same pixel rate as 5120x2880 at 120Hz.
Important to note that this is a 110dpi monitor and therefore not retina nor suitable for integer resolution scaling, whereas the Studio Display is 218dpi. I care a lot more about resolution and dot pitch than about frame rates higher than 60hz
I have a Mac. I also have a work-issued PC. I have both machines connected to the same displays, and switch between them.
DisplayPort isn't some obsolete technology here. I understand why this display doesn't have HDMI, or DVI, or VGA, or Composite, or S-Video, etc. But DisplayPort would be nice.
That's how data cables/ports work. There is a DisplayPort "protocol", then there are DisplayPort physical connectors and cables. Then there are other types of physical connectors and cables that also can be used with DisplayPort "protocol". Same thing for USB, or HDMI etc.
Yes, it's confusing. But it's also a good thing as you can carry lots of stuff over the same cable and connector. A USB-C type cable and connector can carry USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, HDMI, even analogue audio.
Before USB-C, Thunderbolt was using mini-DisplaPort connector and cables.
I don't think Apple really wants you to buy their monitor for use on a PC. It's just a support headache, between the cables and graphics cards and refresh rates and gamma and such.
That it happens to work on a PC at all is, I guess, an unintentional side effect that they'd rather not even acknowledge. You can try it unsupported but it's not their problem...
They've never been good at supporting standards not invented there. Hell, ever tried to use a Magic Mouse with a PC? Everything about it feels completely off. Part of me wonders if subtle incompatibilities, where hardware works 80% of the way, is maybe even part of their deliberate strategy to introduce small headaches to the PC experience to frustrate you into switching.
(Of course OSX has its own share of frustrations too, but nothing like using PC hardware on a Mac or vice versa).
That’s a good point — what I meant was that the DP connector found on graphics cards is pretty common (“standard”), so should be included. As a frame of reference, a similarly priced monitor I have has 2x HDMI, DisplayPort, thunderbolt 3, and a few USB A ports if you use it as a thunderbolt hub. And it’s a 144hz ultrawide with HDR support.
And while I acknowledge that Apple made a trade off for pixel density, they weren’t forced to make tradeoffs for other features that are common on high end monitors.
> the DP connector found on graphics cards is pretty common (“standard”)
So are D-sub connectors and HDMI. Should it have those as well? What about S-Video? Composite?
> they weren’t forced to make tradeoffs for other features that are common on high end monitors
They don't sell any products with DisplayPort connectors, nor do I think they've ever done so (certainly not recently). Selling a product with that connector is a commitment on some level to supporting what people plug into it, and as demonstrated by the OP, PCs are not really supported. It's also more engineering effort, but that's probably marginal.
This is a standard connector with cheap cables that adapt it to legacy devices using the DP alternate mode of USB-C. Apple are known for getting rid of legacy connectors. USB-C is a superior technology, it's only a matter of time before it's used for everything, and I appreciate Apple's efforts to hasten that day.
I have one and somehow managed to get it into a mode where the UI was an appropriate size and it ran at 120Hz. Worked perfectly for almost a year, then I updated to Monterey and cannot for the life of me get it to run in HiDPI mode at my old preferred scaling. Tried all the third party monitor controlling apps (EasyRes doesn't have the scaling I'd like in the HiDPI list of resolutions)
I might just get rid of the monitor. I'm not convinced I loved it for my workflow anyway compared to 2 monitors where I can switch my Mac workspaces independently
Are there any alternatives you'd recommend? When last I looked I was surprised how limited the options were for 2160p + higher refresh rates (I guess maybe cables/ports/GPUs need time to catch up?)
Unfortunately there are no monitors sold by any company other than Apple (and LG for that one 5K display they made specifically _for_ apple) that have a “retina” pixel density, which I would define as >200 PPI. (The Studio Display’s is 218.)
Every ginormous “4k2k” or whatever display is just that: ginormous, so the actual pixel density is much lower, and is comparable to a typical (smaller, 1440p, etc) display.
I suspect this is because the fabrication of the LCDs is tuned to a particular pixel size, so if a company wants to make a 4K monitor, they scale existing LCD production up to a large enough size that they can get it 2160 pixels tall (by however wide), and that’s the size of the display. They can advertise having both a large display (which people like) and 4K (which people like), so there’s no downside to the manufacturers.
But if you want actual high pixel density, 200+PPI, your options are basically an Apple monitor (LG’s apple-sold display notwithstanding), or a smartphone.
(I’d love to be proven wrong on this! My holy grail monitor is 200+ppi, 120+Hz, large (27”+), and ideally ultrawide, but alas, such a thing doesn’t exist.)
It turns out, for basic computer use cases, like scrolling on a website, motion clarity matters. My holy grail (for something usable from current PCs) is
- fast pixel response (CRTs are close, but the light to dark transitions fail)
- strobing, or a refresh rate that is high enough such that there is no blur (240Hz still doesn't fix this)
- at least 100Hz or so (perhaps only because I haven't used stuff over 144Hz enough yet)
- non glossy without grainy artifacts
- retina pixel density
- no viewing angle issues
- *at least* as good contrast as a 90% dead CRT I got in the trash
- no bloatware in the monitor or whatever they do that adds tons of input lag for no reason
- no local dimming type artifacts that (obviously) local dimming causes, but more importantly what the alpha OLEDs have
- low minimum brightness. most LCDs even at the lowest settings are far too bright
- the option of warm color temperatures
- perfectly flat screen, and pixel sharpness, for the sake of being fair (but the latest CRTs almost pass)
- no backlight bleed
Maybe OLED will already be good enough no? I haven't read up much yet on it, but I learned yesterday that the ABL feature I feared (which causes the image brightness to change substantially based on the content on screen) might be disableable on something like the LG CX OLED.
edit: in case anyone knows, I see this monitor "requires two DisplayPorts" for full 8k. Does anyone know if I can plug two display ports into a docking station, and one cord out of the docking station into my 14" m1 mbp? Ideally this would also charge the mbp. Is this possible? If I were to buy such an expensive monitor, I really only want one cord.
I'm sure you can get it to work at some lower res/refresh rate than what its designed for. But that monitor is DP 1.4 dual link because it needs more than the 32Gbit one gets out of a single DP 1.4 cable to run at 60Hz. So if your happy with 8K@30Hz and your mac can provide DP 1.4 it might work with a single cable. And from what I know of Mac's your probably out of luck except for the latest M1 models which support TB4 and the higher data rate DPs.
That said, the easiest way to get this working is probably to get one of the TB->PCIe expander chassis and plug in an external GPU and let it drive the display.
Desktop PC's/workstations still have their place, and driving multiple high resolution monitors is one of them.
PS: Been drooling over that monitor for the past couple years as an upgrade to my dell 5K's I picked up when apple released their first standalone 5k monitor and more than a few high end mac users apparently ebay'ed their dell monitors to get the apple version. Their loss, my gain... :) Hey apple, why don't you release a 8K monitor? Lol.
(PS: There are a couple other manufactures putting that panel in monitors (viewsonic for one), so its not just dell, and a bunch of 8K tv's if you want higher resolution).
thanks, "TB->PCIe expander chassis" wasn't on my radar at all! I'm holding out that apple will release something better than the Studio Display in the next 6-9 months and make some of this a bit easier.
> I suspect this is because the fabrication of the LCDs is tuned to a particular pixel size, so if a company wants to make a 4K monitor, they scale existing LCD production up to a large enough size that they can get it 2160 pixels tall (by however wide), and that’s the size of the display. They can advertise having both a large display (which people like) and 4K (which people like), so there’s no downside to the manufacturers.
There are plenty of 13" 1440p laptop panels being made. You just have to mate 4 of them together to make a 26" 5K display and yet this isn't done. Hell, I'd just settle for someone selling 13/15" 1440p/4K panels in a cheap, thin bezel enclosure with a VESA mount on the back for $250 - $400 a pop and I could make my own 5K/6K display for cheaper than what they're selling for.
Are you saying that it is a shame companies are selling 110ppi monitors?! 110ppi (27 inches/16:9 at 1440p) has been the standard non-retina resolution for a long time. It's what I have on my desk right now as an ultrawide -- I'd be interested in getting a higher-res one but there isn't really one that has a high enough refresh rate.
Maybe it should be, but it’s not actually a thing of the past. I would bet hard cash that a higher number of recently released expensive monitors ($1000+) don’t have retina than those that did. There is still a massive market for people willing to make the trade off in another direction (like higher refresh rate or going ultrawide) rather than retina.
Obviously it’d be amazing if what you said is true, because both retina and HRR are very nice to have
There are so many other dimensions that can be more important. 110 dpi is fine for me now - my next upgrade will focus on contrast and black level instead.
My 2017 4K iMac has a DPI of 219 and supports Display P3, a color gamut that's 50% larger than the standard sRGB.
For most of what developers and even graphic designers do, 120 MHz refresh rates aren't required. People who need high refresh rates on large screens already know that and are prepared to spend the money necessary.
One problem with high pixel density is that you either have to scale everything up, or everything becomes super tiny. And second problem is that with bad eye sight due to aging things get blurry anyway... That 12px font ... I'll just keep buying larger monitors.
Apple's philosophy around high pixel density is to be able to run at a scale factor of 2. (Or close to 2 on mid-2010s Apple laptops, or sometimes 3, as on newer iPhones.) That way everything is physically the same size, but looks a lot nicer. Mac users running 5k monitors aren't running 5120 x 2880, they're running 2560 x 1440 at 2x.
>The bad news is, as a Windows user, very few apps support scaling (aka DPI awareness).
That is not true in my experience. Also, for those who don't support it (which by default look blurry) you can enable it in compatibility options and it will generally work well.
>The bad news is, as a Windows user, very few apps support scaling (aka DPI awareness).
Completely false. I've forgotten the last time I encountered an app that wasn't super ancient and didn't support fractional scaling on Windows 10/11. Sometime in 2017 I think.
Sure, but I'm using a 5k2k 40" display. I had to wait ages for it to come out, and it's hardly "retina" quality, but I can't imagine having a significantly taller 49" display with 3/4 of the lines.
I don't think the person you're replying to was comparing those two monitors, just pointing out that 5120x2880 at 120hz is the same amount of data as 5120x1440 at 240hz.
It's 110ppi, which is the most common display PPI still. Keep in mind 1440p is a family of resolutions, not a single resolution. In this case this monitor is 5120x1440, which is twice the resolution of the most common 1440p resolution (2560x1440).
Does it use Display Stream Compression or something? Raw 5120x1440 x 240 fps x 8 bits x 3 colors = 39.55 Gbits/sec. DP1.4 has a maximum data rate of 25.92 Gbits/sec. DP2.0 on the other hand does 77.37 Gbits/sec.
Even without anything plugged in, or any other displays downstream of the host thunderbolt port, XDR will preferentially negotiate one HBR2+DSC stream if the host supports it. (17.28gbps)
Which yes, means that a hypothetical 6k120 could be done at the same compression level as current 6k60 by using both HBR2 streams that a Thunderbolt 4 host port is required to support.
Hey, would you have some details/info on how I can figure out what exactly my XDR is ‘doing’ (find its connection type like you explained, and pixel depth that the graphics card is outputting - 8 bit vs 10 bit).
I have the M1 Max 14”, and also bought the XDR around a month ago for the extra 6k screen real estate. One thing I noticed is that I can’t figure out what pixel depth it’s running at on my M1 (intel shows 30 bit framebuffer in System Report, M1 shows nothing). SwitchResX software is reporting that it’s running in “Millions of Colors” (8 bit), but I’m not sure if that’s true. The same setup is reporting Billions of Colors on an intel MacBook.
It overall seems to be there’s things missing for the XDR <-> M1 interactions :S
DSC was arguably the hallmark change of DisplayPort 1.4[1]. To say something is "only capable of achieving" its performance by utilizing the very tech it is built on feels like there has been a misunderstanding somewhere.
To be clear, Display Stream Compression is different from Chroma Subsampling[2], which the parent referenced.
"Visually lossless" isn't really lossless. What it actually means is "we're pretty sure you won't notice", which is probably correct but isn't a claim that should be accepted at face value.
Which is precisely why I included the "claimed" part in my statement. I don't know enough about how the compression works to know one way or the other definitively.
To put it another way, there is no such thing as general lossless compression - to make some data smaller without losing any information your new representation has to make other data larger. You can limit that "larger" to 1 bit but you will still have some cases where the compressed data is definitly not smaller than the source so it will not help you with cases like this where there is a hard upper limit on how much data you can transport.
There's also a term for audio, but I forgot the exact terminology.
Things like this is applying lossy compression carefully with lab test on real humans to claim that under an A/B test an average human would not discern the difference.
But it still doesn't mean it should not be taken with a grain of salt.
In any case, it is objectively inferior (and subjectively might not matters.)
On top of my head one thing I'd question is generation loss (but if I am serious in the market of this kind of display I should study more carefully what their claim really is.)
But this is enough a technical detail for anyone to say "they only achieve XxY resolution at Z FPS with DSC" because the theoretical bandwidth isn't there and make do with lossy compression.
I believe "transparent" is the term used when claiming a lossy audio codec is indistinguishable to a lossless one by a human for some definition of an average human. For example I believe aac was considered transparent for most pop music at 160kbps for stereo, 16-bit @ 44.1khz (CD quality). So iTunes selling 192-256kbps was considered more than enough.
As a G9 owner, I'll say it can't even achieve 240hz with DSC. Look up all the G9 owners who have 3090s (or other cards) and experience interlaced output when the refresh is set to 240hz on their G9s, including me.
DSC isn’t lossless. It’s fine for games or watching video, but might show artifacts on lots of text. Depending on what you’re using the monitor for (and your personal standards) that may or may not be acceptable.
You get two weeks to return anything you buy from apple, no questions asked.
I see why they do it: I bought an apple watch 0 figuring I'd get an idea of what the fuss was about and then buy v3 when they got it figured out. Instead, within the first week, I turned around on my way to work because I hadn't put my watch on.
OTOH I got an M1 ipad pro when it launched and ended up returning it and getting an air which was just as good for my needs. As it happens the pro had some hardware bugs anyway but if I'd liked it I would have just asked them to swap it.
I guess, but it just seems like the height of disgusting consumerism to spend several thousand dollars on the off chance a monitor has $feature, while planning on returning it and doubling the carbon footprint via shipping, when you could instead just, you know, search the internet.
To be fair, in the past when going from DVI, Display Port, VGA, HDMI, etc. to other standards, you could just buy a simple cable. Video card manufacturers would even provide convertors in the box. So it makes sense that people may have expectations for simplicity based on their prior experiences.
Right. The monitor is a thunderbolt monitor. Furthermore, your GPU must be part of that. With Thunderbolt 4, most people mistake USB-C for Thunderbolt. They are not the same, even if the connector is.
Just to make life more interesting, USB4 is TB3. TB4 is basically TB3 with higher speed floors. None of this is visible through inspection — you have to query the cable or device.
When people were farting around with the “one cable to rule them all” a decade or so ago it seemed like a great approach at the time. I don’t remember anybody predicting this downside.
> He purchased a TB monitor to plug into a device that doesn't support TB and says "it shouldn't be this hard".
For what it's worth, it shouldn't be hard from a purely technical point of view to create a DisplayPort-to-TB adapter - all that should be needed is a Thunderbolt chip with a DP connector for input and a TB connector for the output.
The problem is Intel has had exclusive control over TB chips [1] and never released datasheets or made the chips otherwise widely available if you did not order a ridiculous MOQ and signed on for an expensive NDA and got their blessing to implement something like this.
Maybe we will see something like this in the next years, now that the TB spec is pretty much an open standard - eventually some third party will finally be able to develop a TB chipset.
TB & USB 4 (which are the same these days) carries video as DisplayPort by default so a Tb-DisplayPort cable is a relatively simple device and is widely available.
Not the author, but in response to the many variations of "why would you do this?", the answer seems simple: If you do most of your computing on a Mac, this is one of the few available monitors that has highly compatible resolution and behavior, and if you have a PC for gaming as well, not everyone has the space or desire to maintain a completely separate monitor expressly for the purpose of PC gaming.
Yeah, indeed. Not rocket science. I use a Mac all day for work and productivity. I play games sometimes on a PC. And as it pertains to games, I personally care way more about resolution and image quality than I care about frame rates exceeding 60hz, which is why I am super grateful to have this display and a beefy GPU that can easily drive it at native resolution at 60hz
Last I checked you can plug any monitor into a Mac, why would anyone need this one outside of further embellishing their Apple ecosystem of products? I don't buy an iPhone and get mad that it doesn't work with Android Auto.
Flip it. If I buy a monitor why can't I plug it into any computer I want? Same thing no?
They all follow interoperability standards that have been around decades and that customers have come to expect as normal. Vendor lockin here isn't an "innovation" customers want
It's only vendor lock-in if you see this as 'yet another monitor', which it is not. Yes, it is made of mostly the same technologies, but it's neither marketed as nor specified for PC-use.
The thing is that it's not about what you think the product should be, because the product won't morph itself into your desire. Just because there are 100 variations of the same monitor out there are all behave nearly the same (And might as well be condensed into 1 version with 2 bezel color options) doesn't mean that that is all there is to it.
The ECU in your car uses the same SoC as the ECU in a truck. But that doesn't make your car a truck, or a truck your car. Just because there are technical similarities doesn't mean that therefore the products must be the same. If a manufacturer decides to focus on some form or function and simply not make other forms or other functions, that simply means that what you wanted and what the product is do not match, and therefore you should either not buy the product, or adjust your wishes. Since the latter isn't really required, not buying the product, but buying a different product instead seems to make the most sense to me.
Pretend there is meaningful market segmentation here all you want. At the end of the day all one has to do is plug in the DP cable and it will work as a regular monitor, and this probably bypasses some of the input lag of the built in OS.
It depends on what you define as 'work'. A single still frame could be consider working, and other people might be more inclined to call 6K and 60fps to be 'working'.
Trying to dilute what a thing actually is makes no sense, especially if you're essentially then trying to boil it down to the $100 category of computer monitors for home web browsing usage.
Technically a display panel, row and column drivers, a tcon and an interface buffer is "a monitor" too. So is a CRT. And a DLP screen. But they are not the same thing and are not useful in the same scenarios.
Not sure what you're talking about. From the article I got that the monitor works without the extra features like audio and camera with a standard DP cable with USB-C connector, which is good enough for someone shopping for just a monitor.
> Trying to dilute what a thing actually is makes no sense, especially if you're essentially then trying to boil it down to the $100 category of computer monitors for home web browsing usage.
Are you saying that this is a super duper monitor that no casual should use, or that this is an all-in-one PC?
>The ECU in your car uses the same SoC as the ECU in a truck. But that doesn't make your car a truck, or a truck your car. Just because there are technical similarities doesn't mean that therefore the products must be the same.
This is a monitor and I want it to work as a MONITOR where is the rocket science here ?
I don't think I could see someone defending Linux exclusive monitors, then why are some people defending apple's inability to make a monitor this expensive behave as such ?
You seem to be missing the point entirely here. An SDI monitor is also a monitor, and monitor speakers are also called monitors. Semantics and market segments matter. Pretending that market placement has no effect on what a product is good for is just silly.
To give perhaps are more relatable example: if you want an ultra-wide curved monitor, you'll probably not get a good experience if you buy any Apple monitor, because those are neither ultra-wide nor are they curved. Yes, monitors are monitors, but there are plenty of differentiating properties that make some options a really bad fit for you, and some other options a really good fit for you.
Trying to make yourself the center of the universe and complaining that 'they should have made what I wanted' neither helps you nor does it help interaction with other people. Pick the product that you want instead.
You can't buy any 5k / 27" displays other than this Studio Display and the almost as expensive LG Ultrafine.
It is a pretty unique display. Too expensive for my taste but I wish there were other 5k / 27" options. And no, 4k on a 27" display isn't even close, primarily because you'd give up a lot of screen real estate with macOS' recommended 2x scaling.
It's also the only monitor I know of that the settings are seamlessly controlled via the computer rather than a joystick and clunky menus. For some reason no OS will control the monitor brightness by default even though displayport and hdmi support it
I'm surprised his PC doesn't have a Thunderbolt connector. At least with all the laptops I've worked with recently they have at least 1 thunderbolt 3 connector, maybe its not as common on desktops.
It's been a "premium" feature on gaming PC motherboards - i.e. you need to pay extra for it and it's pretty rare. Laptops have it because Intel's SOCs (e.g. Tiger Lake) have it built-in. But on a PC motherboard they'd need to add a Maple Ridge chip from Intel separately for the support.
It's weird that it is premium. Intel should put it and 2.5gbps ethernet in some kind of mandatory part, either on the CPU or in the main chipset. A NUC has these features and a NUC is far from premium. It sucks that you need a weird add-in card that has a lot of flaws to get TB3 on Asus.
I appreciated this post because I bought an Apple Studio Display to replace my LG 5K UltraFine that I should get in a few weeks (VESA option took longer to ship) and I was curious how much easier/harder it would be when using Windows. I'm primarily a Mac user but like the author, would like to use my external monitor with all of my devices if possible.
I built an AMD gaming rig last year with a motherboard with a TB3 port built-in (one of the few AMD options to support this) but because of how it is configured (there is only one DP-in port on the motherboard and you need two of them over DP 1.2 to get a 5K signal), the LG 5K only outputs at 4K. All things considered, that was a fine trade-off.
But it looks like the new display is DP 1.4 (at least in theory), meaning I can at the very least use the adaptor cable to just get 5K signal, even if speakers and webcam don't work.
I wish all of this were easier and that Thunderbolt were easier, because it's such a great technology and it is frustrating we have so few options.
I actually did the exact same thing. Went with the ProArt B550 and didn’t consider that the LG 5k requires two video connections to the graphics card. This[0] eventually helped me realize my mistake. Currently running in 4k and it’s fine. At least camera, speakers, and hub work.
Good to know even the ProArt B550 has the same issue (I have the B550 Vision D-P) because I was half-considering swapping for the ProArt B550 (which would ruin the white aesthetic I'm going for, but fine), but if it doesn’t have two DP inputs, that’s a no go. It’s possible the DP 1.4 on the Studio Display would be enough to provide bandwidth on the TB4 connector, but I'll have to wait for others to try it first in the hackintosh forums or elsewhere.
A quick look through Newegg shows 4 AMD AM4 motherboards (B550 and X570) with Thunderbolt (2 TB3, 2 TB4). None have two DP inputs. I didn't see any Intel (LG1200) with two inputs either.
Would you use a Maple Ridge (TB4) card instead of Titan Ridge?
I am impressed with Apple's ability to seamlessly handle all of these scenarios. Their product integration really does create a great experience within their ecosystem. I didn't expect my setup to work perfectly but I'm happy it gets most of the way there. I'm not pulling the trigger on Apple Studio Display but I'll be watching progress to see if it works.
My use case is an outlier, I guess: I'm in the Apple ecosystem for all personal stuff but use a Dell Latitude for work (TB3, GPU chokes on 5k but technically works) and have a beefy Windows desktop for gaming and personal development work in WSL. I love the idea of just plugging a single cable into whatever system I'm using at that moment.
In the same way Apple has started to listen to users regarding their computer feature set they need to do the same for monitors, especially if they want to charge a premium. They make it hard to justify for anyone that uses a Mac + anything, which is honestly probably most people in the market for a $1,600 monitor. I have Mac, PC and gaming consoles at my desk. Do I buy a separate $1,600 monitor for my Mac and another monitor for everything else? Even if you take money out of the equation there are space considerations.
So here is what I think Apple should add if they ever want to get serious:
1. An HDMI 2.1 port.
2. Basic Windows and Linux support
3. AppleTV built in. If you are going to add an a14 you might as well use it for something (I have this fantasy that they will unveil a 24 inch consumer targeted monitor introducing this feature). You then add the ability to use this as a nice small tv or computer monitor, but they will probably never do it.
4. For $1,600 it should really be 120hz or higher, but I imagine if they do introduce this the Pro Display XDR will get it first.
1. Sure, it would be nice. But I don't think it's a big omission.
2. You can connect it, the author of the article updated it with the following information:
"If you just want to use the display and don’t care about the speakers, microphone, or USB-C ports, then by far the simplest solution is to just plug a high-bandwidth DisplayPort cable with a USB-C connector or adapter from your GPU to the Studio Display’s Thunderbolt port. No Thunderbolt cable is actually needed, as the display will happily handshake DisplayPort 1.4 alt mode when connected with a high-bandwidth cable."
So, number two is solveD?
3. I think this is a kind of cool idea, but totally unnecessary. It's a 'studio display', I like that it's focused on being one specific thing.
4.I'm 99% sure that 120hz is not possible. Another commenter posted this math:
"Does it use Display Stream Compression or something? Raw 5120x1440 x 240 fps x 8 bits x 3 colors = 39.55 Gbits/sec. DP1.4 has a maximum data rate of 25.92 Gbits/sec. DP2.0 on the other hand does 77.37 Gbits/sec.”
Also, the only other widely available 27" 5k monitor is the LG ultrafine, which is just a few hundred dollars cheaper. With the studio display, you get much better product design, a newer panel, really good speakers, a really good webcam, and better connectivity.
In CAD, the studio display is $1999, the ultrafine 5k is 1749$. If you don't think this is a 'serious' response to people who have been asking for a '5k imac without the imac' display, I don't know what to tell you.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadThe problems are…
- Very, very few Nvidia or ATI cards have USB-C video out. They seemed to stop caring when VR failed to take off a couple years ago.
- So you're left using DisplayPort-to-USBC — but have to find a high-bandwidth DP 1.4 cable. Many of these are incorrectly marked or advertised.
- HDMI to DisplayPort/USB-C is a whole other game I won't cover here.
- even with the DisplayPort working, you cannot control screen brightness or get audio without a USB signal
- which can be solved with some very esoteric Wacom and Belkin VR devices
- but which appear to not run a fast enough USB spec to be useful with the new Studio Display due to all its A13-driven weirdness
- also some setups may require a USB signal to even turn on? I'm a little unclear on this mark.
I've been through several of these hoops trying to get the earlier, TB-only LG 5k working with anything beyond a MacBook, so I've been watching these discussions with interest.
And we also only have a few high budget/tier games that are made for VR (arguably, only HL Alyx)
The Quest isn't really relevant here, and it's also extremely heavily subsidized.
It is by no means mainstream.
This is the standard that was implemented into cards for a couple years in the hopes it would result in headsets that connected to a computer with single cable. Compatible headsets never materialized so the port disappeared
- Yes, plenty of people including USB-C advocates like Benson Leung really wish NVIDIA didn't drop it for the 30-series. Most new laptops have an appropriate port, however, and probably at least a quarter of new motherboards.
- A low bandwidth cable should work; if link training appropriately trains an HBR2 link then it should light up at 4k60 (or 5k60 if DSC is supported.) The more likely issue is that his original cable was one of the majority of USB-C -> DisplayPort cables that is unidirectional in the wrong direction. They only advertise USB-C -> DP, after all.
- The internal webcam and speakers are connected to the USB 2.0 bus; you can verify this in System Profiler on a Mac when connected via Thunderbolt. Whatever is going wrong with the Wacom link is not because USB 2.0 doesn't have enough bandwidth.
You mean the PC ecosystem. Microsoft did not design the specs for USB, TB and DisplayPort.
Still, I'd much rather have this ecosystem "mess" that's more or less open and has healthy competition with a variety of solid options, rather than an ecosystem where stuff mostly just works but is 100% proprietary and locks you into a walled garden designed for rent seeking, planned obsolescence and e-waste generation (i.e. Apple that sells monitors with non user removable power cables attached to them).
iPads are now TB devices.
I'll never understand why the display industry went went with 720/1080/4k/5k etc. (And the camera industry with another, but I digress) — but:
4k: ~8.3 megapixels
5k: ~14.7 megapixels
That's a huge difference in resolution.
I don't want to be the Apple apologist here, but ... really?
I'm all for repurposing things, so I don't blame them for attempting something most rational people would not bother. Been there done that, will attempt it again on something different.
But I actually really appreciate this comment. I'm just trying to have a decent monitor for work that I can also play games with sometimes in the evenings and would rather not have two monitors on my desk.
edit: Sounds like it does, but missing the additional features like audio.
And my (limited) understanding is that this is all on-spec; in practice you also have stuff like the power supply could be expected to deliver an off-spec amount like the Nintendo switch chargers and not work, etc etc
None the less, it's Apple. None of this sounds surprising, sadly.
In Apple's defense, the specs are pretty clearly laid out with the ports: https://www.apple.com/studio-display/specs/
But it's resolution is quite high. At this resolution, I think there's only one other monitor, the LG Ultra Fine 5k is which is like only $200 cheaper.
I think for people that care about resolution/pixel density, this monitor has basically zero competition? There's plenty of lower resolution monitors with higher refresh rates.
The LG has its problems. It’s kind of wobbly, cheap feeling, and the USB-C ports can fail over time from strain/use. The extra $200 for the quality and features of the Apple display sounds reasonable to me given that benchmark.
Is it expensive in absolute terms? Yeah. The LG is too. But it’s those two options or step up to the Pro Display at $5k.
$300 cheaper and 8 years old now, so likely can find used examples if you wanted. It's pretty clear that 5k / 218ppi just has no significant market appeal at this point outside of the Apple ecosystem. There were a few other 5k displays, but they've all packed up since (including LG, they don't make that 5k Ultrafine anymore afaict)
Although arguably since the LG comes with a height adjustable stand it's $700 cheaper than the Studio Display 27"
One of the bad qualities of the LG UltraFine was it's stand was not very stable and prone to wobble. I had one.
This is apparently true, and it's baffling. I was able to pick up one of the now-discontinued 5k PC displays a few years ago, and it's fantastic in Linux and Windows with 2x scaling.
All of these are pathetically small numbers compared to the >400ppi we all carry in our pockets, though.
That may be your opinion. I'd say it's downright terrible.
You'll likely see 8k as the next common step up from that (it's already happening with TVs). Who knows, maybe we'll have this same conversation again then because Apple will release a 9k display at that point.
I would not expect any Windows users to chose this display unless they are the few who would make the same quality vs price choice that an Apple customer might.
That's a pretty elitest take that doesn't really hold up to any scrunity at all. Other than the resolution, this is a pretty mediocre quality display. At this price point there are no shortage of displays with much better overall image quality, other than the resolution. You're paying for that 5k in more ways than just the price at checkout. Even within Apple's own ecosystem it's pretty weak. It's bigger than the display on the MacBook Pro you're probably docking to it, obviously, but it also looks way, way worse than the display on that MacBook Pro.
The resolution is the essential feature of this display. And it's an important one due to the way macOS handles scaling. You basically always want to use 2x scaling in macOS. On a 4k / 27" display (which are ubiquitous) that results in an effective screen real estate of 1080p which makes the UI feel too large and cramped.
The banwidth for 4k at 60hz is only now becoming mainstream.
IME even non-techies find 30Hz uncomfortable to use.
Definitely not my thing too, I'm all in for 120Hz, but it does have some niche uses at 30Hz.
That means when I bought my current laptop, still under the 3-year warranty, I would have had to get something worse to get HDMI 2.0 support, since I compared everything available.
Everyone: Yeah, not particularly common, nor do they really add much.
PC gamers specifically (and series/ps5 now too, with those consoles supporting 120hz with compatible tvs and games): Quite popular, and they do significantly add to the gaming experience.
In fast paced games the difference between 4k and 5k is going to be barely noticeable, but the higher framerate will be pretty a pretty obvious improvement (both because of the higher refresh rate, and because the GPU can run the game faster at the lower resolution).
Many people can't perceive that LED flicker either (or before that, fluorescent light flicker), while others can.
I'm a huge fan of the RTINGS monitor reviews, which measure backlight flicker and identify which monitors do and don't have it, because I can notice that flicker and it gives me a headache.
The easiest test: move the mouse cursor in a circle repeatedly. The trail at 60hz will complete the full circle, while it will be barely visible at 120/144hz.
I think even if you only have a 60hz monitor it'll compare 60 vs 30, you should be able to see a difference between them.
I have mine at 180hz and it's extremely easy to track horizontally moving objects at 180hz, and it's almost impossible to see anything in the 30hz content.
Electronic ink has terrible refresh rates, but is great for reading.
Apple's displays can run at 24FPS, which is terrible for gaming, but perfect for editing 24FPS films and shows.
I spend most of my workday either writing code or editing video, for which this less-expensive (relative to Pro Display XDR) model is out-of-this-world PERFECT.
The sound is amazing and would be perfect if paired with a subwoofer. And despite terrible reviews, the built-in camera is just fine for video calls. I think a lot of people don't realize that people only look good on their own screen in video calls, because they are seeing their own video before it gets massively compressed to look just as bad as everyone else.
I was talking about using it with a PC, and I stand by what I said for that. >60hz is way too good.
For sim games the difference would still be noticeable and welcome, yet not dramatic as racing.
Bottomline: try 120Hz if you can.
You should be able to send audio over DisplayPort too, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple doesn't support that.
It's not a great experience having to plug multiple USB-C devices into my machine, especially in a WfH world. I'm going to end up damaging a laptop shuffling things around at some point.
When you're working with 4K images and video, that’s enough space for video editing tools on the side and timelines at the bottom, all while viewing "UltraHD" in its full, unscaled beauty.
Until you've experienced what it's like to use a 5K (or even 6K, which will really spoil you), it's hard to appreciate why 4K is insufficient for many professionals.
Regardless multi-monitor setups exist and are well supported, so it's not hard to get both a 4k preview at 1:1 scaling and have plenty of room for controls by just running 2 displays.
It'd be nice to have it all - 5k, >60hz, and a decent HDR support. Even just 90hz would be a good improvement, but 120hz gets you zero pulldown for 24fps video! But alas that display doesn't exist. This display doesn't seem to really strike a good balance of what's achievable, it feels like a stop gap placeholder for the now canceled 27" iMac
If you're working in a professional video studio, chances are you're probably going to encounter 24fps video. So yeah, still matters beyond gaming.
It is just 60Hz, so you might not want to use it for gaming, though there are higher refresh TVs out there these days. Of course you have to dig through the marketing fluff to see if they are a true 120Hz panel or not.
But yes when I have the option I tend to choose the smaller UI settings too.
Reading VSCode off this monitor feels like reading analog text on paper. It's amazing for eye strain. Really doesn't feel like you're staring at a screen all day.
I'm starting to wonder if vector formats and layout engines need pixel hinting capabilities, like font formats already do. As far as I'm aware browser engines already have to hack in these sorts of layout tweaks to avoid, say, float-based layouts collapsing into multiple lines at odd zoom percentages. Apple's insistence on integer scaling ratios is noble, but it also renders the display part of their hardware ecosystem an island.
[1] https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1504473080348884992
A direct reply to that tweet shows the Apple documentation stating that they consider it non removable by the end user
https://twitter.com/aaron_bukovsky/status/150500134118950502...
It required significant force to disconnect it first time but then it goes out and in as expected.
This seems more like a moral panic than a true compromise of the functionality of the monitor.
Also, would that monitor you linked be good for office use?
If you're looking for specifics, I recommend: https://www.rtings.com/
The one really nice thing about this monitor is the built in KVM switch. That's so bloody useful I ignored a lot of other things.
[1]: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27MD5KA-B-5k-uhd-led-monit...
When it was released, the 27MD5KB wouldn’t boot reliably as the Mac Mini’s only monitor on whatever macOS was out at the time, so I couldn’t consider it a valid display for a Mac. No doubt it’s fine for PCs though.
Sounds like it shipped with some last-minute firmware bug that degraded the image quality way below what it's capable of. Should be fixed by a firmware (iOS?) update.
An apple fanboy would, apparently.
But in general, this monitor, though it's impressive, does not have the features needed for gaming.
The author's use case for this monitor doesn't make any sense at all.
I have reached the point where even the desktop feels sluggish at anything under 120hz.
Saying 120Hz feels sluggish is also confounded since the mouse / keyboard have 8ms lag unless you use a gaming one or manually change the polling rate, and games and desktop implementations all have variable input lag up to 100ms or some crazy number. Whether your desktop has vsync is another variable.
None of this of course changes the fact that input lag on a monitor should be zero aside from the pixel transition period.
That being the case, I'd much rather trade away frames in exchange for improved image quality, as I'm doing in this case.
I even prefer using a high refresh-rate screen for office and coding use. I notice it a lot by dragging / moving stuff and scrolling.
I don't get these articles or why you'd even buy one of these monitors for this case, even though I own one. I'd grab a random 144Hz 4k jobby instead. But I'm not a fan of punching myself in the balls over and over again for the hell of it.
So far with this monitor I've read pages of whining from people who shouldn't have bought it or didn't buy it. Everyone who should have bought it and did buy it seems quite happy. I know I am!
When all was said and done, the monitor I found turned out to have similar specs to the Thunderbolt display. Color reproduction, pixel response rates. Basically the same panel and driver. It was $100 cheaper than the Thunderbolt display, at the outside. But made of plastic. So I said fuck it, $100 for an aluminum exterior isn't that crazy, and I can pick it up today instead of dealing with UPS.
I just unplugged that monitor a couple months ago, and I keep trying to figure out if I can squeeze it back on my desk by rearranging some things.
So it was either get the big brother of my primary display (larger but lower ppi), or wait. Last fall they bumped that monitor to... I want to say better speakers and a uniform bezel (old model was fat at the bottom).
I really miss the speakers in the Thunderbolt display. Holy hell are people shipping bad speakers in some otherwise excellent monitors. I'm back to using external ones and dealing with the EM interference.
Driving it on a modern device with anything other than a powered active adapter (near $100 until recently apparently) just doesn't work. I went through a lot of adapters before I stumbled on a USB-C to Dual Link DVI adapter that actually does the job.
I've tried and tried but hooking it to my Xbox has proven basically impossible.
The hdmi ports only do 1080p and despite having a newer Radeon card with a DVI port I haven't been able to get that to work either (It must not be a dual link port?)
This is a 3007WFPT - it has for input Dual-Link DVI, VGA, component, S-Video (should give you an idea of the age) and Composite.
https://jdon.at/OwFuAV - image of the ports
I have an old 30 inch HP that I'm reluctant to replace, but dual link dvi isn't available on new graphics cards. And it'd be nice to hook up my mbp.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QKM856C/
(1) https://github.com/emoacht/Monitorian
It might be similar to the Apple Developer Transition Kit from two years ago, which was an A12 with extra GPU power. But until someone can get software actually running on it, will be hard to know.
The ability to run something and have it be preformant are two completely different things.
MacBook runs a little slow but it’s more than enough for word processing and web browsing.
The same boy way to power a display of that resolution was over a dual link DVI connection which no PC consumer graphics card supported.
I ended up having to purchase an outrageously expensive CAD optimized card but the screen estate was absolutely worth it.
Plus I kept the display for a decade (and migrated to macs in 2006ish) only to replace it with a 27” retina iMac in 2015
Commenters complain that it's 60 Hz but I don't know of an external interconnect that could drive that many pixels any faster.
HN is weird sometimes.
(I don't plan to buy this monitor either, but not for the reasons above. The LG 5K monitors are perfectly adequate for my needs. And like the post's author I was sorry to see target display go).
I have a Mac. I also have a work-issued PC. I have both machines connected to the same displays, and switch between them.
DisplayPort isn't some obsolete technology here. I understand why this display doesn't have HDMI, or DVI, or VGA, or Composite, or S-Video, etc. But DisplayPort would be nice.
Type C is one of the standard interfaces for the Displayport standard, and Displayport is the standard video transport on a thunderbolt cable.
Yes, it's confusing. But it's also a good thing as you can carry lots of stuff over the same cable and connector. A USB-C type cable and connector can carry USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, HDMI, even analogue audio.
Before USB-C, Thunderbolt was using mini-DisplaPort connector and cables.
Everything on the product page suggests it was only designed for Mac: https://www.apple.com/studio-display/
That it happens to work on a PC at all is, I guess, an unintentional side effect that they'd rather not even acknowledge. You can try it unsupported but it's not their problem...
They've never been good at supporting standards not invented there. Hell, ever tried to use a Magic Mouse with a PC? Everything about it feels completely off. Part of me wonders if subtle incompatibilities, where hardware works 80% of the way, is maybe even part of their deliberate strategy to introduce small headaches to the PC experience to frustrate you into switching.
(Of course OSX has its own share of frustrations too, but nothing like using PC hardware on a Mac or vice versa).
Buy the Apple monitor, be impressed, buy the Studio to go with it.
And while I acknowledge that Apple made a trade off for pixel density, they weren’t forced to make tradeoffs for other features that are common on high end monitors.
So are D-sub connectors and HDMI. Should it have those as well? What about S-Video? Composite?
> they weren’t forced to make tradeoffs for other features that are common on high end monitors
They don't sell any products with DisplayPort connectors, nor do I think they've ever done so (certainly not recently). Selling a product with that connector is a commitment on some level to supporting what people plug into it, and as demonstrated by the OP, PCs are not really supported. It's also more engineering effort, but that's probably marginal.
This is a standard connector with cheap cables that adapt it to legacy devices using the DP alternate mode of USB-C. Apple are known for getting rid of legacy connectors. USB-C is a superior technology, it's only a matter of time before it's used for everything, and I appreciate Apple's efforts to hasten that day.
I might just get rid of the monitor. I'm not convinced I loved it for my workflow anyway compared to 2 monitors where I can switch my Mac workspaces independently
Every ginormous “4k2k” or whatever display is just that: ginormous, so the actual pixel density is much lower, and is comparable to a typical (smaller, 1440p, etc) display.
I suspect this is because the fabrication of the LCDs is tuned to a particular pixel size, so if a company wants to make a 4K monitor, they scale existing LCD production up to a large enough size that they can get it 2160 pixels tall (by however wide), and that’s the size of the display. They can advertise having both a large display (which people like) and 4K (which people like), so there’s no downside to the manufacturers.
But if you want actual high pixel density, 200+PPI, your options are basically an Apple monitor (LG’s apple-sold display notwithstanding), or a smartphone.
(I’d love to be proven wrong on this! My holy grail monitor is 200+ppi, 120+Hz, large (27”+), and ideally ultrawide, but alas, such a thing doesn’t exist.)
edit: in case anyone knows, I see this monitor "requires two DisplayPorts" for full 8k. Does anyone know if I can plug two display ports into a docking station, and one cord out of the docking station into my 14" m1 mbp? Ideally this would also charge the mbp. Is this possible? If I were to buy such an expensive monitor, I really only want one cord.
That said, the easiest way to get this working is probably to get one of the TB->PCIe expander chassis and plug in an external GPU and let it drive the display.
Desktop PC's/workstations still have their place, and driving multiple high resolution monitors is one of them.
PS: Been drooling over that monitor for the past couple years as an upgrade to my dell 5K's I picked up when apple released their first standalone 5k monitor and more than a few high end mac users apparently ebay'ed their dell monitors to get the apple version. Their loss, my gain... :) Hey apple, why don't you release a 8K monitor? Lol.
(PS: There are a couple other manufactures putting that panel in monitors (viewsonic for one), so its not just dell, and a bunch of 8K tv's if you want higher resolution).
There are plenty of 13" 1440p laptop panels being made. You just have to mate 4 of them together to make a 26" 5K display and yet this isn't done. Hell, I'd just settle for someone selling 13/15" 1440p/4K panels in a cheap, thin bezel enclosure with a VESA mount on the back for $250 - $400 a pop and I could make my own 5K/6K display for cheaper than what they're selling for.
Obviously it’d be amazing if what you said is true, because both retina and HRR are very nice to have
For most of what developers and even graphic designers do, 120 MHz refresh rates aren't required. People who need high refresh rates on large screens already know that and are prepared to spend the money necessary.
> One problem with high pixel density is that you either have to scale everything up
The bad news is, as a Windows user, very few apps support scaling (aka DPI awareness).
For larger displays, ex: 49" with 5120x1440, you'll take full advantage of every pixel without scaling.
That is not true in my experience. Also, for those who don't support it (which by default look blurry) you can enable it in compatibility options and it will generally work well.
Completely false. I've forgotten the last time I encountered an app that wasn't super ancient and didn't support fractional scaling on Windows 10/11. Sometime in 2017 I think.
Until they get so blurry that reading glasses are obligatory. And then, suddenly, everything is sharp again and that hi-dpi is nice :)
Which yes, means that a hypothetical 6k120 could be done at the same compression level as current 6k60 by using both HBR2 streams that a Thunderbolt 4 host port is required to support.
I have the M1 Max 14”, and also bought the XDR around a month ago for the extra 6k screen real estate. One thing I noticed is that I can’t figure out what pixel depth it’s running at on my M1 (intel shows 30 bit framebuffer in System Report, M1 shows nothing). SwitchResX software is reporting that it’s running in “Millions of Colors” (8 bit), but I’m not sure if that’s true. The same setup is reporting Billions of Colors on an intel MacBook.
It overall seems to be there’s things missing for the XDR <-> M1 interactions :S
To be clear, Display Stream Compression is different from Chroma Subsampling[2], which the parent referenced.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#1.4
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
https://www.cablematters.com/blog/DisplayPort/what-is-displa...
There's also a term for audio, but I forgot the exact terminology.
Things like this is applying lossy compression carefully with lab test on real humans to claim that under an A/B test an average human would not discern the difference.
But it still doesn't mean it should not be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, it is objectively inferior (and subjectively might not matters.) On top of my head one thing I'd question is generation loss (but if I am serious in the market of this kind of display I should study more carefully what their claim really is.)
But this is enough a technical detail for anyone to say "they only achieve XxY resolution at Z FPS with DSC" because the theoretical bandwidth isn't there and make do with lossy compression.
Displayport with DSC (Display Stream Compression) should be able to drive it faster than 60.
>I ordered one the minute that they hit the store in the hope I would receive what I thought I had purchased in 2014
One would think that he'd think twice before dropping that much money on a peripheral. Or at least do some research first.
That satirical video where the guy wishes Apple made books so he'd know what to think wasn't far off the mark.
I see why they do it: I bought an apple watch 0 figuring I'd get an idea of what the fuss was about and then buy v3 when they got it figured out. Instead, within the first week, I turned around on my way to work because I hadn't put my watch on.
OTOH I got an M1 ipad pro when it launched and ended up returning it and getting an air which was just as good for my needs. As it happens the pro had some hardware bugs anyway but if I'd liked it I would have just asked them to swap it.
When people were farting around with the “one cable to rule them all” a decade or so ago it seemed like a great approach at the time. I don’t remember anybody predicting this downside.
For what it's worth, it shouldn't be hard from a purely technical point of view to create a DisplayPort-to-TB adapter - all that should be needed is a Thunderbolt chip with a DP connector for input and a TB connector for the output.
The problem is Intel has had exclusive control over TB chips [1] and never released datasheets or made the chips otherwise widely available if you did not order a ridiculous MOQ and signed on for an expensive NDA and got their blessing to implement something like this.
Maybe we will see something like this in the next years, now that the TB spec is pretty much an open standard - eventually some third party will finally be able to develop a TB chipset.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-motherboard-asrock-fir...
They all follow interoperability standards that have been around decades and that customers have come to expect as normal. Vendor lockin here isn't an "innovation" customers want
The thing is that it's not about what you think the product should be, because the product won't morph itself into your desire. Just because there are 100 variations of the same monitor out there are all behave nearly the same (And might as well be condensed into 1 version with 2 bezel color options) doesn't mean that that is all there is to it.
The ECU in your car uses the same SoC as the ECU in a truck. But that doesn't make your car a truck, or a truck your car. Just because there are technical similarities doesn't mean that therefore the products must be the same. If a manufacturer decides to focus on some form or function and simply not make other forms or other functions, that simply means that what you wanted and what the product is do not match, and therefore you should either not buy the product, or adjust your wishes. Since the latter isn't really required, not buying the product, but buying a different product instead seems to make the most sense to me.
Trying to dilute what a thing actually is makes no sense, especially if you're essentially then trying to boil it down to the $100 category of computer monitors for home web browsing usage.
Technically a display panel, row and column drivers, a tcon and an interface buffer is "a monitor" too. So is a CRT. And a DLP screen. But they are not the same thing and are not useful in the same scenarios.
> Trying to dilute what a thing actually is makes no sense, especially if you're essentially then trying to boil it down to the $100 category of computer monitors for home web browsing usage.
Are you saying that this is a super duper monitor that no casual should use, or that this is an all-in-one PC?
This is a monitor and I want it to work as a MONITOR where is the rocket science here ? I don't think I could see someone defending Linux exclusive monitors, then why are some people defending apple's inability to make a monitor this expensive behave as such ?
Trying to make yourself the center of the universe and complaining that 'they should have made what I wanted' neither helps you nor does it help interaction with other people. Pick the product that you want instead.
It is a pretty unique display. Too expensive for my taste but I wish there were other 5k / 27" options. And no, 4k on a 27" display isn't even close, primarily because you'd give up a lot of screen real estate with macOS' recommended 2x scaling.
I built an AMD gaming rig last year with a motherboard with a TB3 port built-in (one of the few AMD options to support this) but because of how it is configured (there is only one DP-in port on the motherboard and you need two of them over DP 1.2 to get a 5K signal), the LG 5K only outputs at 4K. All things considered, that was a fine trade-off.
But it looks like the new display is DP 1.4 (at least in theory), meaning I can at the very least use the adaptor cable to just get 5K signal, even if speakers and webcam don't work.
I wish all of this were easier and that Thunderbolt were easier, because it's such a great technology and it is frustrating we have so few options.
0: http://johnwilger.com/2019/01/27/lg-utlrafine-on-linux-gnome...
Would you use a Maple Ridge (TB4) card instead of Titan Ridge?
I am impressed with Apple's ability to seamlessly handle all of these scenarios. Their product integration really does create a great experience within their ecosystem. I didn't expect my setup to work perfectly but I'm happy it gets most of the way there. I'm not pulling the trigger on Apple Studio Display but I'll be watching progress to see if it works.
My use case is an outlier, I guess: I'm in the Apple ecosystem for all personal stuff but use a Dell Latitude for work (TB3, GPU chokes on 5k but technically works) and have a beefy Windows desktop for gaming and personal development work in WSL. I love the idea of just plugging a single cable into whatever system I'm using at that moment.
I use a DisplayPort and USB KVM switch to comfortably switch between my gaming PC and Mac mini.
Both PC gaming and Mac work in 144Hz, PC also with G-SYNC.
So here is what I think Apple should add if they ever want to get serious:
1. An HDMI 2.1 port.
2. Basic Windows and Linux support
3. AppleTV built in. If you are going to add an a14 you might as well use it for something (I have this fantasy that they will unveil a 24 inch consumer targeted monitor introducing this feature). You then add the ability to use this as a nice small tv or computer monitor, but they will probably never do it.
4. For $1,600 it should really be 120hz or higher, but I imagine if they do introduce this the Pro Display XDR will get it first.
"If you just want to use the display and don’t care about the speakers, microphone, or USB-C ports, then by far the simplest solution is to just plug a high-bandwidth DisplayPort cable with a USB-C connector or adapter from your GPU to the Studio Display’s Thunderbolt port. No Thunderbolt cable is actually needed, as the display will happily handshake DisplayPort 1.4 alt mode when connected with a high-bandwidth cable."
So, number two is solveD?
3. I think this is a kind of cool idea, but totally unnecessary. It's a 'studio display', I like that it's focused on being one specific thing.
4.I'm 99% sure that 120hz is not possible. Another commenter posted this math:
"Does it use Display Stream Compression or something? Raw 5120x1440 x 240 fps x 8 bits x 3 colors = 39.55 Gbits/sec. DP1.4 has a maximum data rate of 25.92 Gbits/sec. DP2.0 on the other hand does 77.37 Gbits/sec.”
Also, the only other widely available 27" 5k monitor is the LG ultrafine, which is just a few hundred dollars cheaper. With the studio display, you get much better product design, a newer panel, really good speakers, a really good webcam, and better connectivity.
In CAD, the studio display is $1999, the ultrafine 5k is 1749$. If you don't think this is a 'serious' response to people who have been asking for a '5k imac without the imac' display, I don't know what to tell you.