Sometimes resetting the monitor’s settings would dispel it temporarily, sometimes not, and I had grown tired of fighting it all day. I’ve been in the market for a new monitor because my Dell monitor had developed an intermittent shadow across the display. It’s challenging to find a reasonably priced display that fits the bill, especially since 5K monitors never took off (see “ What Happened to 5K Displays?,” 16 November 2018).ĭuring a recent Black Friday sale, Amazon reduced prices on LG monitors, which caught my attention because LG makes the panels Apple uses in iMacs. Unfortunately, there’s no way to press a Retina iMac into service as an external display-Target Display Mode works only with a small subset of pre-Retina iMacs. If you use a 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display like many of us here at TidBITS, it’s easy to be spoiled by its pristine image quality. DisplayPort (or Mini DisplayPort) input for older Macs and USB-C video for newer ones.Reasonably high pixel density for crisp text.
Some have only HDMI ports (that’s a TV, not a monitor), and HDMI is chock full of gotchas: you could buy a 1440p monitor and, thanks to weird HDMI limitations, be stuck at a blurry 1080p resolution. Many displays still feature hoary VGA ports that first appeared in 1987. Even if you find a sharp enough monitor, you may have trouble connecting it to your Mac. The market is full of 27-inch and larger screens that support only 1080p resolution and a pixel density of around 100 pixels per inch, about half of any Retina display you’re used to. Alas, those monitors are costly and, in my opinion, underwhelming apart from their pixel density.īuying a monitor is like navigating a minefield. Instead, Apple endorses the $700 24-inch LG UltraFine 4K Display and the $1300 27-inch LG UltraFine 5K Display by virtue of selling them-and them alone-in the online Apple store. Despite a long history of producing quality screens like the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display, Apple no longer makes monitors other than the insanely priced $5000 Pro XDR Display. If you’re used to the coherence of the Apple cocoon, the PC monitor market is a strange and frightening place. LG 27UK850-W: An Acceptable 27-inch Display for the Mac #1586: Apple Q4 2021 financial results, Hide My Email tutorial, Windows on M1 Macs, m圜harge battery, Insta360 GO 2 action cam.
#1590: Demystifying USB-C cables, Apple sues spyware firm, Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking, printer driver quirks, support TidBITS!.