So they can make the font crazy big and still have room to read everything.
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Anyone think the 27 inch is too big?
- Thread starter mountain_feeling
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I thought this was going to be an iMac thread. I have an 11 inch IPP and a regular XS but you can pry the 27 inch iMac from my cold dead hands!
You must be young. Someday, you won't be and then you'll understand how funny that question is.
Yes, really.
Spoiler alert: It makes a difference.
Not too young. I gave you exact specs, so not sure what your angle is as I’ve proven to you both screens are identical.
Plot twist: bigger does NOT mean better.
It does in this case...the 21.5” is nice and compact, but working on it day in and day out would drive me (47) nuts. As someone else stated, you’ll have to pry my 27” iMac from my cold, dead hands.
Sure, but when the quality between two screens are identical, then size and screen real estate becomes subjective at that point. The 27” is a better fit for me too. If more screen space for content is needed or easier to work with, then going for the larger display makes absolute sense.
But at the end of the day, screen quality between the two are still identical. Readability and pixel density are identical. You can’t argue with specs.
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But with a 27 you can chose "larger text" and have extra real estate compared to a 21.5.
And from your own personal anecdote, you have proven what yourself? That you "prefer" using the 27" display, and nothing more.
To argue based solely on screen size itself as the deciding factor on quality is a false conclusion in itself.
Absolutely! One may certainly do that. That doesn't change the pixel density, color gamut, and brightness of the display though.
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Not sure why you're so salty about @Icaras' comments. They seem perfectly reasonable and in the context he's presenting them, I think he's correct. He's saying, all things being equal, they're the same resolution and will present text at the exact same sizes. Sure, you can blow up the text size on a 27" monitor, but you can also do that on a 21" monitor too.
If you don't need the extra real estate, a 21" iMac monitor should be just as good as a 27" iMac monitor regardless of your good your eyesight is.
Thanks. Yes that's what I meant.
The only thing is that the resolutions are different in that 27" is 5K and 21.5" is 4K. But adding that extra 1K in pixels in an the extra 5.5" of screen gives you more screen estate to work with. GUI elements will remain the same size. Anyway, just did a quick image search and this might be helpful:
I like being able to display multiple windows on the 27". I tried doing the same window workflow on a 21.5" iMac and the window sizing wasn't working for me.
Dang, I didn't realize how large of a screen 21.5" actually is, but I just wasn't connecting the dots that the 21" iMac shares the same panel as the discontinued LG 4K. There are plenty of people who prefer the the LG 4K to the LG 5K, but not always because they didn't want a larger screen though. As an external monitor, the LG 5K is a monster to drive and completely wrecks any flexibility you have in trying to pick and choose components (such as an eGPU).
If you're having problems pushing pixels out to an external 5K monitor, downgrading to the 4K might give you better performance if you're willing to trade off real estate for speed.
I much prefer the 21.5", however, the cost of upgrading the specs to a useable machine is more money than I want to spend, so I've learned to use the stock model 27".
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The 27" is just a better machine overall, as others have said, in terms of its specs/upgradability. Not that I would be unhappy with the 21", I think it's also a good design, just not as much bang for the buck.
I've never really felt that any screen was "too big" (maybe if you were to run it at 720x480, haha.) It's all relative to your space and how it's set up, for me it also doubles as my home entertainment, since I don't own a TV, so bigger suits me just fine. I love being able to place multiple windows and focus on one area of the screen for work, there's so much flexibility in how you use it and not really many drawbacks that I can think of.
I've never really felt that any screen was "too big" (maybe if you were to run it at 720x480, haha.) It's all relative to your space and how it's set up, for me it also doubles as my home entertainment, since I don't own a TV, so bigger suits me just fine. I love being able to place multiple windows and focus on one area of the screen for work, there's so much flexibility in how you use it and not really many drawbacks that I can think of.
That's exactly how I feel. Once I upgrade the 21.5 including RAM since I can't do it myself, I end up with a price tag that is about the same as the top 27 (i5 580x).
Nope. Way back this time in 2010 when I bought my 27" iMac..a major upgrade from a 16" Sony Vaio monitor (eh..yeah I was a PC guy for a long time) - I felt, whoa! But it was pretty darn quick getting used to it. Beautiful for editing photography, video. PROBABLY in hindsight, it didnt help my eyesight (who knows, could be age as well) The 27" I'm looking at now is about 6, 7 inches from my face, text is not as clear as it used to be. Distance and close up sight is....ugh!
Might be time to connect the Mac to my old 51" HDTV as a new monitor.
Many of us have 4K external monitors.
Since he was responding to one of my posts, I find that he missed the point completely.
Therefore, I shall use small words in big print:
27" bigger
Bigger = more things on screen
Make objects bigger if I want
For old eyes, very good thing.
21.5" not as big
27" not same as 21.5" on my desk.
Since he think not important, I know he foolish
Since he dismissed my comments as unimportant by making false equivalency remarks that don't apply, I have no problem with calling him out on this nonsense.
My computer. My money. I make my living on it. My buying choice, not his.
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So what?
This sure was a late reply. But it isn’t nonsense at all. I’ve said before it’s purely anyone’s choice of how much screen estate they want and that’s a completely subjective choice. But to say they are not identical screens is nonsense because the specs are well documented.
You can increase the size of the text and GUI on a 21.5” all you want too. You’re just going to have to scroll more on the smaller size. As I’ve repeated throughout this thread, the only difference is how much stuff you can fit on the screen, which again has nothing to do with the quality of the display panel, which are identical in about every way. Text enlarged to 176 font will have the same crispness in both the 21.5” and 27” screens. Period.
I think the 27 inch iMac is the minimum size you can get away with these days. It may seem huge at first, but I can guarantee within a few days of ownership you will be asking the question "is it big enough".
BTW as someone of more senior years and who also owns the 21.5 inch iMac, I can confirm that having the larger screen really does make a big difference.
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Sort of. ...only because I wish it was 32, to be big enough to watch films on, yet still fit on a desk. But since it isn’t 32, if I could have gotten the same maxed out performance in a 21, I would have, and then plugged a larger external display into it, to use as my main monitor, and relegated the iMacs 21” screen as an extra display off to the side. 27” is just big enough that it’s too big to be off to the side of anything. If I could plug one 27” into another 27”, and have them share processing power in a Beowulf config, that would be pretty cool. ...although again I’d probably rather do two smaller 21s just the same.
The winning combo is probably a 16” MBP and a decent projector to blast a 12 foot wide display on your wall, so you can ditch your desk and chair, and just chill on a couch axross the room and and not squint or strain your eyes to see what you’re doing.
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Except that if you go back and read carefully, you'll find that he didn't miss your point. What you said just wasn't clear.
He was questioning how something is more readable just because it's on a 27" monitor with identical resolution to a smaller 21.5" version.
That was what you appeared to be saying, but what you actually meant to say is that you find it easier to read when you have extra real estate and he's not disagreeing with that as he said he prefers the 27" himself.
Because it’s bigger.
You both seem to be unaware that one can select different resolutions. Someday, you will get old and will appreciate the ability to make things larger. 4K on the 21.5 is not the same as 5K on the 27 when I can read things more easily on a 27.
What I’ve been stating is clearly my opinion.
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They literally are the same PPI, i.e. the size of fonts/icons at 'native' resolution (whether plain 4k/5k mode or HiDPI "retina" mode) is the same.
So perhaps you've set the 27" to scale down to "looks like 1920x1080" rather than the default "looks like 2560x1440".
That's fine, but then to get the same relative size you need to set the 21.5" at 1536x864.
At that point, the text/icons/etc are being rendered at pretty much exactly the same relative size (81.59 vs 81.97 PPI, or 75% of 'native' Hi-DPI/Retina resolution). The larger screen may mean that more fits on the screen at a time, for a given PPI. And that possibly makes it easier to read for you, but a given word or sentence should appear almost exactly the same on each display, if their resolutions are set to the same % lower than 'standard'.