Best Monitor for the new 2021 MacBook Pro?

[Amethyst1]

I switched to the LG-34WK95U-W and it is much better.

Exactly. That LG and the MSI PS341WU are the only 34” ultrawides with a sufficiently high resolution and pixel density for macOS’ HiDPI modes and their vastly better font rendering. I wouldn’t ever consider using any lower-resolution ultrawide for use with macOS. Text looks like utter crap on these non-HiDPI monitors sadly.

 

[Jl006p]

Has anyone here caved in and bought the XDR display?

I've also entertained the idea of getting the LG OLED 48"...

 

[Matt2012]

Personally the resolution would be too low for me on that one. I tried a 34" LG @ 3440x1440 and while it was a very nice monitor, after working with retina-level screens for years, the resolution was just too low. It was difficult to discern in my work whether what I was seeing was the low resolution of the screen or a flaw in the image/asset.

I switched to the LG-34WK95U-W and it is much better. I love the widescreen format, and this is afaik, the only wide-screen display in this price range with 5k-ish resolution.

And this would be better for text/video editing (no gaming) than the bigger 38" you think? I'm ok going down in size a bit if it''ll work ok

 

[Matt2012]

Exactly. That LG and the MSI PS341WU are the only 34” ultrawides with a sufficiently high resolution and pixel density for macOS’ HiDPI modes and their vastly better font rendering. I wouldn’t ever consider using any lower-resolution ultrawide for use with macOS. Text looks like utter crap on these non-HiDPI monitors sadly.

Right now I use my M1 macbook with an LG Ultrawide 34WL75C and next to that is my PC that i use most and that has a Samsung 49" G9 Ultrawide monitor.
I get what you're saying about the text on the 34WL75C screen with the Mac as if i open the same webpage on both PC and Mac, the text on the Mac looks bolder (not in a good way) and more blurred.
If i got the LG-34WK95U, I take it the text would be much better yeah?

 

[ascender]

Right now I use my M1 macbook with an LG Ultrawide 34WL75C and next to that is my PC that i use most and that has a Samsung 49" G9 Ultrawide monitor.
I get what you're saying about the text on the 34WL75C screen with the Mac as if i open the same webpage on both PC and Mac, the text on the Mac looks bolder (not in a good way) and more blurred.
If i got the LG-34WK95U, I take it the text would be much better yeah?

Yip. The resolution of the LG-34WK95U is 5K and "retina-like" so text on it looks nice and sharp, as it does on the Macs.

There's very, very few ultrawide monitors with suitably high resolutions at the moment. I'm not entirely sure why, but can only guess its down to the cost of the panels?

 

[Amethyst1]

I'm not entirely sure why, but can only guess its down to the cost of the panels?

And maybe also a lack of demand for high-ppi ultrawides from the PC crowd.

 

[DaveOZ]

Has anyone here caved in and bought the XDR display?

I will be soon.

 

[archi penko]

Having used an ultra wide for the past more than couple of years, my next is not going to be one because:

• The extra width 21:9 is not as good as having the height screen real estate... especially for editing, it widens things out. I don't know how to explain this, but in certain applications, having higher is better than wider.
• Black bars for content started to annoy me. Lots.

On the ultrawide, tne could reduce the window size, but also I'm not a fan of distractions or black bars.

I think 21:9 is for gaming especially, but I reflected and the amount I game vs do work is way much heavier on the work side.

I'm not actively looking for a non-ultrawide, but just want the best monitor out there whatever ratio. So that said, my dream monitor is the LG 32" 4K UltraFine OLED Display Monitor (32EP950) which is $1000 less than the Apple's XDR, but so so so much better, but still a very pretty penny.

If I was to go for a monitor, I would go for this OLED monitor over the XDR. Disney has given them out to all its peeps. It doesn't game, but I have my laptop for that.

 

[zhenya]

Depends on your needs, I suppose. A 4k 32” monitor has considerably lower PPI than the 5k/2k 34” (nearly 3 million fewer pixels) - enough that it won’t really look sharp for detail work. I agree that height is important, and beat against the 16:9 format for a long time - however I also realized that this was primarily a problem when screen resolutions were really low (ie. the old MBA @ >1000px height). Once I have more than about 1200, and certainly more than the 1400 or so I get on an ultrawide that’s plenty. The ability to place several documents side by side and fully readable is more important than additional height. Not to mention that most creative software is optimized for extra width, rather than height. Again, the ability to have a huge InDesign or Premier Pro window plus some supporting reference material on the same screen without fighting multiple monitors is a huge boost to productivity.

Side bars are annoying, but I essentially never watch full screen video on my work computer. I have tv’s that are much better suited to that purpose.

 

[archi penko]

Depends on your needs, I suppose. A 4k 32” monitor has considerably lower PPI than the 5k/2k 34” (nearly 3 million fewer pixels) - enough that it won’t really look sharp for detail work.

A 4K monitor is also a 4K/2k… it’s clever marketing by LG to call the height 2K… and say 5K/2K when it’s short of 5k. But yes the ppi of a 4K 32” screen is lower than a 5K/2k @34”.

I think also the benefits of OLED are better than an IPS monitor, it terms of contrast, Color accuracy and HDR. If it’s just the number of docs side-by-side then yeah it’s not for your use case.

Edited: clarity

 

[zhenya]

A 4K monitor is also a 4K/2k… it’s clever marketing to call the height 2K… but the ppi is lower than a 5K/2k @34”.

I think also the benefits of OLED are better than an IPS monitor, it terms of contrast, Color accuracy and HDR. If it’s just the number of docs side-by-side then yeah it’s not for your use case.

I'm not calling it 5k/2k for marketing, but for clarity that we are not talking about "5k" which is normally 5120x2880.

4k at 32" is 137ppi whereas 5k/2k at 34" is 163ppi. I've had both, and the transition between retina-like and not occurs between those two pixel densities on this size of display.

My work requires retina level resolution to ensure that assets are adequately sharp across a variety of platforms, but absolute color matching is not a major part of my job. If you just need documents side by side, standard ultra-wide at 3440x1440 is fine for most people.

 

[Hammie]

"Best" is subjective based on use case.

I am extremely happy with my dual BenQ SW2700PT monitors even though they are only 2560x1440 resolution. I have considered upgrading to 4K, but at $1600 per monitor for the next level up of the BenQ (SW271C), I cannot justify it.

I do hobby level photo editing and like the color calibration of these monitors. They are the best that I have tried (Never tried an Enzo but heard they are better but like 2 or 3x the price). I do most of my editing in AdobeRGB so it matches the prints best, IMO.

 

[anticipate]

Exactly. That LG and the MSI PS341WU are the only 34” ultrawides with a sufficiently high resolution and pixel density for macOS’ HiDPI modes and their vastly better font rendering. I wouldn’t ever consider using any lower-resolution ultrawide for use with macOS. Text looks like utter crap on these non-HiDPI monitors sadly.

I can't find it anywhere. I would have gotten that instead, but I am happy with the 31" 4K LG I ended up with. It is retina to my eyes, at my distance.

 

[Matt2012]

Well, I ordered the LG-34WK95U-W and hopefully arriving today.

 

[Matt2012]

LG-34WK95U-W arrived and set up. Nice screen but resolution is weird (to what I'm used to) and had to use SwitchResX to give me a custon resolution of 4096x1728.
The native 5120x2160, the text on everything is just way too small and below 4096x1728, everything is to big and can't get enough stuff on screen.
The biggest thing I've noticed is having a curved monitor and flat monitor next to each other (PC and Mac) just does not work as both monitors end up looking weird.
The new monitor looks like its curving back too as I'm so used the curved so its going to take a bit of getting used to.
Need to have x2 curved or x2 flat

 

[HyperliteG4]

I'm not happy with the current choices, so I just bought the BenQ PD2705Q to hold me over. My thought is to wait a little longer and see if Apple comes out with this rumored cheaper display. I'll use this BenQ for now and eventually transition to it being my secondary once I find something better. Ultimately I want a 5K 27" so I can have true retina at the 27" size due to how my desk is arranged. 32" is too big for me at the distance I sit.

 

[Amethyst1]

Ultimately I want a 5K 27"

#4

 

[jstsch]

I'm using two LG UltraFine 5K's with my MacBook Pro M1 Max. They work much better on the M1 than on the older Intel machines. The M1 doesn't even get warm driving both screens.

I quite like the displays, visually. Two nits: they (sometimes?) suffer from ghosting, especially if you leave some high contrast window static for a couple of hours. And they apparently don't identify themselves uniquely, so the OS has trouble knowing which screen goes where (e.g. left display doesn't always stay on the left).

Oh, and I just want two of these screens, but then from Apple, made with 2021 versus 2016 technology (for <1500 USD).

 

[Wxchaser]

LG 32UL950-W 32"

Impeccable thus far.

 

[Fishrrman]

Hyperlite wrote in #116 above:
"My thought is to wait a little longer and see if Apple comes out with this rumored cheaper display."

Better pour yourself a tall drink, with a wine cellar full of bottles to spare.
It could be like, "Waiting for Godot"...

 

[Riffbear]

I bought a Samsung M7 yesterday to try out. Was ok but I’m too used of my iMacs panel, so today I ordered the LG 5k Ultrafine. Looking forward to it. I don’t think anything else will suffice for my needs.

 

[Jl006p]

Has anyone been able to try out universal control yet?

Why can't apple just enable Target Display Mode again?

 

[Riffbear]

LG Ultrafine 5k arrived. I'm blown away!

It's exactly the same as my iMac 27". Sound is good.
Plug and play no fuss! Perfect size for me.

 

[ShiniestofShinies]

Has anybody tried a Dell S2722DZ?
I wonder if the built in webcam would work on an M1 pro?

 

[c0mm0n]

Finally got the Lenovo p40w today (5k2k 40"), really love it, 75hz is really noticeable and the whole screen is just perfect (running it in retina x2 mode).

It's only 65W power supply but enough for daily use, the ports are really nice (the usuals + ethernet) and it even came with a webcam add-on.