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Choosing the right monitor for a mac studio.

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static123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 28, 2016
15
1
Hello I am after some advice and to also give others the heads up so they don't make the same mistake I nearly did.

I am switching from a 2015 i7 16gb iMac 27" ( Its served me very well ) to a Mac Studio, I cant justify the expense of a Mac Studio monitor so like many others I am sure I am looking at alternatives. I am fully aware that its going to be a bit of a down grade compared to my old iMac with its 27" 5k display but I am not a video editor nor a photographer I am a full time composer that uses Logic pro and thats it so in all honesty a 5k display has been a massive over kill for me these last 7 years.

Choosing a new monitor I thought would be easy but due to the way apple scale things and what there special displays are like its made it a little tricky, if you get it wrong the text will be stupidly small and your have to change it with apples built in scaler options this unfortunately will use up machine resources and in turn slow the computer down. From what I have worked out you need to get the PPI right, stay as close as you can to either 110 PPI or 220 PPI, I believe 220 is good for retina and 110 good for non retina there are a few calculators on line that will work that out from you. I think as long as you keep within 3440 x 1440 and 34" you're be very close to 110 PPI and you wont need to do any scaling in OSX, and the same for 5120 x 2880 27" and will be close to 220 PPI.

I am hoping someone has a lot more experience and knowledge than me on this subject that can confirm what I have said and also to take a look at what monitors I am considering, I really don't want to make the wrong choice.

Something else that I am puzzled about is what would be a good Hz to go for ( I wont be gaming )

Here is one of the ones I am looking at - https://www.ebuyer.com/983351-lg-34wn750-b-34-ultrawide-qhd-ips-monitor-with-amd-freesync-34wn750-b

I am considering ones with a curvature but not sure at what amount, I don't what something thats really curved, any advice on that would be great.

Anyways thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully someone can give some help.

Many thanks
 
Basic75

Basic75

macrumors 68020
May 17, 2011
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You are completely right, macOS is only designed for a monitor resolution of ~110ppi which is then doubled for "retina" to ~220ppi. Everything in between is only faked by indirect rendering.

If you want to use a monitor at its native resolution and don't need "retina" then good choices are 27" with 2560x1440, 34" with 3440x1440 as you mentioned, 38" with 3840x1600, and 49" with 5120x1440 which is like two 27" next to each other.

Unfortunately the majority of monitors on the market today are around either 140ppi or 163ppi which makes then not well suited for Mac users - unless you don't mind the disadvantages of indirect rendering OR haver particularly good or bad eye sight.

With good eyes you can run say a 32" with 3840x2160 at native resolution, with bad eyes you can use pixel doubling for an effective 1920x1080 which makes everything really large at the cost of usable real estate.
 
S

static123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 28, 2016
15
1
Basic75 said:
You are completely right, macOS is only designed for a monitor resolution of ~110ppi which is then doubled for "retina" to ~220ppi. Everything in between is only faked by indirect rendering.

If you want to use a monitor at its native resolution and don't need "retina" then good choices are 27" with 2560x1440, 34" with 3440x1440 as you mentioned, 38" with 3840x1600, and 49" with 5120x1440 which is like two 27" next to each other.

Unfortunately the majority of monitors on the market today are around either 140ppi or 163ppi which makes then not well suited for Mac users - unless you don't mind the disadvantages of indirect rendering OR haver particularly good or bad eye sight.

With good eyes you can run say a 32" with 3840x2160 at native resolution, with bad eyes you can use pixel doubling for an effective 1920x1080 which makes everything really large at the cost of usable real estate.
Click to expand...
Hey thanks for your reply, the one I linked in my original post is 3440 x 1440 and thats 34" the PPI according to this Calculator https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/technology/ppi-calculator.php is 109.68 so pretty dam close would you agree that this would be a good choice to run it natively with no scaling ?
 
S

static123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 28, 2016
15
1
Basic75 said:
What part do you need to work out?
Click to expand...
How much the curve is, I believe there is a number that will represent that but I cant seem to find that information on monitors specs on line unless I am going blind and stupid and that is a possibility :)
 
S

static123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 28, 2016
15
1
T

theorist9

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,881
3,060
Basic75 said:
You are completely right, macOS is only designed for a monitor resolution of ~110ppi which is then doubled for "retina" to ~220ppi. Everything in between is only faked by indirect rendering.

If you want to use a monitor at its native resolution and don't need "retina" then good choices are 27" with 2560x1440, 34" with 3440x1440 as you mentioned, 38" with 3840x1600, and 49" with 5120x1440 which is like two 27" next to each other.

Unfortunately the majority of monitors on the market today are around either 140ppi or 163ppi which makes then not well suited for Mac users - unless you don't mind the disadvantages of indirect rendering OR haver particularly good or bad eye sight.

With good eyes you can run say a 32" with 3840x2160 at native resolution, with bad eyes you can use pixel doubling for an effective 1920x1080 which makes everything really large at the cost of usable real estate.
Click to expand...
Disagree completely. A 4k 27" (163 ppi) at default 2:1 integer scaling will look far sharper than a native 110 ppi monitor (unless your eyesight is so bad you can't tell the difference), and thus give a far superior viewing experience. The UI on the 163 ppi is larger than that on the 218 ppi, but I don't find that's an issue.

Indeed, I'm currently running a 5k 27" (218 ppi) and a 4k 27" (163 ppi) side-by-side. I prefer the sharpness of the 5k, which is why I use it as my main monitor (I have very good close vision). However, I prefer the larger UI size of the 4k because (a) when I want to work rapidly, I can more quickly grab the scroll bars and hit the open/close buttons with the larger UI; and (b) the UI's on my apps don't take up much real estate to start with, so the space used with the larger UI is not significant—plus font sizes within apps can easily be scaled.

In summary, the UI size on MacOS is not some rigid absolute rule, in spite of the way it's often portrayed by over-zealous adherents. Instread, it's all about personal preference, and you need to find what works for you.
 
Basic75

Basic75

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May 17, 2011
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theorist9 said:
A 4k 27" (163 ppi) at default 2:1 integer scaling will look far sharper than a native 110 ppi monitor
Click to expand...
Of course, I agree that there is a personal preference involved, some people want or need everything larger than designed, some even go for everything smaller. And yes, a 27" 4K @2x will be sharper than a 27" 1440p @1x. However the resulting effective 1080p is only 56% of 1440p, so you the trade-off is a big loss in screen real estate. To come back to your point, it's a personal preference which is better. People just need to know the baseline and then they can decide if and in which direction they want to diverge from that. Just saying that "4K is sharper" doesn't give the whole picture, pun intended.
 
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theorist9

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May 28, 2015
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Basic75 said:
Of course, I agree that there is a personal preference involved, some people want or need everything larger than designed, some even go for everything smaller. And yes, a 27" 4K @2x will be sharper than a 27" 1440p @1x. However the resulting effective 1080p is only 56% of 1440p, so you the trade-off is a big loss in screen real estate. To come back to your point, it's a personal preference which is better. People just need to know the baseline and then they can decide if and in which direction they want to diverge from that. Just saying that "4K is sharper" doesn't give the whole picture, pun intended.
Click to expand...
First, 1080 is 75% of 1440, not 56%. Second, that way of calculating loss of screen real estate doesn't make sense.

Here's a real-world example using Mathematica, showing top-to-bottom half-screen screenshots, 4k (163 ppi) on left, 5k (218 ppi) on right. These are both run at the default (2:1 integer) scaling, so 4k = 1080p, and 5k = 1440p.

In spite of the difference in pixel density, the difference in screen real estate is trivial—in both cases you can display the same number of equations (eight), the only difference being a slight shift in where the 9th equation is cut off. So the real-world loss in your actual working area is insignificant. Granted, this would not be the case if you had programs where the UI took up a much larger percentage of the screen, but my apps typically don't. [Note that I don't actually use the Palette, the drop-down is just show for illustrative purposes.]

Thus while your calculation shows a 25% reduction in real estate, the real-world reduction is trivial.

1665036878578.png
 
Last edited:
Basic75

Basic75

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May 17, 2011
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theorist9 said:
First, 1080 is 75% of 1440, not 56%.
Click to expand...
When speaking about real estate, rather than density, you need to take into account that area is two dimensional while the density is linear, in other words any relative difference needs to be squared. Or, put differently, my calculation is correct: (1920*1080) / (2560*1440) = 0.5625.
 
Basic75

Basic75

macrumors 68020
May 17, 2011
2,107
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Europe
theorist9 said:
Granted, this would not be the case if you had programs where the UI took up a much larger percentage of the screen, but my apps typically don't.
Click to expand...
Yes, you can usually compensate for higher or lower ppi in the content part of the application where it scales freely, like in Keynote or Preview where you the app will do the right thing. The problem is with the fixed UI parts including the menu bar which are always rendered at the same size of layout pixels which can end up being wastefully large or uncomfortably small. It's a shame Apple doesn't tackle this.
 
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theorist9

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
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Basic75 said:
When speaking about real estate, rather than density, you need to take into account that area is two dimensional while the density is linear, in other words any relative difference needs to be squared. Or, put differently, my calculation is correct: (1920*1080) / (2560*1440) = 0.5625.
Click to expand...
Yes, you're right about that. But I notice you didn't respond to the heart of what I wrote. In comparing the actual working real estate in my screenshots of the same app on 4k and 5k displays, you clearly don't see any significant loss of working real estate, and certainly not a reduction to 56%, indicating you're not doing the right calculation to show actual real estate loss.
 
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