External Display with 2021 Macbook Pro 16 M1 Pro/Max

[Jglez]

Out of curiosity: How many of you are using external displays together with your 2021 16' Macbook Pro?

My hypothesis is that with the display having a high DPI it's likely to be the highest definition display for most users, thus, by connecting it to an external display you are most likely to have a worse experience than just using your laptop's screen on top of a desk/propped up on a stand.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

 

[pugxiwawa]

Mine is connected to external monitor when I'm sitting at my desk. I started with LG 34WK95U (5k2k) monitor figured that it should be good enough and close to retina quality. But I was wrong. I was never impressed with 5k2k resolution and the vertical resolution is just too narrow for me to be useful for office work. I then switched to LG 27" 5K monitor. I know it's been out forever and might be replaced soon, but the quality is much better than the 34" 5k2k. I like it a lot. IMO that's the best option for external monitor after 32" Pro XDR.

But using external monitors have some weird bug. I tried connecting to both 34" 5k2k and 27" 5k the same time, after adjusting resolution what I want on each and the order of the screen, occasionally after laptop wakes up from sleep it will forget the setting and change resolution back to original or put monitor in wrong order. It's kind of annoying bug with Mac OS. Also if you are doing any type of Citrix work, or video/photo editing, using external monitor is really taxing resources, and M1 Pro is no exception. It was very evident using Citrix desktop to remote into my work and everything just became sluggish. Maybe 16GB of ram is not enough. Hope this helps.

 

[sb in ak]

I use a BenQsw70c 27” 2k with my 16” MacBook Pro M1 for primarily photo editing. I’m probably in the minority here that I’m just fine with 2k monitors even next to the almost 4k MBP. Editing on a laptop screen just kinda sucks. There’s a lot more to a monitor than sheer resolution and this monitor is seemingly well built with good color accuracy and uniformity. Given the choice between a ******** 4K and a good quality 2k I went 2k and I don’t regret it. This monitor has worked nearly flawlessly with my laptop (I once had to unplug the monitor and plug back in to recognize the laptop) and I also use it as a low speed USB-A hub and charge my laptop via USB-C.

I was going to go for an Eizo 2k but they weren’t in stock.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Mine is connected to external monitor when I'm sitting at my desk. I started with LG 34WK95U (5k2k) monitor figured that it should be good enough and close to retina quality. But I was wrong. I was never impressed with 5k2k resolution and the vertical resolution is just too narrow for me to be useful for office work. I then switched to LG 27" 5K monitor. I know it's been out forever and might be replaced soon, but the quality is much better than the 34" 5k2k. I like it a lot. IMO that's the best option for external monitor after 32" Pro XDR.

But using external monitors have some weird bug. I tried connecting to both 34" 5k2k and 27" 5k the same time, after adjusting resolution what I want on each and the order of the screen, occasionally after laptop wakes up from sleep it will forget the setting and change resolution back to original or put monitor in wrong order. It's kind of annoying bug with Mac OS. Also if you are doing any type of Citrix work, or video/photo editing, using external monitor is really taxing resources, and M1 Pro is no exception. It was very evident using Citrix desktop to remote into my work and everything just became sluggish. Maybe 16GB of ram is not enough. Hope this helps.

Hey mate I have the same issue at some point my Citrix viewer eats 1GB, might be due to rosetta