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How has your 14” or 16”MacBook Pro worked with external 27” displays?

D

davedirect

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 19, 2021
37
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Before I go ahead and order my 14” MacBook Pro, I’d like to hear about how your experience with 27” external displays has been.

I’ve read about some issues with external
displays and I’m wondering if the majority of owners don’t have any issues at all when running a 27” monitor. Perhaps it’s just a small group who has issues, or maybe it’s owners of a certain type of display?

Good or bad, I’d love to hear your input!
 
Mine MBP 2020 still has flicker issue, no matter what external displays I tried.
But for me, it's not a bid deal because I rarely use external displays with a laptop
 
No problems but definitely it doesn’t work like windows (quick screen recognition by the os)
 
I've used the Ultrasharp 27 4k and Ultrasharp 25 QHD and they worked fine on my 2021 M1 PRO MacBook Pro. The monitors exacerbate the Monterey memory leak problem though.
 
I thought the memory leak issue had been patched, having been identified as caused by users who chose the new option to customise the colour of their pointer via Accessibility.
 
MBP14, I have Samsung 34" ultrawide and it looks like my mouse pointer is on 10fps, tearing or blurr or whatever its called, tried different cables DP/HDMI, still the same result :(:( compared to my old gaming PC it looks way worse
 
Seems to be functioning well with 14" MBP and my old Apple Cinema Display.
 
My MBP Max works really well with my LG UltraFine 5K Display. Then again, so did my 2015 MBP and 2019 MBP.

Can someone explain to me how/why I could buy this for $1000 five years ago. Yet today, the same exact monitor costs $1300 and no one else makes a 5K monitor!?! Regular TVs get better and cheaper...but anything above a 4K monitor does the opposite!?!

I have a 2015 iMac with a beautiful display - why can't I just buy that display?
 
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Working fine with my BenQ SW270C via USB-C. I had to unplug the monitor from the computer and power one day to get it to recognize the machine, but no issues otherwise.
 
anakin44011 said:
I have a 2015 iMac with a beautiful display - why can't I just buy that display?
Click to expand...
I've wondered this for a long time. It doesn't seem too long since Apple used to market their own branded monitors based around the displays in their then-current iMac models. Then all of a sudden, they didn't, other than the HDR thing that costs the price of a decent used car which no one except photography, graphics design and video professionals can justify.
 
MBP16" M1 here, used daily with LG 4K 27" monitor...
I have problems using USBC-DP cable - with this setup some apps don't work at all (e.g. Microsoft OneDrive crashes after launch). I could "solve" it by turning off DP1.2 in the monitor (does not support DP1.4) but I saw worse display quality like this... (btw. a friend of mine has the same problem with Intel 16" MBP after upgrading to latest Monterey, so it's not M1 specific)
So I switched to USBC-HDMI cable and I have zero problems since then, everything works as it should, no flickering, no black screen after wake, all perfect!
 
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MajorFubar said:
I've wondered this for a long time. It doesn't seem too long since Apple used to market their own branded monitors based around the displays in their then-current iMac models. Then all of a sudden, they didn't, other than the HDR thing that costs the price of a decent used car which no one except photography, graphics design and video professionals can justify.
Click to expand...

You can buy just the monitor: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HMUB2LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-display
 
I have used my 16" with two LG 4K 27" and 32" USB-C monitors separately. It has worked without any issues at all.
 
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ice29 said:
MBP16" M1 here, used daily with LG 4K 27" monitor...
I have problems using USBC-DP cable - with this setup some apps don't work at all (e.g. Microsoft OneDrive crashes after launch). I could "solve" it by turning off DP1.2 in the monitor (does not support DP1.4) but I saw worse display quality like this... (btw. a friend of mine has the same problem with Intel 16" MBP after upgrading to latest Monterey, so it's not M1 specific)
So I switched to USBC-HDMI cable and I have zero problems since then, everything works as it should, no flickering, no black screen after wake, all perfect!
Click to expand...
Which LG 4K 27” monitor are you using??
 
My company bought this monitor for me from CDW. It's at least two years old. I do not believe that exact monitor is still available, but I would like to think similar LG monitors would work well.
 
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I'm using my 14" M1 Pro with a 5-yr old LG 27" 4K monitor (UD-68) at 60hz and it works great. I run it in HiDPI mode at "Looks like 2560 x 1440", which is the same effective resolution as the 27" iMac / LG 5K Ultrafine and a great size for text and icons. I run through a Caldigit TS3 Lite dock (Thunderbolt 3 from MBP to the dock, and Displayport from dock to monitor).

Everything looks fantastic, text looks super smooth (even when I move my eyes super close to the screen), and window movement is very smooth at 60hz even with the non-integer scaling.

I ran this same setup for prior 5 years with my 2016 13" MBP (first generation with touchbar) as well, generally without issue. My usage is pretty light graphics-wise, so transition to my new 14" MBP was pretty seamless.
 
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benq pd2700u, has random flickering issues on my M1 Max. can go several hours or days between the issue flaring up. I've tried multiple cables. Also worth noting the display and cables both work flawlessly on my 2018 MacBook Pro and PC work tower, so its a compatibility issue with this M1 machine for sure.
 
Running on Gigabyte M32U 4K 144Hz with a single cable USB-C 3.2 Gen2 no issues. I was able to use 48-144hz refresh rate as well at 4K + KVM Mouse Keyboard and Camera.

Screen Shot 2022-01-19 at 10.37.11 PM.png
 
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