How is your 5K 27" holding up?

[SaSaSushi]

Btw, you can be less of an ass about people using their customer rights and wanting as good as a product as they can get.

Oh, I'm all for them.

It's the self-professed experts that claim to have far superior discern for display imperfections than the ignorant asses that I take issue with. They post in threads such as these around the release of every new iMac cycle about how poor Apple's quality control and shoddy manufacturing is, how getting a good panel on an iMac is akin to winning the lottery. They carefully chronicle their 3 or 4 returns before finally giving up.

That is just the characteristics (specifications) of the panel, it has nothing to do with the quality. They're picking panels based on specs (good ones) and then they mount them. If you get a very well mounted well lit panel in your iMac you're going to have a very good display, what I'm saying is that nobody in the factory is going to test that before they ship the machine.

How, exactly, do you come by this knowledge of what Apple is and is not testing on the assembly line?

Someone must be getting those well-lit displays. What are the odds that someone would return an iMac for such a problem and then receive two more that are equally bad?

None of the professional reviewers raving about the screen on the iMac got even one bad one and yet you keep saying that the good screens are the rarity.

Mind you, I'm not saying bad panels never happen. I returned a Late 2009 iMac with a bad yellow tint that Apple's service department confirmed. The first (and only) replacement I received at the time resolved the problem.

 

[BergerFan]

As the title says, I have reading many problems with 5K iMac display.

How is your holding up? Any problems?

Don't know if I'll wait till 2018 for the new redesign and new screen as this is getting some problems..

Thank you!

No issues here, had it for a month.

 

[960design]

As the title says, I have reading many problems with 5K iMac display.

How is your holding up? Any problems?

Don't know if I'll wait till 2018 for the new redesign and new screen as this is getting some problems..

Thank you!

I have a late 2015 iMac 27" ( had it for just over year ) and it is the work horse of my job. No problems whatsoever.

 

[tozz]

Oh, I'm all for them.

It's the self-professed experts that claim to have far superior discern for display imperfections than the ignorant asses and know full well from the beginning that they're never going to get a product up to their demanding standards who post in threads such as these around the release of every new iMac cycle about how poor Apple's quality and shoddy manufacturing is and carefully chronicle their 3 or 4 returns before finally giving up that I've got no particular use for nor interest in the rights of.

Wow, you just love those wide brushes don't you?

How, exactly, do you come by this knowledge of what Apple is and is not testing on the assembly line?

Someone must be getting those well-lit displays. What are the odds that someone would return an iMac for such a problem and then receive two more that are equally bad?

None of the professional reviewers raving about the screen on the iMac got even one bad one and yet you keep saying that the good screens are the rarity.

Occam's Razor, if bad screens are being delivered continuously then nobody is testing for bad screens. Either that or the specifications for what a bad screen is are pointless to the consumer. Given this premise the odds for getting many bad screens in a row are quite low and hence should be expected.

Which professional reviewers are referring to? You can't expect any kind of response to a statement without context. I quickly browsed a couple of reviews by googling and none of them actually tested the screen.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Wow, you just love those wide brushes don't you?

I'd edited my original post a bit since you quoted me.

Which professional reviewers are referring to? You can't expect any kind of response to a statement without context. I quickly browsed a couple of reviews by googling and none of them actually tested the screen.

Appleinsider:

However, for mainstream graphics, video and office users who play video games — and others living in the iMac sweet spot — the Kaby Lake generation of iMacs offers a great lineup for new buyers to jump in or a strong upgrade for users looking for faster, sustained performance in a great looking package with a breathtaking display and strong connectivity features.

Macworld UK:

Well if you wanted a stunning 5K widescreen Retina display to make your work look beautiful too, you’ve got it. And as we discuss later, the new display is the one area where the design of the 2017 generation iMac has changed.

Macworld:

Apple updated the iMac screen with one that the company says is 43 percent brighter (it’s rated at 500 nits). It’s certainly noticeable to me. Colors are vibrant, and the details are sharp. I thought the screen quality looked good in older iMacs, and the new brighter screen hasn’t really changed my opinion.

Tomsguide:

The 5K display makes everything look great, but the real benefit is that you can do things like edit 4K video at full resolution and still have all of your toolbars and sliders on-screen. The 27-inch monitor is large enough and sharp enough to work with documents side by side — even those with smaller text — and never worry about readability.

CNET:

The Apple iMac's 27-inch 5K display remains the most color-accurate monitor we've seen thus far in an all-in-one, and performance is much improved.

Expertreviews:

Testing the screen with our colour calibrator, we found that the screen was capable of 99.8% of the sRGB and 98.5% of DCI-P3 colour gamuts. At a measured 740:1 contrast ratio, it might not be the best panel around, but it's definitely one of the better-quality displays out there.

There are more but I'm going to stop there. In fact, I haven't read a single review that didn't mention the screen in a positive way. It makes sense since it is pretty much the single greatest feature.

 

[tozz]

Appleinsider:

However, for mainstream graphics, video and office users who play video games — and others living in the iMac sweet spot — the Kaby Lake generation of iMacs offers a great lineup for new buyers to jump in or a strong upgrade for users looking for faster, sustained performance in a great looking package with a breathtaking display and strong connectivity features.

Macworld UK:

Well if you wanted a stunning 5K widescreen Retina display to make your work look beautiful too, you’ve got it. And as we discuss later, the new display is the one area where the design of the 2017 generation iMac has changed.

Macworld:

Apple updated the iMac screen with one that the company says is 43 percent brighter (it’s rated at 500 nits). It’s certainly noticeable to me. Colors are vibrant, and the details are sharp. I thought the screen quality looked good in older iMacs, and the new brighter screen hasn’t really changed my opinion.

Tomsguide:

The 5K display makes everything look great, but the real benefit is that you can do things like edit 4K video at full resolution and still have all of your toolbars and sliders on-screen. The 27-inch monitor is large enough and sharp enough to work with documents side by side — even those with smaller text — and never worry about readability.

CNET:

The Apple iMac's 27-inch 5K display remains the most color-accurate monitor we've seen thus far in an all-in-one, and performance is much improved.

Expertreviews:

Testing the screen with our colour calibrator, we found that the screen was capable of 99.8% of the sRGB and 98.5% of DCI-P3 colour gamuts. At a measured 740:1 contrast ratio, it might not be the best panel around, but it's definitely one of the better-quality displays out there.

There are more but I'm going to stop there. In fact, I haven't read a single review that didn't mention the screen, and positively so which makes sense since it is pretty much the single best feature of the machine.

I checked every one of them and there's not a single test of the display. There's statements, but I can say my Mazda is faster than a Tesla, as long as I don't have to prove it.

Here's an example of how you actually test a display: http://www.prad.de/new/monitore/test/2017/test-eizo-cg2730-teil4.html

 

[SaSaSushi]

I checked every one of them and there's not a single test of the display.

Not that this is true but nor did they make one single mention of all of the horrible display anomalies you keep going on and on about. All I see is praise.

Here's an example of how you actually test a display: http://www.prad.de/new/monitore/test/2017/test-eizo-cg2730-teil4.html

For an Eizo monitor with a built in color calibration sensor that costs more, on its own, than a base model iMac!!

 

[tozz]

Not that this is true but nor did they make one single mention of all of the horrible display anomalies you keep going on and on about. All I see is praise.



For an Eizo monitor with a built in color calibration sensor that costs more, on its own, than a base model iMac!!

So where do they actually publish the test results? Because the links don't contain them from what I can see.

The link wasn't to show the results of a display but how to perform proper testing of one. There's plenty of tests of cheaper monitors from all kinds of brands.

 

[SaSaSushi]

So where do they actually publish the test results? Because the links don't contain them from what I can see.

PC Magazine:

To get a more quantitive conclusion, I tested color accuracy using Datacolor's Spyder5Elite colorimeter and software. The package runs a test on the screen's ability to display different color spectrums used for a variety of purposes across industries. Color accuracy is important to many professionals for representing real-life colors digitally to facilitate physical printing, samples, and more. The iMac's display covers 100 percent of the sRGB specturm, 87 percent of NTSC, and 92 percent of Adobe RGB. The coverage isn't complete, but results are still strong, and should satisfy most use cases.

The Expertreviews review above also did color calibration testing:

The new iMac uses the same IPS technology as before, which covers the DCI-P3 colour space but is brighter. Apple claims it has 500nits of brightness, and after putting it through the X-Rite i1Display Pro calibrator, the 5K iMac does achieve a 514cd/m2 maximum brightness.

The link wasn't to show the results of a display but how to perform proper testing of one. There's plenty of tests of cheaper monitors from all kinds of brands.

Proper in your opinion. It seems to me like you might just have some unrealistic expectations.

You really don't think if the new iMac really had as poor quality of a display as you claim that not one review would mention it?

 

[tozz]

PC Magazine:

To get a more quantitive conclusion, I tested color accuracy using Datacolor's Spyder5Elite colorimeter and software. The package runs a test on the screen's ability to display different color spectrums used for a variety of purposes across industries. Color accuracy is important to many professionals for representing real-life colors digitally to facilitate physical printing, samples, and more. The iMac's display covers 100 percent of the sRGB specturm, 87 percent of NTSC, and 92 percent of Adobe RGB. The coverage isn't complete, but results are still strong, and should satisfy most use cases.

The Expertreviews review above also did color calibration testing:

The new iMac uses the same IPS technology as before, which covers the DCI-P3 colour space but is brighter. Apple claims it has 500nits of brightness, and after putting it through the X-Rite i1Display Pro calibrator, the 5K iMac does achieve a 514cd/m2 maximum brightness.



Proper is your qualification. It seems to me like you might just have some unrealistic expectations.

Those are just statements, I don't trust reviews that doesn't publish results. Color accuracy is defined as DeltaE (and there's many different specifications), if a reviewer doesn't even publish mid screen data on that they just don't know what they're doing, simple as that.
To even state that color accuracy is important and then don't reveal the accuracy measurements, come on...

The way to measure color and uniformity has been pretty clear for the last decades (with upgrades to the measurement standards along the way), to say that measuring according to those standards are unrealistic just comes off as childish.

 

[mbosse]

PC Magazine:

To get a more quantitive conclusion, I tested color accuracy using Datacolor's Spyder5Elite colorimeter and software. The package runs a test on the screen's ability to display different color spectrums used for a variety of purposes across industries. Color accuracy is important to many professionals for representing real-life colors digitally to facilitate physical printing, samples, and more. The iMac's display covers 100 percent of the sRGB specturm, 87 percent of NTSC, and 92 percent of Adobe RGB. The coverage isn't complete, but results are still strong, and should satisfy most use cases.

The Expertreviews review above also did color calibration testing:

The new iMac uses the same IPS technology as before, which covers the DCI-P3 colour space but is brighter. Apple claims it has 500nits of brightness, and after putting it through the X-Rite i1Display Pro calibrator, the 5K iMac does achieve a 514cd/m2 maximum brightness.



Proper is your qualification. It seems to me like you might just have some unrealistic expectations.

Tom's guide as well:

In our testing, the iMac’s display registered an average of 463 nits, and at the center of the screen we saw brightness as high as 496 nits, right in line with the 500 nits Apple claims. It easily beats the Dell XPS 27 (316 nits) and Microsoft Surface Studio (354 nits).

The iMac's vivid display reproduces an impressive 167 percent of the sRGB color gamut (we consider 100 percent to be excellent). That's much better than the category average (141 percent), but color gamut is one area where competitors give Apple a run for its money — both the Surface Studio (181 percent) and the Dell XPS 27 (187 percent) produce even more colors.

Apple's display is also worthy of praise for its nearly perfect color accuracy, with a Delta-E score of 0.06 (0 is ideal). That's better than even the best all-in-one displays, like the Asus Zen AiO Pro (0.28), the Microsoft Surface Studio (1.0), the Dell XPS 27 (5.06) and the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 910 (1.8). It's even more accurate than the previous iMac (2.2).

In all fairness one should keep in mind, I guess, that sites such as Prad are dedicated to displays, and thus perform a more rigid and comprehensive testing of image and panel quality, which would probably overwhelm in the context of a computer review.

I would, however, look forward it Prad could get their hands on an iMac. Just as a benchmark.

Magnus

 

[SaSaSushi]

The way to measure color and uniformity has been pretty clear for the last decades (with upgrades to the measurement standards along the way), to say that measuring according to those standards are unrealistic just comes off as childish.

I just said that you might have some unrealistic expectations of the 2017 iMac. It is, after all, a consumer all-in-one machine (albeit the one with the best display available by far) and not a high-end standalone monitor for graphic design.

I agree with what Magnus said above and I hope Prad does get an iMac and test it. They're welcome to borrow mine.

 

[tozz]

I just said that you might have some unrealistic expectations of the 2017 iMac. It is, after all, a consumer all-in-one machine (albeit the one with the best display available by far) and not a high-end standalone monitor for graphic design.

I agree with what Magnus said above and I hope Prad does get an iMac and test it. They're welcome to borrow mine.

Ok, I read it as you meant I had unrealistic expectations of reviewers. I might be overly critical, but on the other hand, I've seen very big differences between iMacs, my own, the ones in stores and colleagues so I know as an observable fact that they can be a lot better than what I have right now

 

[Lando555]

No issues here. Love it! 2017 27"/i7/580/40GB/2TBSSD. Happy with screen as well as (non-existent) noise and heat.

Really, where are you reading about many problems with the display? I mean even in this forum, where those who have or thoroughly search for issues gather, there is not a lot complaining about the display.

 

[theluggage]

No issues here. Love it! 2017 27"/i7/580/40GB/2TBSSD. Happy with screen as well as (non-existent) noise and heat.

Really, where are you reading about many problems with the display?

No real problems with mine either - if I fill the screen with white and squint then there is a slight yellowing at the bottom corners, to which the solution is "don't do that then". It has no practical impact.

Affordable LCD displays have always come with some tolerance for imperfections - if you want a perfect screen for colour-critical photographic work you'll need to pay $1000+ for even a 1440p display - and you can count the number of 5k displays available on the fingers of a boxing glove.

(Also, ISTR there was an issue with a yellow tint on brand new iPad screens caused by the glue bonding the screen to the glass taking a while to cure properly...)

Meanwhile, there is bound to be the occasional lemon.

As for noise: most of the time the fan is inaudible against general background noise. When something like a video transcode lights up all the processor cores it briefly gets quite noticable - but its a fairly clean "rushing" sound with no whines or clicks. Might be an issue if you actually wanted to use it in a recording/mixing studio or onstage but, otherwise, not really.

The main iMac flaws are the ones I knew and accepted before buying - I'd have much rather had a headless machine and my own choice of display (I'd personally prefer a larger 4k screen, or maybe a matched pair) but Apple don't offer such a beast. However, the 5k display, at the price, acts as a sweetener in that respect.

The limited adjustability of the stand is a triumph of form over function and its silly that a VESA mount is a BTO option. The i/o is fairly good - glad Apple didn't go all USB-C - but very inconveniently located. I'm looking for a USB-C or Thunderbolt hub that would sit on the pedestal to provide front-facing ports, but none of the current designs are ideal (being aimed at laptop users). As I said - those are all compromises that I accepted.

 

[Glideslope]

I've been using my 27" for close to 6 weeks. Prior to this I was a Cheese Greater MP user for 10 years. I cringed at the thought of another all in one. I can't say enough positive things about my experience so far. The display simply amazes me every time I sit down. It's fast, quiet, and a dream to use. I have the 7600K i5 with the 580. 32g RAM, and the 1TB SSD. Due to storage limitations on the 1TB I run an external 512 SSD Samsung T3 via USB-C as a Boot Drive as well. Just velcroed it to the back of the arm. Blazing speed. I also have a 6TB WD USB 3 Platter for my images, video, and backup.

Everything plays nice together. Everything is a joy to use every time. With out a doubt this is my favorite Mac since my Performa 630 CD.

 

[tozz]

No real problems with mine either - if I fill the screen with white and squint then there is a slight yellowing at the bottom corners, to which the solution is "don't do that then". It has no practical impact.

That would be marvellous, considering much of the web is displayed on a white or light background it's quite common to be in a scenario where uniformity matters
Om my current iMac I have a bright spot just next to a shadow one pretty much in the middle of the screen so when reading this forum half the post looks blue the other one looks redish, if it were just the corners I would jump of joy

 

[AZhappyjack]

Been running mine for over a year with no issues.... My only regret is that I didn't go for a larger SSD.

4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 with Retina 5K display, 16GB memory, 512GB Flash Storage, AMD Radeon R9 M395X

 

[theluggage]

That would be marvellous, considering much of the web is displayed on a white or light background it's quite common to be in a scenario where uniformity matters

You missed the "if I squint" and "slight" bits. Its only visible if you go looking for it.

Maybe your screen has a significant problem - I'm certainly not going to tell you that you're imagining it. If mine had had a fault matching your description I'd have returned it.

This thread is just a bit of a show of hands for people who have no problem and wouldn't otherwise post about it - otherwise there's a danger that we'll only hear from the unlucky (or, in some cases unduly picky).

 

[tozz]

You missed the "if I squint" and "slight" bits. Its only visible if you go looking for it.

Maybe your screen has a significant problem - I'm certainly not going to tell you that you're imagining it. If mine had had a fault matching your description I'd have returned it.

This thread is just a bit of a show of hands for people who have no problem and wouldn't otherwise post about it - otherwise there's a danger that we'll only hear from the unlucky (or, in some cases unduly picky).

No I didn't, that was kind of the point, I would love to be in a scenario where squinting was the only way to see it.

 

[smdonnel]

Perfectly! It is my first experience with a retina display. I do have some worry that a full rez HD image is so small that I may miss a pixel or two off when rendering stuff out. Still this machine is dope!

 

[Rapakar]

As the title says, I have reading many problems with 5K iMac display.

How is your holding up? Any problems?

Don't know if I'll wait till 2018 for the new redesign and new screen as this is getting some problems..

Thank you!

The display and everything worked decent for the first month and then I started getting numerous crashes and restarts and had to take it in. They restored it with the latest sierra and once I finished he setup, it went into an infinite loop of crashing and became unusable. I have been to the Apple Store twice in two days and hope that it's just a lemon. The display was spectacular and it operated well. I got the base model but with the hard rice upgrade to 1 TB fusion drive. Then did a ram upgrade. I got it for media and high end video editing and software development. I cannot wait till it's fixed but am a bit discouraged at the moment since it has wasted two days to fix. I am an avid Windows user at work taking the Mac plunge and all the wonderful things I hear about macs never crashing are just not true. Like I said probably a lemon but a bit frustrating.

 

[Dc2006ster]

I've been using my 27" for close to 6 weeks. Prior to this I was a Cheese Greater MP user for 10 years. I cringed at the thought of another all in one. I can't say enough positive things about my experience so far. The display simply amazes me every time I sit down. It's fast, quiet, and a dream to use. I have the 7600K i5 with the 580. 32g RAM, and the 1TB SSD. Due to storage limitations on the 1TB I run an external 512 SSD Samsung T3 via USB-C as a Boot Drive as well. Just velcroed it to the back of the arm. Blazing speed. I also have a 6TB WD USB 3 Platter for my images, video, and backup.

Everything plays nice together. Everything is a joy to use every time. With out a doubt this is my favorite Mac since my Performa 630 CD.

Thanks for this post. I am close to ordering an iMac to replace my 2006 (2x 2.66GHz quad cores) Mac Pro and you have eased some of my misgivings. If you don’t mind I have a couple of questions before I order.

Apart from the usual Internet tasks my main interests are amateur photography (I use Capture One) and home videos (I use Final Cut Pro X). I was thinking I might need an i7 processor but see you have the i5. I am sure the i7 would be better but would you say the i5 is perfectly acceptable?

I have been thinking to use an internal or external SSD as a startup drive instead of using a Fusion drive but have read posts suggesting that the flash memory of the fusion is faster than an SSD. Are you able to comment on this? Do you find any difference in speed between the external SSD and the internal 1TB SSD?

I had 4 drives in my MP one of which was for Time Machine. Have you partitioned your external WD drive? I was thinking to do that to create a Time Machine partition.


Thanks again.

 

[SaSaSushi]

The display and everything worked decent for the first month and then I started getting numerous crashes and restarts and had to take it in. They restored it with the latest sierra and once I finished he setup, it went into an infinite loop of crashing and became unusable. I have been to the Apple Store twice in two days and hope that it's just a lemon. The display was spectacular and it operated well. I got the base model but with the hard rice upgrade to 1 TB fusion drive. Then did a ram upgrade.

What RAM did you install in the machine? The symptoms you describe are typical of bad/incompatible RAM.

Remove the RAM you added and see if the crashes don't disappear. Also, you can run Memtest86 and check for errors.

 

[Glideslope]

Thanks for this post. I am close to ordering an iMac to replace my 2006 (2x 2.66GHz quad cores) and you have eased some of my misgivings. If you don’t mind I have a couple of questions before I order.

Apart from the usual Internet tasks my main interests are amateur photography (I use Capture One) and home videos (I use Final Cut Pro X). I was thinking I might need an i7 processor but see you have the i5. I am sure the i7 would be better but would you say the i5 is perfectly acceptable?

I have been thinking to use an internal or external SSD as a startup drive instead of using a Fusion drive but have read posts suggesting that the flash memory of the fusion is faster than an SSD. Are you able to comment on this? Do you find any difference in speed between the external SSD and the internal 1TB SSD?

I had 4 drives in my MP one of which was for Time Machine. Have you partitioned your external WD drive? I was thinking to do that to create a Time Machine partition.


Thanks again.

Capture One and FCPX are both CPU Intensive applications. I do not use either. I know Capture One uses Hyper Threading, and I think FCPX does as well. So, it's about your work flow, and time management. I use CS6 and Premier (Don't Hate Me ; ). My 7600K is not as fast as the 7700K because it has no Hyper Threading, and CS6 is more GPU intensive. That's ok with me because it's a hobby, not my profession. My fans never move off 1200 rpm. My CPU tops out at 79C if it's maxed for a while. If you need speed then the 7700K is the choice, IMO. If you're doing home video and images I doubt it would run at 95C with the fans at 2600 rpm.

The 2TB and 3TB Fusions are around 418MB/s Read/ 2100MB/s Write. My External T3 is roughly 418MB/s Read/435MB/s Write on USB-C to USB-C. My internal 1TB (Samsung 960) is usually around 1870MB/s Read / 2490MB/s Write. So yes, there is considerable difference.
My WD Platter is partitioned into a 2TB Time Machine Backup, and a 4TB for Image and Video storage. The WD platter is backed up off site.

Enjoy.