Is Luna Display worth it now that Universal Control is available?

[coolbreeze2]

Astropad's Luna Dispaly is on sale now for $89. I've been wanting to try it because I want to use my 2017 iMac 27-inch as a display for my more powerful M1.

Do Universal Control and screen sharing match all the benefits and features of Luna Display? Is Luna Display faster and more customizable?

 

[chrfr]

Astropad's Luna Dispaly is on sale now for $89. I've been wanting to try it because I want to use my 2017 iMac 27-inch as a display for my more powerful M1.

Do Universal Control and screen sharing match all the benefits and features of Luna Display? Is Luna Display faster and more customizable?

Luna Display and Universal Control aren't the same thing. Sidecar correlates much more closely with Luna. Universal Control just lets you use a given keyboard and mouse/trackpad to control another device, but you're still using each device's display separately.

 

[coolbreeze2]

Luna Display and Universal Control aren't the same thing. Sidecar correlates much more closely with Luna. Universal Control just lets you use a given keyboard and mouse/trackpad to control another device, but you're still using each device's display separately.

So it sounds like you are saying Luna Display is worth the money because sidecar does not work with Mac-to-Mac. Right?

 

[chrfr]

So it sounds like you are saying Luna Display is worth the money because sidecar does not work with Mac-to-Mac. Right?

I’ve never used Luna Display, but Apple doesn’t provide what you’re looking for with built in tools.

 

[roguefury]

So it sounds like you are saying Luna Display is worth the money because sidecar does not work with Mac-to-Mac. Right?

So, I live, everyday with Luna display. It is one of those products that is truly amazing. Let me give you my background on this device.

I have a work Macbook, which is nice but I want to be able to use a bigger monitor. I also have a 27" iMac, which has a brilliant 5k display. I don't have space for another monitor, although I was offered one from work. Enter Luna Display. With the luna dongle in the work Macbook, a lightning cable (although you can wifi across devices as well), and my iMac, I now have a 5K display attached to my work Macbook. Yes, you read that right, Luna's latest update powers full 5K at 60hz. The refresh rate is slightly lagging, but I hardly notice as I'm mostly jumping between Office365 apps.

I thought of getting another monitor, but as long as Apple continues to support the intel iMac, it's hard to leave the gorgeous 5K retina display.

Sidecar is, um, janky at best.

I bought the Luna dongle several years ago. I suppose the sale on it is over by now, but I think it's the best $100 I've spent on my setup.

 

[pshufd]

The free solutions are:

1. Airplay, which requires Monterey on both systems and only on recent Macs,
2. Airplay using OCLP which supports a lot of older Macs,
3. Using a virtual monitor and then doing a share screen from the other Mac

The paid solutions are Luna Display (hardware dongle), and Duet Display (subscription software)

Here is an example of using a virtual monitor:

and another example:

I am using this solution right now to run three 4k monitors off of my M1 Mac mini.

I have a rather long document describing the solutions, pros and cons. I have tried all four them and they generally have a few issues but for different configurations.

I have done some testing with 5k monitors but I need to do more configuration testing and need to modify the virtual monitor software to support additional scaled resolutions. These solutions all use networking between the Macs as the video transport and 5k monitors may require a lot of bandwidth. Thus the solution for a machine-to-machine direct wired network, typically via Thunderbolt. This is a general solution to these products that use the network for video traffic.