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aurieg92

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2020
24
5
Looking for a 27-32inch monitor with color & HDR that's as good as MBP Liquid Retina XDR display. I've tried a few and nothing so far compares! Any "HDR10" monitor is out. I've tried Asus ProArt PA32UCR which is supposed to be 1000 nits and 98% P3 but when I test 12-bit color images or iOS video there are lots of bright spots where the ProArt monitor blows out and yet all looks fine on the Liquid Retina XDR. I haven't tried testing the Studio display because I read it's basically the same as the iMac Retina 5k and I have that-- it's a great screen but HDR isn't nearly as good as the Liquid Retina XDR. So what's the deal? Does Apple just use unobtanium for the MBP displays?
 

leifp

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2008
522
501
Canada
Yeah, I’d love that! So far the only solution I’ve found is Apple’s own Pro Display XDR. Which is no solution to me, as I personally cannot justify that price. So I suffer silently, waiting for a suitable monitor to magically appear…
 
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aurieg92

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2020
24
5
the Pro Display XDR is old though, is it really the only comparable part? I’ve watched a bunch of youtube reviews and the ProArt was supposed to be comparable but HDR solidly not as good as MBP
 

aurieg92

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2020
24
5
Alright so I tried ProArt again but over DP instead HDMI and it looks much much closer now, no more sunlight blowouts and color is a lot more comparable. I guess Mac HDMI is just poor or maybe HDMI has that much less bandwidth.
 
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danwells

macrumors 6502a
Apr 4, 2015
783
617
A real pro photographic monitor (Eizo is one major brand) will be quite significantly better than any Apple display with the possible exception of the Pro Display XDR.

Even the XDR is difficult to calibrate (it was uncalibratable for a long time, then Apple allowed calibration, but only using a very expensive (many thousand $, often over $10,000) tool called a spectroradiometer. Hollywood production houses have spectroradiometers lying around, but they are beyond the reach of ordinary photographers and small video shops.

Ordinary colorimeters (available for $100 to $400, depending on quality and software) don't work, although there are some workarounds. Pro photographic monitors are explicitly DESIGNED to work with a colorimeter, and some expensive models actually have colorimeters built in.

The accuracy and gamut of a good photographic monitor is significantly beyond a Mac screen, but you won't get the resolution. Some of them are sub-4K, probably the largest group are standard 4K (3840x2160 pixels) and a few are Cinema 4K (4096x2160). I'm not aware of any that are higher resolution than that, and I'm not aware of any of the monitor manufacturers being very interested in the short term. We'll see 8K versions at some point...
 
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