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LG UltraFine 5K - Owners Thread

has anyone here experienced specs of dust inside their Ultrafine display? I called LG and they simply gave me an authorization code to take it to service center which is over 30 miles from me and in a very bad part of the city. If this is a common issue, I will sell the display if LG gives me a new unit. Your thoughts?

This is just one side of the problem. It's on the other side as well.

IMG_4197.JPG
 
tomislavf said:
According to Apple, hardware accelerated HVEC encoding and decoding will be available in the 2016 MBP as well.
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The 2016 will only do 8 bit, the 2017 is capable of doing 8 and 10 bit.

The LG 5K will run faster on the MBP 13" with macOS High Sierra since the macOS interface will be accelerated on the GPU by using Metal 2.
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It remains to be seen if it will run fast enough ;)
 
I want to get this monitor soon. Would you say it matches the color and cast of the MBP? I just got a 2017 Touch Bar MBP. I had a 4k monitor but ended up liking the huge color difference even with calibration. I want something somewhat close to whats on my Retina Display.
 
thenk83 said:
I want to get this monitor soon. Would you say it matches the color and cast of the MBP? I just got a 2017 Touch Bar MBP. I had a 4k monitor but ended up liking the huge color difference even with calibration. I want something somewhat close to whats on my Retina Display.
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I can't tell the difference between my MBP and the LG 5K
 
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With the 15-inch MBP (2017) and the need for USB-C + charging, there's no other display than the UltraFine 5K right?
 
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thenk83 said:
I want to get this monitor soon. Would you say it matches the color and cast of the MBP? I just got a 2017 Touch Bar MBP. I had a 4k monitor but ended up liking the huge color difference even with calibration. I want something somewhat close to whats on my Retina Display.
Click to expand...

White balance on both of mine were slightly different for me vs calibrated MBP15 display, as well as slightly different than each other. After calibration with eye1pro spectro they are all very close all around, and I have no issues.
 
I just got the display. I plugged it in. But not getting a 5K resolution. System Report is telling me 2560x1440. About this Mac says 5120x2880 but I'm certainly not getting the resolution. 4K video looks horrible. Something I'm doing wrong here?
 
Actually when I go to scaled. I only see "More Space" as 3200x1800 and nothing higher. I'm also using a 2017 MacBook Pro with Touchbar.
 
Figured it out. I needed to hold "Option" to get to the custom resolution window. I'm seeing my Mavic Pro video too.
 
diotav said:
With the 15-inch MBP (2017) and the need for USB-C + charging, there's no other display than the UltraFine 5K right?
Click to expand...

If you want your system to charge over the same cable, then no, there's no other display.

But if you're happy to use the standard MPB charging cable, then you can get any number of displays to work with the 15-inch MPB with the right USB-C cable. There's quite a few decent quality USB-C to DisplayPort and USB-C to HDMI cables (and adapters) around now which should let you run anything up to 4K easily enough (always go DisplayPort for 4K, as HDMI support for 4K can be hit-and-miss).

I'm now using 2 LG 5K displays PLUS an Asus ROG Swift 1440p monitor (via an HDMI-to-USB-C cable) all at the same time, and I'm finding it's quite a stable setup now. You can even run the laptop display at the same time as all that, which is pretty darn impressive out of a laptop. I do find that getting all three going at once can be tricky when plugging in, but it nearly always seems to work if I plug the USB-C/HDMI ASUS monitor in first, and then the 5Ks afterward.

I also grabbed a monoprice USB-C to USB-Male adapter which then plugs into a (USB-A) USB-3-Ethernet hub for everything else. I'd still say avoid the monitor's build in USB-C hub at all costs, as they're unreliable. Would love to see a firmware update LG, how long are we going go to wait?

UPDATE: Interestingly, I just decided to try the High Sierra public beta, and the 5Ks seem to be a fair bit better there. The volume issue appears to be gone, and re-connection doesn't appear to have that same "I'll connect, no wait I'll connect, no wait we'll both connect" thing that Sierra does with dual 5Ks. When connecting any 5K, you just seem to get a single fade out and then all connected displays come to life quickly, just like any other external monitors I've ever used with Macs before. So maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel when High Sierra is likely released in September / October.

One gets the feeling that Apple probably had a lot of work to do with Thunderbolt / Graphics with the whole eGPU support in High Sierra, which probably required a significant architectural change. Perhaps they didn't want to fix the same bugs twice with the 5Ks?
 
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I just got a 2017 MBP 15" and I'm having trouble getting a 'crisp' resolution on my LG Ultrafine on Windows 10 via bootcamp. The text is far from retina and very jagged. Any ideas on how to fix this?
 
thisisDimitri said:
I just got a 2017 MBP 15" and I'm having trouble getting a 'crisp' resolution on my LG Ultrafine on Windows 10 via bootcamp. The text is far from retina and very jagged. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Click to expand...

I've used mine a few times in BootCamp and they look great. Did you definitely run the BootCamp windows installer that usually autoruns once Win 10 has finished installing? It sounds like a graphics driver problem. Also, What version of Windows 10 do you have?
 
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diotav said:
With the 15-inch MBP (2017) and the need for USB-C + charging, there's no other display than the UltraFine 5K right?
Click to expand...
Nope, there are quite a few others too. The difference being that the Ultrafine 5k charges the MBP at 85W whereas the others will only do 60W. They all will charge it, the Ultrafine will charge it the fastest and also under higher loads than the others (under a very high load even this display or the original power adapter might simply not be enough).

blackmondo said:
One gets the feeling that Apple probably had a lot of work to do with Thunderbolt / Graphics with the whole eGPU support in High Sierra, which probably required a significant architectural change. Perhaps they didn't want to fix the same bugs twice with the 5Ks?
Click to expand...
They have been on a Thunderbolt fixing spree since 10.12.4. 10.12.5 came with a lot of fixes and probably 10.12.6 will too (there is quite a difference in Thunderbolt firmware versions). High Sierra expands on that plus it also has a big overhaul of the entire graphics system.

Btw, it is actually very common to (back)port the fixes so it fixes a couple of different versions of the software (in this case macOS).
 
For me it seems to have fixed the issues concerning connected devices to the USB hub (connexion has been consistent for the last two days), and the volume issue.
 
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I guess the update is only available for the 5K model. I cannot see it in the LG Screen Manager for the 4K model...

Update: A reset did the trick :)
 
dyn said:
The 2016 will only do 8 bit, the 2017 is capable of doing 8 and 10 bit.


It remains to be seen if it will run fast enough ;)
Click to expand...
I am still struggling with this topic..so I disconnected my LG 5K and connected an older Cinemadisplay 27" with 2560x1440px..wow text looks ugly..I did not know that it is making such a large difference!

Anyway, what I wanted to know: How is system performance? FYI: I have the maxed out spec Mabook Pro 13 Inch OLED Touch Late 2016
The worst performance on the LG5k is opening the Facebook wall in Mozilla Firefox. On the LG 5k this is unusable, it takes up to 30 seconds until you can scroll again and CPU load goes to 100%)
Same scenario with the Cinema display: Facebook wall takes around 3 seconds to load until I can scroll down and CPU load does not go above 40%. Scrolling is pretty smooth, not perfect but definitely something I can live with it.

Before I thought it is Firefox that has such a worse performance (and probably Firefox is not the best Mac OS X app anyway).

However, the difference is huge.

It really seems to that the current Mac OS X Sierra UI / UI rendering is not made for 5k "retina" and the CPU does need to do all the rendering..which is crazy.

Is really nobody noticing this except me? I am wondering because I do not find anything on this topic.

Does the new Kaby Lake 13 inch fixes this issue with Sierra or is it only High Sierra that will fix the performance for both Late 2016 and Early 2017 13 inch models?

Side story: We do have some Imac 27" 5k units in the office and they do not have this issue at all. Seems the dedicated GPU in this models is doing the rendering..or is it the Quad Core CPU that can do it easily compared to the dual core CPUs in the 13 inch Macbook Pro?!

Additional information: I am using the LG5k with the scaling option 4 (one to the right from the middle with "more" space)
 
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Weaselboy said:
Thanks for letting us know @bknaepen

I just installed and the only difference I see so far is the volume adjustment is fixed as was mentioned.

No change log that I can find anywhere.
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I noticed now that it wakes a lot quicker for me too. Before it took 3-4 seconds before it showed anything on screen if my computer was attached and in sleep mode. Now it starts in about a second.
 
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SLSWE said:
I noticed now that it wakes a lot quicker for me too. Before it took 3-4 seconds before it showed anything on screen if my computer was attached and in sleep mode. Now it starts in about a second.
Click to expand...
I just tested, and mine also seems to wake about twice as fast as it did.

Also, just a warning for anybody doing this update. Don't get panicked when it seems to have stalled. Mine got to around 20% or so and sat there a good two or three minutes apparently doing nothing, then slowly started inching along again. I'd say the whole thing was about seven minutes.

I noticed the FW installer made an install log in a folder call lsm in my ~/Documents folder.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I just tested, and mine also seems to wake about twice as fast as it did.

Also, just a warning for anybody doing this update. Don't get panicked when it seems to have stalled. Mine got to around 20% or so and sat there a good two or three minutes apparently doing nothing, then slowly started inching along again. I'd say the whole thing was about seven minutes.

I noticed the FW installer made an install log in a folder call lsm in my ~/Documents folder.
Click to expand...

Great to finally see an update! Seems we won't have to wait for High Sierra after all.

Updated both of mine too, and they certainly do come alive a lot quicker from sleep.

Another word of advice about the installer - I had a USB Hub connected to a Thunderbolt port on the opposite side of the MacBook, and I kept getting an "Update was interrupted" error towards the end of the install. It (thankfully) didn't screw anything up, but I had to unplug the hub which then allowed the update to run correctly. Also note that you need to quit and re-open the LG Screen Manager software if you need to run the update multiple times. So it might be wise to make sure you have nothing else connected while running it. I only plugged in one 5K at a time as well, just to be safe.

I'll be testing out the USB functionality now - really hope I can run those without issue, as it gives me 6 more ports to play with. Our patience has finally paid off ;)

dops said:
It really seems to that the current Mac OS X Sierra UI / UI rendering is not made for 5k "retina" and the CPU does need to do all the rendering..which is crazy.
Click to expand...

It seems that the integrated GPU of the 13 inch MacBook Pro is a bit underpowered for 5K, a few people with those machines have complained about sluggish performance. I was a little surprised that the 13 even supported the 5Ks as it's a lot of pixels to push for a relatively low performance GPU. Metal 2 may help improve performance when High Sierra lands, as it apparently makes better use of the GPU for graphics rendering. Right now the latest High Sierra Public Beta actually feels slower on my 15 inch MPB, as there's a weird initial lagging issue when dragging windows around for me. Will likely be better in the final version though.
dops said:
Additional information: I am using the LG5k with the scaling option 4 (one to the right from the middle with "more" space)
Click to expand...

Apparently the "more space" options push the GPU harder as you're actually rendering even more pixels than 5K (already a lot) which is really going to tax your machine. Have you tried just running it in the "Best for Display" setting?
 
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