Mac displays for a programmer/photographer: a conundrum

[eugleo]

TLDR: Skip to the second to last paragraph, and read the questions in the last one.

Hey! For the past few days I've been sifting through dozens of blogposts, Reddit threads, and tweetstorms, trying to find out what external display would play nicely with my (new) MacBook. I'm a programmer and do photography as a hobby, so I'm looking for sharp text, good colors, and as much screen real estate as I can get. This post summarises what I've learned and poses some question which I hope you'll be able to answer for me.

Let's start off easy. If money is not a part of the equation for you, just get the Apple XDR. The second best choice seems to be the LG 27" 5K, which is (resolution-wise and ppi-wise) almost identical to the 5K iMac. But let's assume you can't shell out over half of what your MBP cost you just to buy a display — what then?

Then it gets more complicated. Let's say you decide to go for a 27" 4K screen; those are pretty common and cheap these days. This gives you ~160ppi. Unfortunately, MacOS is designed to look well on ~110ppi screens (or ~220ppi in the case of retina displays), meaning the UI will look too small on your 160ppi display if you run at native resolution. On the other hand, should you scale by an integer amount (say, 2x, or 200%), the UI would look too big.

Now, you say, how about we scale the UI by a non-integer amount, e.g. 140%? Well, that _should_ theoretically work (although non-integer scaling has some negative impact on the GPU) , however I've seen reports that Mac doesn't handle non-integer scaling very well, making the text look blurry.

To recap: You don't want to use the 6K or 5K displays because they're expensive as hell. You can't run a cheap 4K 27" native (UI too small), nor in 140% (text is blurry), nor in 200% (UI too big). What other options do you have? You can buy a ~110ppi monitor — luckily there are plenty of those — and run it with 200% scaling. However, that effectively shrinks the real estate of the monitor by half, so your 33" becomes a 16". And large 110ppi monitors (let's say 40"+, so that you get 20"+ after the scaling) are back in the "costing half of my MacBook" territory.

Are you hoping for a happy ending? There isn't any. I genuinely don't know what to do; I'd like to hear your solutions to this conundrum. And I'm especially interested in your experience with non-integer scaling on MacOS. If it turned out that the articles are obsolete, and scaling looks nice now, we could just buy a bunch of cheap 4K 27"s and be done with it. To that end, I'm already using my MacBook in a scaled mode, not the "recommended" one (one notch to the right to get more real estate), and I'm ok with it. Maybe that means I'd be ok with some non-integer scaling at an external monitor as well?

 

[Ryan0751]

I‘m also a software developer and photographer (software to pay the bills, photography for fun), and I’m using dual LG 4K 32” displays with my MacBook Pros (I have a work and personal 16” 2019, with a new 16” 2021 on order to replace my personal machine).

I run them at a “looks like 3008x1692” HiDPI resolution. They look great, I would say on a 27” you would probably want to run “looks like 2560x1440” resolution in order to not look too small.

There ARE a few HiDPI resolutions that don’t looks as good (text will be a little fuzzy), but macOS actually does an excellent job with the modes I mentioned above. Apparently it’s starting with a very high resolution (5K, 6K?) and downsampling to create the “looks like” resolution you see.

I’d say in practice it looks not too far off from a Retina display. It’s quite sharp, and significantly higher PPI than say, a native QHD display. There CAN be a performance impact. On my 2019 MBP’s I don’t notice it at all, but on earlier MBP’s it was a problem. For example, I had a 2015 era work issued machine with integrated Intel graphics and the Jetbrains IDE’s (Intellij IDEA, PyCharm, etc) slowed WAY down when running at scaled resolutions. But as I said, with the 2019’s I just don’t even notice it - everything is zippy.

The Apple XDR displays are gorgeous, but the limited connectivity is a problem for me (also, $5,000, eaks, spending $10,000 for two would be nutso). In addition to my Mac’s I have a dual-boot Windows/Linux desktop PC, and the XDR (having only one Thunderbolt 3 input) is really only designed to connect to recent Macs. Also, there’s no KVM options out there that would support the XDR, whereas I was able to buy a 4-port, dual monitor 4K 60Hz KVM switch that I used with my LG’s. I can switch easily between my desktop PC and my work and personal laptops with a button press.

I have toyed with the idea of swapping out the dual monitors with something like what LG offers in an ultra wide curved WUHD (4K UDH resolution horizontally, but less vertical resolution), but haven’t been able to concede with giving up the screen real estate of dual 32”’s (it’s a LOT of space, and takes up a lot of desk space, but is awesome for development work).

In all, I think a couple 4K 27”’s is not a bad choice at all.

 

[Amethyst1]

I have toyed with the idea of swapping out the dual monitors with something like what LG offers in an ultra wide curved WUHD (4K UDH resolution horizontally, but less vertical resolution),

The problem is macOS will not enable HiDPI/Retina modes on these low-resolution/low-ppi ultrawides, resulting in awfully fuzzy/blurry font rendering. The only ultrawides that get HiDPI modes out of the box are the 5120×2160 ones.

Ultrawides aren’t really a good choice for macOS because of this.

 

[Amethyst1]

Apparently it’s starting with a very high resolution (5K, 6K?) and downsampling to create the “looks like” resolution you see.

Yep. For "Looks like 3008×1692", the framebuffer is rendered off-screen at 6016×3384 (twice as wide and twice as tall) and then downscaled to the monitor’s native 3840×2160.

Also, there’s no KVM options out there that would support the XDR,

The XDR can actually be driven by DisplayPort alone (HBR2 link rate is sufficient for 6K 60Hz with DSC enabled), so any KVM switch that supports HBR2 (enough for 4K 60Hz without DSC) should work with the XDR, as long as it doesn’t mess with the video signal in any way. And you’d need to get USB to the XDR too in this setup for brightness control, presets and its built-in USB hub. There are a couple of adapter cables that do this and have been confirmed to work with the XDR.

 

[eugleo]

The problem is macOS will not enable HiDPI/Retina modes on these low-resolution/low-ppi ultrawides, resulting in awfully fuzzy/blurry font rendering. The only ultrawides that get HiDPI modes out of the box are the 5120x2160 ones.

Oh well, this is pretty important information! I'm eyeing a 40" 5K2K Dell (140ppi at native resolution), because I'm able to get it in a big discount; do you suggest it won't be affected by this problem?

Are there any other things that I should know concerning UWs and MacOS?

 

[Amethyst1]

Oh well, this is pretty important information! I'm eyeing a 40" 5K2K Dell (140ppi at native resolution), because I'm able to get a discount on it; do you suggest this problem won't be affecting it?

"5K2K" is 5120×2160. That’s sufficient for the HiDPI modes to be made available.
3440×1440, 3840×1600 or 5120×1440 screens, for instance, will not get the HiDPI modes. Their vertical resolution (height) is too low.

Maybe that means I'd be ok with some non-integer scaling at an external monitor as well?

The slight blurriness introduced by non-integer scaling is definitely visible to me. I run a 164 ppi 3840×2560 monitor scaled to 2560×1707 while the monitor that sits next to it is 219 ppi and running pixel-perfect. But it doesn't ruin the user experience for me. It's still a lot better than a low-resolution/low-ppi monitor running at non-HiDPI modes.

 

[cobaltlemon]

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one experiencing this dilemma. I’m really struggling. I went out and bought 3 4k monitors for my switch to Mac. Problem was the m1 mini can only drive 1 natively. So I tried getting an m1 max but the laptop I received screen didn’t work. I had to wait another 2 months so I canceled the order. I ended buying a 32:9 ultra wide 1440p from Samsung. And everything in the UI is markedly blurry. It’s not a big deal until you start coding. Rendering text is a major part of programming and looking at blurry text all day is uncomfortable and ultimately unacceptable. Doesn’t help that the text smoothing issues are exacerbated once you crack open IntelliJ idea. It’s horrid and unsettling in IDEA. It’s made me contemplate using VS Code, but that’s a ridiculous choice to have to make.

I honestly don’t understand why Mac has to look so much blurrier than Linux or Windows. This in my opinion is a major shortcoming and if I must say a bug in the OS.

Right now I’m being boxed into purchasing studio displays that cost 1600 a piece and then I have to run 2-3 times the wires, migrating from 1 ultra wide. Not to mention I’ll have to get a Mac studio to get support for the same amount of screen real estate with 2 or more monitors

I really wish Apple would just bring back the lcd font smoothing algorithm and not rely so heavily on scaling everything up 200% for sharpness which effectively cuts your screen real estate in half. Effectively discarding one of the major benefits of purchasing a higher resolution screen.

 

[Amethyst1]

Problem was the m1 mini can only drive 1 [monitor] natively.

The M1 Mac mini can drive two monitors; one via DisplayPort/Thunderbolt/USB-C and another via HDMI.

 

[cobaltlemon]

The M1 Mac mini can drive two monitors; one via DisplayPort/Thunderbolt/USB-C and another via HDMI.

Thanks for the correction!

 

[Luvwine]

There is a tension between monitors for digital consumers (bright, high contrast), and digital creators (color accuracy, gamut, capable of accurate calibration for print or digital output with lower contrast and luminance frequently desired). As a photographer, retina displays make judging sharpness tricky as everything looks sharp—even when slightly soft. This is great for consumers, but less so for creators. Anyway, deciding where your priority is will help your decision process. Every monitor is a compromise. Sharpest text, highest contrast is probably Pro Display XDR tho new OLED displays have infinite contrast so there’s that. Pro Display has a very good color gamut (96.7% Adobe RGB tho oddly only 94% of SRGB) but is not easy to calibrate (all displays drift over time). I am more comfortable with being able to calibrate the display and to assign luminance values and color gamut easily. For me, an Eizo 4k 31” (CG319x) monitor with self-calibration built in was the ticket and I can live with some theoretical softness of text (plenty sharp to me but ymmv). Bottom line is my priorities may not be yours, but perhaps identifying what is most important will help? Oh, and as for non integer scaling, I run my 4k monitor at native tho sometimes I bump up the text size for text heavy applications. I don’t notice much difference in sharpness. When I had my 27” iMac next to the Eizo, there was a tiny difference, but I settled in happily to use the Eizo, it’s greater real estate, and ignored the iMac screen till my Mac Studio arrived.

 

[theorist9]

Then it gets more complicated. Let's say you decide to go for a 27" 4K screen; those are pretty common and cheap these days. This gives you ~160ppi. Unfortunately, MacOS is designed to look well on ~110ppi screens (or ~220ppi in the case of retina displays), meaning the UI will look too small on your 160ppi display if you run at native resolution. On the other hand, should you scale by an integer amount (say, 2x, or 200%), the UI would look too big.

I know you're asking about non-integer scaling, but let me ask: Are you assuming that a 4k 27" with 2x scaling would be too big, or have you actually seen one? That's what I run, and I think the UI is nicely-sized.

BTW, the loss of text sharpness with non-integer scaling is noticeable to me. As is the loss of text sharpness when using the Nano-textured version of the Studio or XDR, as opposed to the glossy version.

 

[elchorizo]

Another software developer photographer here. I traditionally do my photo/video editing on a Windows machine running a couple 32" BenQ monitors (PD3200U) which are great. I run them at native 4k resolution on the Windows box.

I do my development work on my work-assigned Macbook hooked up to a couple 27" 4k LG monitors, on the 2nd highest scaling option (I'm not home now so I can't see the name of that scaling option). The text looks great to me there.

I've ordered a new Mac Studio and plan to migrate both work flows there. I've also ordered the new 42" C2 OLED from LG and plan to run that side by side with one or both of my BenQ monitors. I'm hoping (praying) everything will look good on this monitor combination. I'll do most of the development and photo editing on the BenQ monitor and use the OLED for HDR video mastering mostly (also some photo editing I suppose if I want to see the edited photos on an OLED for that sweet sweet contrast).

If only the studio display had been 32" I probably would have just got 2 of those. Alas, I have no interest in 27" at this point.

This thread has me a little nervous but I guess I'll see once my studio arrives sometime in 2027 or so

 

[theorist9]

To the OP: I think these are your low-cost options:

1) The LG 24" 4k monitor, which is 200 ppi. UI elements would only be 10% larger than with 220 ppi. Price is very reasonable ($300). Indeed, at that price you could get two of them.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1269687-REG/lg_24ud58_b_24_4k_freesync.html

2) If 24" is too small, you could buy a used 27" 5k LG off of EBay. I've seen them for ~$600. Just make sure to do your research on the models. The older 27MD5KA/27MD5KB can't connect with USB-C, while the newer 27MD5KL-B (introduced in 2019) can; but this may have no effect on connecting them to a MacBook.[It's really 27MD5K vs 27MD5KL, not sure what the "A" and "B" mean; the model number Apple had listed on its site, when they still sold them, was LG 27MD5KL-B.AUSA, but that's the same as the 27MD5KL-B.] More info.:

Difference between old and new LG UltraFine 5K(4K) Displays

The Apple Store shows the LG UltraFine 5K Display and LG UltraFine 4K display marked as "new". I have found reviews on YouTube of the same two displays dated 2 years ago. Does this mean that the...

apple.stackexchange.com

3) If you don't want to buy used, and 24" is too small, you could run a 27" 4k at non-integer scaling. As I've mentioned, I think this noticeably compromises text quality. However, you're not going to get an answer to whether the compromise will bother you unless you actually check for yourself. You'll probably need to find a local store that has a 27" 4k on display, or find a friend/colleague with one, and hook your Macbook up to it and see. Just remember to bring a cable with you .

N.B.: You'll also want to Google [model # of monitor] + [model # of your spectrophotometer] to determine how readily the monitor can be calibrated.