I chose the
Dell 40" 5K/2K ultra-wide U4021QW They say it has 140 ppi and it looks super sharp to my, "perfect" 20:20 eyes... as good as my prior iMac 27" that, in conking, took my best monitor down with computing hardware.
Yes, I have an old Mac myself with pre-retina screen and I can see the difference when comparing it to a retina screen. However, comparing this new Dell to my old iMac, I do NOT see a difference... except in having much more horizontal screen RE which is even better than I imagined it would be. Jamming 5K pixels into a 40" diagonal space is a lot of closely-packed pixels. And 2K pixels in a vertical space of a little over 15" is also a LOT of pixels.
The "must be <Apple's exact choice> of ppl" crowd passionately makes that case because either they actually believe that or they are in closet marketing mode trying to "help" Apple sell a monitor that costs about as much as a former iMac 27" but is only the screen instead of a whole computer. They will spin anything less than
that exact ppi will be "blurry, ugly, mess"... but that's simply not true... much like the spin of how phablets were "abominations", etc
BEFORE Apple rolled out their own and "99% don't need NFC payment functionality" before Apple rolled out Apple Pay. The crowd is fantastic at faulting what Apple doesn't have for sale right now and then flip-flopping to evangelizing that exact thing when Apple gets around to going there.
On this very topic of screen resolution, Apple once had an iPad event in which they rolled out a retina screen on one new iPad and a non-retina on the other. What did the crowd do? Spun why retina was absolutely must-have (upgrade) on the former but was not needed on the latter... until the next year when Apple rolled out a new version of that one
with retina... and then retina was THE group spun reason to upgrade. Funny how very passionate opinions evolve WITH whatever Apple has for sale at any given time.
The easiest way to test that wall of spin yourself is take that MB to a retailer with a variety of monitors and hook it up to some of them. Dirt cheap monitors won't look so great. But up at Apple Studio Monitor price points, there are MANY good choices that can look great and deliver desirable consumer options like BIGGER than 27" sizes and/or wider-to-ultra-wide options. I'm no Dell fan at all but I completely love this new monitor vs. my former iMac "best" monitor.
Besides giving me that bigger, ultra-wide I was long-desiring in a new iMac, it also has a KVM hub built in...
Now that Bootcamp is pretty much dead, those needing Windows too need good solutions. Monitors in this price range can come with many connectors other than only thunderbolt. For example, the one I chose has several video inputs. My new Mac Studio goes into the thunderbolt jack... just as it would if I went with the Studio Monitor. However, when I add a Mac mini-like (sized) PC to get Bootcamp back the old fashioned way, I have available jacks (2 HDMI or 1 DisplayPort) to feed its picture to this
same monitor too. This one will even "split screen" so I can have macOS on one half and Windows in the other... at the same time... if I need side-by-side computing. The KVM lets ONE keyboard and mouse work with
BOTH platforms.
I'm sure Apple Studio monitor is a great screen because it's largely the
same screen many of us know from 27" iMacs. And if case material or Apple logo is paramount in decision making, it's the
ONLY desktop option available for less than $6K. But if one can get over those kinds of things, there are MANY good choices for $1500-$2000. I encourage consumers to do the most fundamental consumer thing and
shop around. It's very easy to go see some with your own eyes. There's some nice options available out there.
