The Sad State of Mac Monitors in 2023
As a Mac user (for laptop/desktop), I’m a big fan of external high-resolution monitors. With HiDPI/Retina, 4K is basically a minimum, and ideally 5K or higher. Single-cable thunderbolt with Power Delivery (65W minimum, ideally 100W or higher), and ideally an integrated camera, microphone, speakers, and USB-C ports (for permanently connected devices like an ethernet adapter, multifunction dock, etc.) are great too.
There are plenty of fairly commodity 4K displays from 24” to 32”, and lots of TVs at 4K up to even 85”, but these aren’t really ideal due to resolution. (I still remember using a cheap 30Hz-limited HDMI-driven 4K 39” TV as a monitor back when I worked at Cloudflare in 2014…a lot better than the 1920x1200 24” options at the time). If you’re using a screen for enough hours per day, the improvement over 4K (in screen real estate as well as sharpness) is worth it, at least to me. A lot of the weird ultrawide monitors take the place of multiple monitors on a desk, but do not have particularly high resolution (often lower than 4K for vertical resolution: 1440), so they’re great for gaming but not for small text, etc.
For years, I’ve been using LG 5K displays. These are overall decent, but essentially Mac-specific, unchanging in design, and rather old and expensive.
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27md5kl-b-5k-uhd-led-monitor $1299, a slightly updated version of a monitor first released in 2016. It has a good panel, but mediocre speakers and microphone and camera.
The Apple Studio Display 27 is a pretty direct replacement which fixes most of the minor complaints about speakers/camera and costs $1599. This is probably what I’d buy today if I suddenly had to get another Mac monitor.
Above this, there isn’t a whole lot.
There is the Apple Pro Display XDR, which is 32”, 6K, and generally beautiful for $5-7k. I probably should have just bought one of these (and would if I were sitting at the same desk for 8+ hours/day for a year — it’s expensive, but 10% happiness and productivity increase for 2000 hours is well worth $1-3k depreciation.). (ugh, starting to convince myself to buy one of these…)
8K is to some degree the promise of what’s next, but there are multiple issues there.
The (now discontinued?) Dell UltraSharp 32 8K Monitor - UP3218K.
This one is interesting, but difficult to drive from a Mac laptop, as it uses 2x Display Port, and is $4k. 8K displays are probably also pushing the limits of what the graphics processor in a rMBP16 can comfortably run.
But maybe there’s hope!
The new (announced at CES 2023) Dell 32 6K (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/dells-new-ultrasharp-monitor-is-a-6k-powerhouse-for-pros/) might be a good alternative, as it will probably be priced more reasonably (with a lower quality panel), will support multiple computers, and will be modern enough to support single-cable connections. I’ll probably hold out for this, supposed to be shipping in the first half of 2023.
Apple might ship some new/updated monitors at the end of 2023, but I’d really like to move away from being tied to Apple, and since I tend to replace monitors far less frequently than I replace computers, having a couple 6K monitors which work well with multiple computers and last for 4-6 years is pretty attractive.
So yes, after about 6 years of limited progress in the high-end (but not crazy) >4K monitor world, we might be seeing some new options!