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They sort of imply that only the Studio display would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that

They sort of imply that only the Studio display would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that. Then he concludes that 600nits is unnecessary and that he doesn't need or want the USB-C ports. I have no idea why he went with the apple display instead of any good 4k screen for 400$, or two of them.

JofArnold 5y ago
5k. Not 4k. It's a huge difference; 2x 1080 versus 2x 1440.
shadowfacts 5y ago
I can't speak for the author, but I find 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of screen real estate (and physical size for UI elements). Unless it's a small 21" display, 4k at high-DPI would result in less screen space. Going up to 5k is the best way to get that combination of real estate and pixel density.
- ysleepy 5y ago
  1000$ worth of difference? - Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper?
  - mistersquid 5y ago
    > Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper? The LG Ultrafine 5K is notorious for its high unreliability (WiFi interference), low build quality (creaky plastic), and low durability (flaky ports). The target market for Apple Studio Display does not look to trade price for lower quality. Rather, Apple's target market are premium buyers, people looking to pay a bit more for higher quality.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Not only is the UltraFine 5k’s chassis creaky, it can’t handle the heat the display produces and has an extremely high rate of cracking with pieces flaking off. The whole product is abysmal in terms of quality, I don’t know how LG thought it was ok to release.
      - gonehome 5y ago
        What's weird to me is it doesn't take a genius to guess at what an Apple monitor would have looked like. Why can zero other companies execute on something like this? Sure Apple has advantages with scale, but it's not like they're squeezing tight margins. There was a lot of room under the cost of the Pro Display XDR. I'm not sure why none of these other companies can really execute on high quality hardware.
        hnlmorg 5y ago
        Maybe the demand isn’t there? There might not be a big intersect between those who are willing to spend > $1000 on a monitor and those who wouldn’t want to buy non-Apple hardware.
        gonehome 5y ago
        Maybe? There were years without any viable option where I think people would have. Now that Apple is back in the game you're probably right.
        mort96 5y ago
        Hell, just take the same LG panel that's used by both the LG UltraFine and the Apple Studio Display, put it in a well-built metal case, don't waste money on things like the A13 CPU, 64GB of flash, 13 megapixel camera, high-quality speaker system, etc, don't spend as many engineering resources on making the monitor as thin-and-light as possible. You could've made the standard monitor for anyone who wants a 5k 27" screen. I don't understand why the only manufacturer in the 5k 27" screen market was LG for half a decade and now only LG and Apple. There should be so much room here.
    - aabhay 5y ago
      As a counterpoint, I absolutely love my LG Ultrafine 5k. I bought a second one even. Never had any issues at all, and I love taking video calls, doing design work, etc. on them.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Inexplicably, Apple buyers trade price for less functionality.
- canuckintime 5y ago
  > 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of [MacOS] screen real estate (and physical size for [MacOS] UI elements) ftfy. Apple is double dealing you here. Apple developed MacOS to look best at that size/density, and forced the development of the few expensive displays are that size/density... After a decade waiting for third party displays to meet up their standard, to no avail, perhaps Apple should just modify the OS to better support other HiDPI displays available
  - mort96 5y ago
    Nah, that's not true. Linux also looks best at roughly that scale. Everything is way too big at 1080p@1x/4k@2x at 27" -- in both macOS and Linux. I'm not too sure about Windows, but given the fact that cross-platform apps like web browsers render everything at the same logical size across the systems, and the fact that browsers don't look hilariously out of place in Windows. I'm gonna assume that it applies to Windows as well. I used to have a 27" 1080p monitor for my Linux box, now I have a 27" 1440p monitor and a 24" 1080p monitor. Everything looks less oversized now.
    - skydhash 5y ago
      I don't know about 4k@27, but 1080@27 is indeed too big. The only thing I want to be big is the text - and icons maybe -, But I can't stomach big UI elements.
      - mort96 5y ago
        FWIW, 4k is 3840x2160, which is (19202)x(10802). So 4k@27 running at a 2x scale is exactly the same physical area per logical pixel as 1080p@27 running at a 1x scale.
        skydhash 5y ago
        I have a 1440p@27 monitor. That gives me enough real estate to actually use editors and IDE and have some real estate. I could probably do 4k, but maybe @32 inches and native resolution.
Neverending 5y ago
Not to mention this is the only glossy display he's used, which is visually going to be much more pleasing than a matte display until you can't stand the glare.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
radley 5y ago
A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen. So a 4K screen will natively provide a smaller desktop layout regardless of screen size, particularly on macOS.
- tzs 5y ago
  > A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen Not quite. 24" 4K (3840 x 2160) is 184 DPI. A 27" 5K (5120 x 2880) is 218 DPI. I'm pretty sure that 24" 4K would be high enough that I would not be able to notice the lower DPI compared to my current 27" 5K iMac. I base this on the fact that I normally view the iMac from about 19" away, occasionally leaning in to as close as 13". At 218 DPI, viewing from those distances gives 72 PPD (pixels per degree) and 49 PPD. I don't see any difference, and so conclude that I'm fine with anything about 49 PPD. At 19" distance a 24" 4K would give me 60 PPD. Somewhere around 15" it would drop below the 49 PPD I know for sure is good enough for me. At 13" it would be down to 42 PPD. I'm pretty sure that would still be fine, because if I get close enough to my iMac for it to be 42 PPD (just a little under 10 inches) it is still fine for me. The main issue I have with 24" 4K is that there doesn't seem to be many models and they cost a lot. Newegg for instance only has 3: LG 24MD4KL for $690, LG 24MD4KLB for $900, and a refurbished LG for $649. B & H has those first two for $697 and $882, and an LG 24UD58 for $297. I'm not sure why that last is so much cheaper than the others--it has a pretty low maximum brightness but I didn't notice anything else too bad in the specs. Fortunately, similar calculations for 4K 27" and tests at various distances from the iMac to match the PPD of 4K 27" at my distances suggest that 4K 27" would work for me and there are a gazillion of them in the $300-600 range. I've been recently looking into this because my 2017 27" 5K iMac has developed a vertical line of bad pixels [1]. (And wow...I need to clean that screen. Those photos show a lot of dust and dirt that I do not see with the naked eye). That line is in the middle of the right half of the screen and the way I sit has me centered in front of the left half of the screen, so it is pretty much ignorable most of the time but it has prompted me to start thinking of upgrading to a new Mac system, with a Mac Studio being the most likely candidate. [1] https://imgur.com/a/AKyMIKZ https://imgur.com/a/AKyMIKZ
mistersquid 5y ago
> would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that. While true, the ppi increase from most 4k screens would not be as large as the Apple Studio Display. Most 4k monitors are 24 inches, and those monitors will be 192.94 ppi. [0][1] The Apple Studio Display comes in at 218 ppi. [2] [0] https://www.sven.de/dpi/ https://www.sven.de/dpi/ [1] https://imgur.com/a/8Woe7Bn https://imgur.com/a/8Woe7Bn [2] https://www.apple.com/studio-display/specs/ https://www.apple.com/studio-display/specs/
- ysleepy 5y ago
  That's why I said "DPI increase". 27" at 1440p is 108.79 PPI. I'm sitting in front of a 4k 27" and the 160ppi is almost indistinguishable to my macbook at 227 due to the different viewing distance. And I always had the impression most 4k displays were 27".
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    Well to compare devices used at similar distances... my XDR blows away my previous 27" 4k monitors and various 5k ultrawides. I don't even use HDR, the density is just that good for looking at text all day. It takes on this milky quality that I haven't seen on any other monitor before this. The complete lack of appreciable IPS glow or uniformity issues is also better than you might expect for text. Especially with dark backgrounds which will now present one impressively uniform block of color, improving contrast.
  - mistersquid 5y ago
    > 27" at 1440p is 108.79 PPI. > most 4k displays were 27". This is in the direction of lower PPI/DPI, which is worse. That is: 4K @ 24" > 4K @ 27" The OP chose a higher PPI/DPI than what is available for most 4K monitors. Also, as others have noted, the Apple Studio Display is 5K, so more UI is visible than on a 4K monitor.
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    I use a 30" 4K monitor, and I still don't notice the DPI difference between it and my MacBook Pro or iPad. Personally I would much rather that they made the display 4K and 120hz instead of 5k and 60hz. At that size, I don't see a big difference between 4K and 5k, but the 60hz vs. 120hz jump is very noticeable.
mort96 5y ago
Maybe because he wanted a 27" display and not a 24" one? You wanna stick to integer DPI scaling for the most part, and at 2x scale, a 4k 27" display has way too big GUI elements. There aren't many good options in the HiDPI 27" market, just half-measures like the 4k 27" screens you mention which require fractional scaling.
- kuschku 5y ago
  Not fractional scaling, just dpi scaling instead of integer scaling. Sadly, macOS and Gnome refuse to support it, which is ridiculous, because macOS UI Toolkit is originally based on PDF to allow arbitrary scaling.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    You can enable DPI scaling under GNOME and it works fine for the DE itself and most GNOME programs, but it’s extremely hit or miss for anything not GNOME. Same deal with KDE. Really irritating because it makes my Thinkpad X1 Nano unusable under Linux. This is probably why macOS does things the way it does: no room for third party developer error.
  - mort96 5y ago
    Wayland (as in the protocol) doesn't support it either, FWIW. Fractional scaling on compositors which support it (e.g Sway) renders everything at the nearest integer scale and then downscales when compositing, so everything becomes a bit blurry -- just like how macOS does it. Using all vector graphics for the GUI so that you can freely change the scale is all well and good, but lots of GUI applications need raster graphics too. With integer scaling, you just have different image assets for the different scales. With fractional scaling, there isn't really a good solution; you could automatically downscale a higher resolution image, but then you get the blurriness problem. GUIs also use lines a lot. If an application asks for 1pt wide lines, and you're at 1.5x scale, what do you do? Do you draw it at 1px wide, and end up with a line that's too light? Do you draw it at 2px line, and end up with one that's too heavy? Or do you make one line of pixels that's solid and one line of pixels that's at 50% opacity, which gives the right visual weight but makes it look blurry and messes up the positioning slightly? This probably isn't a huge problem, but it's the kind of problem that it makes sense if Apple wants to avoid.
newaccount2021 5y ago
fuzzieozzie 5y ago
Maybe because it's April 1?
turtlebits 5y ago
On a Mac, the UI on 4k at 27" is too large. That is why the Studio Display is 27" 5k and the 24" iMac is 4.5k. You can do non-integer scaling to change the UI size, but then it becomes blurry.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  And even on OSes that can handle native non-integer scaling, sharpness is noticeably degraded compared to 5k.
- selectodude 5y ago
  I 2x everything on my 32" 4K display. Maybe my eyes just suck.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  People say it is blurry but I think I have pretty good eyes and do a lot of pixel peeping and don’t really see the issue. I don’t think I’ve ever run macOS at the native resolution because things are just too big, with the exception of my 1080p monitor. Does blurry mean something other than blurry?

JofArnold 5y ago

5k. Not 4k. It's a huge difference; 2x 1080 versus 2x 1440.

shadowfacts 5y ago

I can't speak for the author, but I find 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of screen real estate (and physical size for UI elements). Unless it's a small 21" display, 4k at high-DPI would result in less screen space. Going up to 5k is the best way to get that combination of real estate and pixel density.

ysleepy 5y ago
1000$ worth of difference? - Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper?
- mistersquid 5y ago
  > Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper? The LG Ultrafine 5K is notorious for its high unreliability (WiFi interference), low build quality (creaky plastic), and low durability (flaky ports). The target market for Apple Studio Display does not look to trade price for lower quality. Rather, Apple's target market are premium buyers, people looking to pay a bit more for higher quality.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Not only is the UltraFine 5k’s chassis creaky, it can’t handle the heat the display produces and has an extremely high rate of cracking with pieces flaking off. The whole product is abysmal in terms of quality, I don’t know how LG thought it was ok to release.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      What's weird to me is it doesn't take a genius to guess at what an Apple monitor would have looked like. Why can zero other companies execute on something like this? Sure Apple has advantages with scale, but it's not like they're squeezing tight margins. There was a lot of room under the cost of the Pro Display XDR. I'm not sure why none of these other companies can really execute on high quality hardware.
      - hnlmorg 5y ago
        Maybe the demand isn’t there? There might not be a big intersect between those who are willing to spend > $1000 on a monitor and those who wouldn’t want to buy non-Apple hardware.
        gonehome 5y ago
        Maybe? There were years without any viable option where I think people would have. Now that Apple is back in the game you're probably right.
      - mort96 5y ago
        Hell, just take the same LG panel that's used by both the LG UltraFine and the Apple Studio Display, put it in a well-built metal case, don't waste money on things like the A13 CPU, 64GB of flash, 13 megapixel camera, high-quality speaker system, etc, don't spend as many engineering resources on making the monitor as thin-and-light as possible. You could've made the standard monitor for anyone who wants a 5k 27" screen. I don't understand why the only manufacturer in the 5k 27" screen market was LG for half a decade and now only LG and Apple. There should be so much room here.
  - aabhay 5y ago
    As a counterpoint, I absolutely love my LG Ultrafine 5k. I bought a second one even. Never had any issues at all, and I love taking video calls, doing design work, etc. on them.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Inexplicably, Apple buyers trade price for less functionality.
canuckintime 5y ago
> 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of [MacOS] screen real estate (and physical size for [MacOS] UI elements) ftfy. Apple is double dealing you here. Apple developed MacOS to look best at that size/density, and forced the development of the few expensive displays are that size/density... After a decade waiting for third party displays to meet up their standard, to no avail, perhaps Apple should just modify the OS to better support other HiDPI displays available
- mort96 5y ago
  Nah, that's not true. Linux also looks best at roughly that scale. Everything is way too big at 1080p@1x/4k@2x at 27" -- in both macOS and Linux. I'm not too sure about Windows, but given the fact that cross-platform apps like web browsers render everything at the same logical size across the systems, and the fact that browsers don't look hilariously out of place in Windows. I'm gonna assume that it applies to Windows as well. I used to have a 27" 1080p monitor for my Linux box, now I have a 27" 1440p monitor and a 24" 1080p monitor. Everything looks less oversized now.
  - skydhash 5y ago
    I don't know about 4k@27, but 1080@27 is indeed too big. The only thing I want to be big is the text - and icons maybe -, But I can't stomach big UI elements.
    - mort96 5y ago
      FWIW, 4k is 3840x2160, which is (19202)x(10802). So 4k@27 running at a 2x scale is exactly the same physical area per logical pixel as 1080p@27 running at a 1x scale.
      - skydhash 5y ago
        I have a 1440p@27 monitor. That gives me enough real estate to actually use editors and IDE and have some real estate. I could probably do 4k, but maybe @32 inches and native resolution.

Neverending 5y ago

Not to mention this is the only glossy display he's used, which is visually going to be much more pleasing than a matte display until you can't stand the glare.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

radley 5y ago

A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen. So a 4K screen will natively provide a smaller desktop layout regardless of screen size, particularly on macOS.

tzs 5y ago
> A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen Not quite. 24" 4K (3840 x 2160) is 184 DPI. A 27" 5K (5120 x 2880) is 218 DPI. I'm pretty sure that 24" 4K would be high enough that I would not be able to notice the lower DPI compared to my current 27" 5K iMac. I base this on the fact that I normally view the iMac from about 19" away, occasionally leaning in to as close as 13". At 218 DPI, viewing from those distances gives 72 PPD (pixels per degree) and 49 PPD. I don't see any difference, and so conclude that I'm fine with anything about 49 PPD. At 19" distance a 24" 4K would give me 60 PPD. Somewhere around 15" it would drop below the 49 PPD I know for sure is good enough for me. At 13" it would be down to 42 PPD. I'm pretty sure that would still be fine, because if I get close enough to my iMac for it to be 42 PPD (just a little under 10 inches) it is still fine for me. The main issue I have with 24" 4K is that there doesn't seem to be many models and they cost a lot. Newegg for instance only has 3: LG 24MD4KL for $690, LG 24MD4KLB for $900, and a refurbished LG for $649. B & H has those first two for $697 and $882, and an LG 24UD58 for $297. I'm not sure why that last is so much cheaper than the others--it has a pretty low maximum brightness but I didn't notice anything else too bad in the specs. Fortunately, similar calculations for 4K 27" and tests at various distances from the iMac to match the PPD of 4K 27" at my distances suggest that 4K 27" would work for me and there are a gazillion of them in the $300-600 range. I've been recently looking into this because my 2017 27" 5K iMac has developed a vertical line of bad pixels [1]. (And wow...I need to clean that screen. Those photos show a lot of dust and dirt that I do not see with the naked eye). That line is in the middle of the right half of the screen and the way I sit has me centered in front of the left half of the screen, so it is pretty much ignorable most of the time but it has prompted me to start thinking of upgrading to a new Mac system, with a Mac Studio being the most likely candidate. [1] https://imgur.com/a/AKyMIKZ https://imgur.com/a/AKyMIKZ

mistersquid 5y ago

> would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that. While true, the ppi increase from most 4k screens would not be as large as the Apple Studio Display. Most 4k monitors are 24 inches, and those monitors will be 192.94 ppi. [0][1] The Apple Studio Display comes in at 218 ppi. [2] [0] https://www.sven.de/dpi/ https://www.sven.de/dpi/ [1] https://imgur.com/a/8Woe7Bn https://imgur.com/a/8Woe7Bn [2] https://www.apple.com/studio-display/specs/ https://www.apple.com/studio-display/specs/

ysleepy 5y ago
That's why I said "DPI increase". 27" at 1440p is 108.79 PPI. I'm sitting in front of a 4k 27" and the 160ppi is almost indistinguishable to my macbook at 227 due to the different viewing distance. And I always had the impression most 4k displays were 27".
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Well to compare devices used at similar distances... my XDR blows away my previous 27" 4k monitors and various 5k ultrawides. I don't even use HDR, the density is just that good for looking at text all day. It takes on this milky quality that I haven't seen on any other monitor before this. The complete lack of appreciable IPS glow or uniformity issues is also better than you might expect for text. Especially with dark backgrounds which will now present one impressively uniform block of color, improving contrast.
- mistersquid 5y ago
  > 27" at 1440p is 108.79 PPI. > most 4k displays were 27". This is in the direction of lower PPI/DPI, which is worse. That is: 4K @ 24" > 4K @ 27" The OP chose a higher PPI/DPI than what is available for most 4K monitors. Also, as others have noted, the Apple Studio Display is 5K, so more UI is visible than on a 4K monitor.
- D13Fd 5y ago
  I use a 30" 4K monitor, and I still don't notice the DPI difference between it and my MacBook Pro or iPad. Personally I would much rather that they made the display 4K and 120hz instead of 5k and 60hz. At that size, I don't see a big difference between 4K and 5k, but the 60hz vs. 120hz jump is very noticeable.

mort96 5y ago

Maybe because he wanted a 27" display and not a 24" one? You wanna stick to integer DPI scaling for the most part, and at 2x scale, a 4k 27" display has way too big GUI elements. There aren't many good options in the HiDPI 27" market, just half-measures like the 4k 27" screens you mention which require fractional scaling.

kuschku 5y ago
Not fractional scaling, just dpi scaling instead of integer scaling. Sadly, macOS and Gnome refuse to support it, which is ridiculous, because macOS UI Toolkit is originally based on PDF to allow arbitrary scaling.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  You can enable DPI scaling under GNOME and it works fine for the DE itself and most GNOME programs, but it’s extremely hit or miss for anything not GNOME. Same deal with KDE. Really irritating because it makes my Thinkpad X1 Nano unusable under Linux. This is probably why macOS does things the way it does: no room for third party developer error.
- mort96 5y ago
  Wayland (as in the protocol) doesn't support it either, FWIW. Fractional scaling on compositors which support it (e.g Sway) renders everything at the nearest integer scale and then downscales when compositing, so everything becomes a bit blurry -- just like how macOS does it. Using all vector graphics for the GUI so that you can freely change the scale is all well and good, but lots of GUI applications need raster graphics too. With integer scaling, you just have different image assets for the different scales. With fractional scaling, there isn't really a good solution; you could automatically downscale a higher resolution image, but then you get the blurriness problem. GUIs also use lines a lot. If an application asks for 1pt wide lines, and you're at 1.5x scale, what do you do? Do you draw it at 1px wide, and end up with a line that's too light? Do you draw it at 2px line, and end up with one that's too heavy? Or do you make one line of pixels that's solid and one line of pixels that's at 50% opacity, which gives the right visual weight but makes it look blurry and messes up the positioning slightly? This probably isn't a huge problem, but it's the kind of problem that it makes sense if Apple wants to avoid.

newaccount2021 5y ago

fuzzieozzie 5y ago

Maybe because it's April 1?

turtlebits 5y ago

On a Mac, the UI on 4k at 27" is too large. That is why the Studio Display is 27" 5k and the 24" iMac is 4.5k. You can do non-integer scaling to change the UI size, but then it becomes blurry.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
And even on OSes that can handle native non-integer scaling, sharpness is noticeably degraded compared to 5k.
selectodude 5y ago
I 2x everything on my 32" 4K display. Maybe my eyes just suck.
n8cpdx 5y ago
People say it is blurry but I think I have pretty good eyes and do a lot of pixel peeping and don’t really see the issue. I don’t think I’ve ever run macOS at the native resolution because things are just too big, with the exception of my 1080p monitor. Does blurry mean something other than blurry?