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That's the thing, the brightness is actually only 350nits on Dell, but 400nits on HP and Philips I've linked; the original MSRP was the same as the Dell, it's o
by cnst 1y ago
That's the thing, the brightness is actually only 350nits on Dell, but 400nits on HP and Philips I've linked; the original MSRP was the same as the Dell, it's only the sale price that ended up being really good on those. So, the only TB monitor in its class actually has worse brightness than many of the non-TB options.
The HP is calibrated and has amazing colours, and it's 90Hz, too, although I keep it at 60Hz.
The Philips monitor is 4k UHD and also IPS Black, same 2000:1 contrast as all IPS Black panels share, so, I'm not sure why you'd get the Dell with the lower resolution and lower brightness at a higher price. The only true benefit of Dell is 2.5GigE and 120Hz, but 350nits is actually a downside compared to 400nits of the cheaper monitors I've listed.
BTW, you've never addressed the UPS issue.
Do any docks at all work when the power is out? How do you take that into account when you need to connect stuff like SSD, kb and mouse? Do you suffer data loss on your SSD because your laptop lacks standard ports and dock use is required that can't be powered by the laptop anymore? Or do you get UPS for your laptop just for the dock? I just don't understand how the dock requirement is not a big deal. I got a laptop simply because it's fanless and has an integrated UPS, I didn't need it to be portable otherwise.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago4k is a detractor for my usage, no integer scaling, which is annoying not just under macOS but also Linux. 2560x1440 or 5k are preferred. I guess you’d probably need a UPS for a powered dock, I don’t know. The power is out too infrequently where I live for it to be an issue and it’s nice for the dock to be able to charge for one cable swapping between machines.
- cnst 1y agoI think the last power loss here was 8mo15d ago at my place (around Christmas time in 2024?), but it could easily result in a data loss if you're using an external SSD through a dock, because your MacBook lacks a sufficient port supply, and because internal storage is severely limited by Apple, too, so, you may as well be required to use it with an external SSD at all times. 4k@27in may be too small pitch, but QHD@27in would be too pixelated. Especially on macOS that does NOT allow turning off antialiasing. I'm currently using the 400nit HP Z24m G3 @ 2560x1440 @ 24in with my 16GB MBA M1, the colours are absolutely amazing compared to the cheaper Lenovo monitors. Firefox works great, because it lets you turn off antialiasing, but there's no way to turn it off in Brave or Chrome, which results in super washed out and blurry text everywhere. Honestly, macOS is not production ready at this point. Data loss because you have to use an external SSD through a dock, poor monitor support with regressions after moving to Apple Silicon, no ports for anything, inadequate RAM/storage that cannot be upgraded in any way besides the external SSD through a dock with a UPS. Basically, the most simple things are super complicated. Didn't it used to be the opposite with the Macs, where they were actually simpler and more flexible?
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoI have one desk setup where the main monitor is a 5k Studio Display (with 27” 1440 secondary), and another where that Dell is the main monitor. While the former is much nicer looking, I don’t find the 27” 1440s bad at all under macOS. My mail client and RSS reader even sits on the secondary 1440 most of the time, so it’s used for reading plenty. I don’t futz with AA settings at all. Laptops in general haven’t been flush with ports for a very long time now, unless we’re talking about workstation laptops and sometimes gaming laptops. I have an old late-00s 15.4” Precision that has more ports than a lot of consumer desktops and entry-level motherboards these days, but by and large laptops come with maybe a third as many at most. Apple laptops haven’t been replete with ports like that since the PowerBook G3 “Pismo” was EoL’d back in 2000. People who need that many ports usually get a tower of some kind.