Studio Display or Alternatives

waspy88

waspy88

waspy88

Associate
Joined
9 Sep 2008
Posts
1,512
Location
United Pingdom
Hey Guys,

I have an LG 38" 3840 x 1600 and its just too grainy and horrible with my work laptop and the text is garbage.
I am thinking of getting a Studio Display for the resolution but have a few qualms..

27" is it too small, and do I need two of them?

The alternatives in my mind are:

Dell 40" 5120 x 2160 Ultra Wide Screen
BenQ 32" PD 3225U

But I hear that 4k doesn't look great for text on macs, fwiw I do a lot of reading for work so stare at the monitor a lot.
My wife works for the NHS so the Studio display comes to £1409 from apple directly still feels like a lot of money for what it is, but not sure there is a real alternative.
 
I have two of the Studio Displays, and for MacOS I would not go with anything else, unless I came into a lot of money to be able to splurge on the bigger Pro Display XDR.

Lots of people are fine with the text on other displays, but it's always looked like garbage to me. I have a good quality Alienware OLED which also looked trash, but looks perfect on Linux.
 
Great displays. I have a pro display XDR and a studio in portrait next to it and its a great setup. The XDR is silly but honestly the Studio isn't actually horrendous value in the grand scheme of 5K displays and I hate 27" 4K displays. Only really stupid bit on the Studio is the mount. You can't change it without taking it to an apple store and having them replace the whole back panel for a lot of money. Who designed it should be shot.
 
Finally managed to get a good ish deal on the Studio Display Height & Tilt, so got that delivered today, I do need a second monitor.. so gone for a VESA on to add to the desk :P

For those on the verge of getting one and on the fence, the resolution is amazing and the type is so clear. If you sit in front of your screen a lot deffo get this!
 
I keep telling myself I'm fine with my 27" 4K LG :p set to 200% scaling in macOS for 1080p sizing but double the resolution. Looks good enough for me :D
 
waspy88 said:
Finally managed to get a good ish deal on the Studio Display Height & Tilt, so got that delivered today, I do need a second monitor.. so gone for a VESA on to add to the desk :P

For those on the verge of getting one and on the fence, the resolution is amazing and the type is so clear. If you sit in front of your screen a lot deffo get this!
Click to expand...

People underestimate how important a good quality display is. My eyes really hurt from using 2 displays with different resolutions and 4k at 27" is crap IMO. I have an XDR and a studio display next to it and its great. Studio is portrait for my coding IDE and the XDR has everything else. Great setup if somewhat expensive.

Can't put a price on your comfort and eyesight for something you look at 8+ hours a day. Well, you can but I try not to think about that :p

One thing that really annoys me about the Studio display is the fact you have to select the mount at time or purchase and it feels like an afterthought with the VESA mount. The XDRs mounting is so nice compared to the Studio and you don't have to take it in to apple and pay lots of money to change the stand.
 
Last edited:
Scott C said:
That’s what I thought until I started running it at ‘looks like 1440’ :p
Click to expand...
But isn't that the issue? You're running at a scaling/resolution that doesn't map to native pixels. I.e., at 4K, you can 200% scale and have exactly 4 pixels rendering 1, whereas a 1440p scale is some odd number and so causes fuzziness.

5K displays work the same way for 1440p.
 
squerble said:
But isn't that the issue? You're running at a scaling/resolution that doesn't map to native pixels. I.e., at 4K, you can 200% scale and have exactly 4 pixels rendering 1, whereas a 1440p scale is some odd number and so causes fuzziness.

5K displays work the same way for 1440p.
Click to expand...

Yep, which is why 5K is far far superior to the faux 4K that monitors/TVs have decided to use.

I had a couple of the LG 4k Monitors that were 4096x2304 and at 21.5" they were the perfect size for the resolution. Unfortunately they had other issues and they were just a little too small in the end but thats quite a considerable number of extra pixels vs the 3840x2160 that 4K is on every other monitor.

1080 is so little screen real estate when you are running 4K at 2x.
 
fez said:
1080 is so little screen real estate when you are running 4K at 2x.
Click to expand...
Yea I understand this to a degree, I don't find it too limiting though. That said, I'm typically only ever doing productivity and some YouTube on there, with very tiny stints with VSCode open so perhaps that's why I don't have issues with it.
 
squerble said:
But isn't that the issue? You're running at a scaling/resolution that doesn't map to native pixels. I.e., at 4K, you can 200% scale and have exactly 4 pixels rendering 1, whereas a 1440p scale is some odd number and so causes fuzziness.

5K displays work the same way for 1440p.
Click to expand...
Yeah, what fez said really :) I tend to have multiple JetBrains and terminals open at the same time and 1080p is just so ‘restricting’

It’s also why I referenced that 5k BenQ display in the same post :p
 
squerble said:
Yea I understand this to a degree, I don't find it too limiting though. That said, I'm typically only ever doing productivity and some YouTube on there, with very tiny stints with VSCode open so perhaps that's why I don't have issues with it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, its all depending on use case. I was running my old 4k (with the higher 4k res) next to the XDR and was still having issues with screen real estate. I use VIM with 4 panels on screen at once usually so it was the horizontal width that was the issue in portrait mode. That and the old screen didn't play so nicely with MacOS and would wake in a really dimmed state quite often which was annoying.

Currently with the 6k XDR I have 2 apps side by side which is usually browser and slack/A.N.Other and then full screen VIM on the portrait 5K Studio. A bougie setup for sure but it works.
 
I went through quite a few monitors before landing here on the Studio display, 4K was not clear enough for me. Obviously the best option would be an XDR, but with that being a few years old I am hoping they refresh that. Also it buys 3 x studio displays :P

For my PC I have an LG Dual Up and an LG C2 42" - also I did have a 32" 4K OLED LG Dual Mode monitor which was gash.. so hard to find a good monitor these days.

I believe that the 6K 120hz is probably feasible with thunderbolt 4 and the M4 chips, on the spec sheet of the m4 it says it supports 8k 120hz external displays
 
For a long time I had a 5k 27” iMac paired with a Dell 4k 27” secondary.

When that iMac started to show its age, I switched to a 24” M1 iMac and got a second Dell 4k 27”.

I’m now on a Mac Studio with the two Dells and I’m yearning for three monitors again.

I feel a Studio display paired with my two Dells would be perfect for me. I think the XDR would be too big…
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom