How is the Ultrafine “unreliable”? What functionality would a monitor even have that could possibly break?
The state of external retina displays
101–110 of 353 posts
Re: The state of external retina displays
#102> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…
Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables . Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down. Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways. Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "goo…
Excellent point.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#103LG 27GN950 seems like it hits a a lot of the criteria others are discussing. It is not 220 PPI though. 4K IPS at 144Hz (or 120Hz depending on video card) HDR 400 nits It also rotates to portrait mode, has a built in backlight for eyestrain, is essentially borderless- and it's $800-900. Have had it over a year with no issues.
Is it actually HDR, or is it 'HDR'? I have another LG monitor that claims HDR support but really it just squishes the SDR content to make space for HDR - so it makes everything look awful .
400 nits HDR is a marketing gimmick. For real HDR you need a 1000 nits minimum as well as a 10 (if not 12) bit display.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#104Don't even get me started on brightness... good luck finding anything that's higher than 350 nits.
Why do you need so much brightness in an indoor environment? Personally I've more frequently had the opposite problem, i.e. minimum brightness only going down to the 30-50 nits level, which is quite bright in dark-ish environments.
One field that needs it is editing 4k+ HDR content that has 16 steps or more of dynamic range. All of the blacks would blend together on lower output monitors like 400nits. Really need like 1000.
Here's a decent 18.4", but it costs $14k[1], or you could get the 32" for $30k.
[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1676872-REG/canon_560...
Re: The state of external retina displays
#105> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…
I think the issue is most employers are unlikely to buy a monitor like this for anyone except video editing professionals. That leaves it on the employee to purchase it out of their own salary, even though it is almost certainly a work only expense.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#106> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…
Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables . Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down. Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways. Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "goo…
This is a good comment in general, but:
> I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
I'd normally agree, but the article's point is that this isn't happening with displays - we're stuck at 4K as the best available except for a handful of displays that are still expensive even years after introduction.
I bought my LG Ultrafine 5K in 2018, and it launched in 2016. There's still no real alternative - we seem to be in a monitor progress limbo.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like a MacOS problem, not a "220dpi is not enough" problem.
This specific issue is definitely a macOS problem - instead of doing proper resolution independent rendering, macOS just renders at 2x the 'looks like' resolution, and then scales the result to fit the panel. But even on Windows, the choices at 27" 4K aren't great. 100% is too small. 200% is too large. 150% is quite nice, but I find apps regularly don't scale properly, and text still isn't as nice as 200% on a 5K dis…
I use a triple monitor setup with the LG 24UD58-B. 24", 4K, $300. 2X scaling is absolutely perfect on it. 27" is not a good monitor size for this, I agree.
As an aside, a user here recommended putting the outside monitors in vertical mode with the middle monitor in horizontal mode. It works extremely well for reading websites/documentation/terminal output while coding in the middle panel.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#108I really wanted the 27-inch LG UltraFine 5K ( https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27md5kl-b-5k-uhd-led-monit... ), but I heard many complains about it not being as reliable as you'd expect, then I decided to get the LG UltraFine 4K ( https://amzn.to/3qs2pFW ) a little over a year ago, and I don't regret at all spending so much more for a display, than I'd normally expect to. Now, I want to update to Apple's Pro Display…
The mount for the 4K display sucks. I don't know why the hell they designed it this way, but it's a rectangle that protrudes about 5cm in front of your display. This mean that it forces your keyboard to be placed closer than it should depending on the distance you use it.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#109> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…
>"Without reference to the technical merits of the Apple Display, I don't think dropping $5000 on a monitor is outlandish for any professional in the situation I've described."
I can afford $5000. But I would not pay this money. I do away just fine with 4K 32" BenQ at $700. I use it for programming and for this task that $5000 brick offers no advantages for me. And it is not ever real pro display. Those go for much more than 5K. Try 20K and up.
Re: The state of external retina displays
#110How is the Ultrafine “unreliable”? What functionality would a monitor even have that could possibly break?
Here’s a list of issues the LG 5k Ultrafine has had over the years:
The initial batch would get disrupted if a WiFi antenna (like the kind in an ordinary laptop) was too close. There was a recall to replace the shielding.
Sporadic dumping of devices connected to the internal USB-C hub (mine did this all the time when I had 2.5” HDs connected; got better when I switched to SSDs; mostly disappeared when I switched to an M1 Mac).
Ghosting (I currently have this problem bigly).
The pins in the powered USB-C socket that are responsible for data are poorly soldered. Over the years and wear, this can result in displays that can power laptops but not necessarily show a picture.
The whole product line is a big fat lemon.