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The state of external retina displays

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Re: The state of external retina displays

#111
post #73

> 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…

I am guessing scissors, esp if they get sharpened 2x/day will not last multiple decades (because sharpening an edge removes material).

Re: The state of external retina displays

#112

I would add LG CX/C1 48 inch. The lowest price has come down to 1000 usd + tax around recent month. It has all the features and packs a top tier oled panel.

That’s basically a small TV - it’s nowhere near retina, and 4k is barely acceptable at 1/4 that size.

Unfortunately there are no 40-43 inch models like other usual 4k tvs. 48 is the best we can get for now

Re: The state of external retina displays

#113
post #73

> 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…

8 years ago you had to pay $1k for a 1440p 27" sRGB IPS panel. 2 years ago I spent $800 on a 4k 27" 144 Hz monitor with >95% P3 coverage.

Or another example: 8 years ago I spent $320 on a 1080p 27" (massive pixels) monitor with horrible color reproduction and contrast. 4 years ago I upgraded to a new monitor and for $300 I was able to get 4k 27" with >100% sRGB.

And when you consider inflation, progress is even greater.

It's the same with GPUs, and to a lesser extent CPUs and memory and storage. Moores law is great in many ways, but as a buyer of high end technology it always stings to see the same thing be 30-50% cheaper a few years later.

Progress does seem to have slowed down within the past few years for monitors. I expect the pandemic is relevant there.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#114
post #15

Don'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.

Having an open window near your desk it’s pretty easy to want a brighter display depending on the time of day. If you don’t have natural light it is a much smaller concern.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's cheap enough that I've been tempted to pick up one of these to try, but I think going back to 24" would be a little frustrating for side-by-side editing in an IDE.

I think it could make a great secondary though.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#116
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just picked up a pair of P3222QE monitors. Kind of pricey but hands down the best monitors I've owned. I think it's too big to be "Retina" at 4K, but I really can't see any pixels. I still find it hard to believe though that I can't change the brightness via the keyboard though in state of the art monitors. Does anyone know of any monitors where this is possible, or do they mostly require you to go through the terr…

See https://lunar.fyi to change brightness via keyboard

Very cool! This lead me to another project as well for Windows: https://github.com/emoacht/Monitorian

Re: The state of external retina displays

#117
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am guessing scissors, esp if they get sharpened 2x/day will not last multiple decades (because sharpening an edge removes material).

He’s almost certainly referring to honing the blades. Actual sharpening would require equipment that would be just ridiculous to have around a hair salon.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#118
post #19

Why is Dell has a 32 inch 8k display which is ~280 ppi in stock. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-32-8k-m...

If you're on macOS, your choice for a 27" 4K is realistically either the 'looks like 1080p' high DPI mode, or the 'looks like 1440p' high DPI mode. The 'looks like 1080p' mode makes all of the UI elements huge. The 'looks like 1440p' mode makes text slightly fuzzy as it's being downscaled from 5120x2880 to 3840x2160. It's not terrible , but it's nowhere near as nice as the 27" 5K.

I'm using a 28" 4K (with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS) — used to use 1.5x with downscaling but switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)

Re: The state of external retina displays

#119
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a matter of connectors and display bandwidth. Apple's extra-expensive display doesn't use HDMI or DisplayPort connectors, it uses a proprietary connector. edit: I'm wrong on that. oops. apparently that invalidates my entire point. (it doesn't) display bandwidth matters, and connectors are where display bandwidth goes to die. apple had to design a special one for the bandwidth requirements of that display. it's n…

DisplayPort over Thunderbolt is not a proprietary connector (this is what the Pro Display XDR uses).

It's really stupid to force Thunderbolt usage though when USB-C has an alt mode for DP directly.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#120
post #19

Why is Dell has a 32 inch 8k display which is ~280 ppi in stock. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-32-8k-m...

I wish Mac OS and Apple hardware supported 8k monitors. I have this monitor and love it, but I can't use it with a Macbook at higher than 4k.
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