M1 Max MacBook pairs nicely with 40-inch ultra-wide display [Setups]

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No scaling issues seen here.
No scaling issues seen here.
Photo: AeGertjan@Reddit.com

Curved ultra-wide displays are all the rage lately, and it’s no wonder why. What a fantastic amount of real estate. But it can be worrisome buying one if you’re not sure how it will look with your Mac’s resolution and scaling options.

Today’s featured computer setup pairs a beast of a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook with a brilliant 40-inch LG 5K UltraWide curved display. Let’s look at how well it’s working and what some of the issues can be.

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16-inch M1 Max MacBook works well with 40-inch LG 5K display

Video editor and Redditor AeGertjan (“Gert”) showed off the setup in a post descriptively titled, “16″ M1 Max / LG 40″ Ultrawide / Logitech MX Keys & MX Master 3 / LaCie 2big / Bose Companion / Philips Hue.”

You can see in the photograph the setup is as neat as a pin. Right away a commenter said, “Love your work with the cable management.”

Gert replied, “Thunderbolt 4 monitors for the win, power cables and adapters are attached to the bottom of the desk.”

The commenter asked she used velcro to attach those adapters.

There’s a net drilled into the bottom of the desk with 6 anchor points, it holds the cables and adapters,” Gert said.

MacBook Pro and 5K LG ultra-wide display

The setup centers on a big-time 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro. One of those with a 10‑core CPU and 24‑core GPU, 64GB RAM and a 2TB SSD sells for $4,100 on Amazon.

The powerhouse laptop pairs with a with a just-as-big-time 40-inch LG curved 5k display capable of 5120 x 2160 pixel resolution and a refresh rate of 72Hz. It goes for about $1,797.

“The LG 5K is too much for me at 27 inches, how do you handle 40 inches?” a commenter asked.

“It’s a deep desk (80cm),” Gert replied. “The monitor is right up to the wall, and I’m a video editor, so screen real estate is valuable to me. Coming from a 34-inch ultra-wide before this.”

Another person asked, “How is the resolution with a Mac? What effective ppi is it?”

“Native ppi of the monitor is 140ppi, which scales very bad on macros, I run it at 109ppi and that’s the perfect resolution and scale for me,” Gert said. “Very happy with the recent update!”

Good with the 16-inch MacBook, not the 13-inch

A person looking to compare the %K LG to a 5K Dell asked how Gert liked her display.

“This one just feels right, simple setup with the 1 thunderbolt 4 cable, decent image quality, great anti reflection coating on the screen. I sit 70-80cm away from my screen, if I’d be sitting any closer I would not go 40 inches, though.”

She added, however, that she only uses her 16-inch M1 Max MacBook with the LG display (at the second listed scaling of 3840 x 1600). She has trouble making it look good with her 13-inch M1 MacBook in macros.

Someone with a 32-inch 4K monitor asked if everything in macOS is “enormous” on the bigger LG screen.

“Since this screens is 5k and 40 inches, it’s about the same ppi as your 4k 32 inch. Macros has a couple of scaling options. I use the second smallest, you can actually see the menu bar in the photo.”

LaCie desktop RAID and Bose sound

Rounding out the setup — in addition to a pair of widely admired Logitech input devices we see all the time in Setups — Gert uses a LaCie 2big Dock RAID solution for storage and Bose Companion 2 Series III Multimedia Speakers for sound.

The LaCie 2big may, indeed, be too big for some people. You can use it with anywhere from 8TB to 32TB of external space. It boasts data-transfer speeds of up to 440MB per second for those big video files Gert works on.

It features SD and CF card slots for direct file ingestion, a USB 3.0 hub for charging devices and offloading footage, dual Thunderbolt 3 ports for daisy chaining, a USB 3.1 port for computers and DisplayPort for high-res monitors.

The Bose multimedia speakers are the company’s most-affordable set, at about $149. They’re designed to be an improvement on your computer speakers, and in many cases, they certainly will be.

Bose describes the sound as “spacious and lifelike, made possible by TrueSpace stereo digital processing circuitry.”

And if you like the subtle desktop wallpaper showing on the display, Gert said it’s from the Gradienta page on unsplash.com.

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If you would like to see your setup featured on Cult of Mac, send some high-res pictures to info+setups@cultofmac.com. Please provide a detailed list of your equipment. Tell us what you like or dislike about your setup, and fill us in on any special touches or challenges.

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