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The Best Monitors For Your Mac in 2023
Apr 30, 2024
Full Article on Cult of Mac: https://www.cultofmac.com/770205/best-monitor-mac/ More Apple news: http://www.cultofmac.com What’s the best #monitor for your #Mac? Desktop displays aren’t just for desktop computers anymore — 77% of you are buying MacBooks, but you probably want a nice setup when you’re at home. And if you do have a Mac mini or Mac Studio, you want to make sure you’re picking the right #display. Produced by Extra Ordinary for Cult of Mac Music composed by Will Davenport, arranged by D. Griffin Jones Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:26 Retina Displays 4:24 Standard Displays 6:12 Ultrawide Displays 8:05 Small Displays Follow us! Twitter: https://twitter.com/cultofmac Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cultofmac Instagram: https://instagram.com/cultofmac/
View Video Transcript
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What's the best monitor for your Mac
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Desktop displays aren't just for desktop computers anymore. Even though 77% of you are buying MacBooks
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you probably want a nice big monitor that you can plug your Mac into when you're at home
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And if you have a Mac Studio or a Mac Mini, the monitor you pick is very important
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So I'm going to walk you through all of the options on the market today, or at least, all the ones worth considering
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I'm going to start by talking through some retina displays. Now a retina display is any display
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display that has twice the resolution of a standard display. It packs four pixels in the space of just
0:35
one pixel, so you get smoother text and crisper images. In order for a display to be a retina display
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the pixels have to be small enough that you can't discern any individual one at a normal distance
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That equates to 4K on a 24-inch display or 5K on a 27-inch display. Apple's been building retina
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displays into all of their products for years now, but if you want an external display, your options are
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kind of limited. And if you already have a Mac, the best all-around option is Apple's own
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studio display. It has a 5K resolution at 27 inches. It doesn't have some of the most advanced
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features like HDR, which is where colors can get extremely bright, or promotion where it can
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adaptively go down to 24 hertz or all the way up to 120 hertz in refresh rate for super smooth
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images. But for a giant retina display made out of premium materials, it's a pretty good price
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Some reviewers found the display sits a little short, and for an extra $400,000, you
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You can get a height adjustable arm, but honestly, it's cheaper to just put it on a monitor stand
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The real advantage to using Apple's own monitor is all of the convenience features, like Center Stage
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where it uses an ultra-wide camera that'll zoom around and stay centered on your face no matter where you are in front of it
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And of course, you never have to turn it on or off. When you turn your Mac on, the display comes on
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It's really simple. And you have a lot of handy ports on the back, one Thunderbolt 3, and 3 USBC
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Now, if you don't need as many premium features, but you still want to have a retina display, at least, you can get the LG
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this. It only costs $300, and it still has an iPS screen, so it'll still look
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good, no matter at which angle you're at in front of it. There's no color distortion
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But that's about where the similarities end. It doesn't get as bright and only 250 nits
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which is enough for a reasonably lit office like this but if a direct laser beam of sunlight falls on it you won be able to read anything for a little bit It a pretty cheap plastic body that gets wobbly over time so you have to retitin the screws in the stand
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You can plug it in over HTML, or you can get an HTML to USBC cable
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but there are no extra ports on the back. And again, it's not as big at only 24 inches
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but because it's a retina display, you can run it in a scaling mode where you get the same amount of screen space
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So if you only care about having a retina display for that crisp text
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it's hard to beat the value of the LG. You literally can't
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At the highest end of the market is Apple's Pro Display XDR. A 32-inch 6K screen add up to 1,600 nits with full HDR
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This thing is basically precision tuned for the brightest and most accurate colors money can buy for video editing and graphic design
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Honestly, if your line of work is at the professional level where you think you need a $6,000 monitor
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nothing else on this list matters because it's the only one, and if you are absolutely
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sure that you need it. You definitely don't. So let's move on. The Dell Ultrasarp 32 made a big splash
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in the news this year, because it also has a pretty wide collar gamut, although it falls a little
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short of being full HDR, but it matches the Pro Display XDR in brightness, passes it in resolution
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and connectivity, all for almost half the price. Now, it definitely falls short in the looks department
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For some reason, it has this giant, chunky forehead, and the camera that sticks out of the top
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is even bigger, but at least it's a pretty good camera. It's 4K and it has an ultra-wide field of view
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And as I said, it has a lot of ports. It has a Thunderbolt 4 port that you can use for charging at
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140 watts. That's enough for the biggest MacBook Pro. Another Thunderbolt 4 port for peripherals
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3 USBC ports, 5 USBA ports, and Ethernet. You can upgrade it to an 8K display and still undercut
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the Pro Display XDR by $2,000. It's the highest resolution 32-inch display
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on the market. So unless you really need HDR, this is probably what you should buy if you have all
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that money to spend. Now, how about some more standard displays? Basically, if you take the retina
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out of the Pro Display XDR, you end up with the Samsung S60A. This is a 32-inch display with a little
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less screen space, but you have HDR 10 and a billion colors. It's a little less bright at just 300
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nits but it has a higher refresh rate of 75 hertz and it comes included with a stand that raises lowers tilts swiveles and rotates It a pretty attractive option at just On the cheaper side the Dell S
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offers a standard 1080p at a standard 24 inches. You can also get a 27-inch at the same resolution
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for a little bit more. Much like the S-60A, it also has a 75-hertz screen, a pretty good contrast
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ratio, and an anti-glare coding. I've personally used these displays before, four of the
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on the same computer, in fact, and I can say that even though they have a plastic body
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they have an excellent build quality. The only downside is that the colors are distorted
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when you're not looking at them straight on. But at only 120 bucks, it's a good pick
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The Samsung M8 is also a pretty good map to the Pro Display XDR. It's the same size
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It has a little bit more screen space, the same 60 hertz refresh rate, although it's not as bright at only 400 nits
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But you do still have HDR10, and this monitor will look really good sitting next to a color-matched iMac
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Now, this display also comes with a built-in chip that lets you browse the web, watch movies, and work on projects all on its own without
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an attached computer. Why you would want to do this on a low-powered Android chip
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instead of the computer you presumably have plugged into it, is beyond me, but I won't judge
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Well, not that much. Yeah, I will. So personally, I'd probably go for the S-60A
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but if you want the fun colors and the added screen space, this is an attractive option, too
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Now let's talk ultra-wide displays. If you have a big area to fill, but you don't want a big seam running down the middle of your line of sight
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an ultra-wide display might be for you. This can give you a better experience gaming or watching some movies
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Some of them are curved so that you're always looking dead on, whether you're looking at the left or right extreme of the display
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But, of course, curved displays are a little more expensive. Overall, though, buying one ultra-wide display might be cheaper than two smaller displays
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So at the high-end, LG makes a 40-inch curved ultra-wide display, with a resolution of 5120 by 2160
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It offers 96 watt charging through a USBC cable, so it's the only thing you have to plug in your laptop with
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It supports HDR with a billion colors and the P3 color gamut, just like the Pro Display XDR
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although, again, at a dimmer 300 nits. It also has a high refresh rate at 72 hertz compared to 60
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The stand tilts raises and lowers, but obviously it doesn rotate to portrait That be ridiculous So it comes to a Thunderbolt 4 port for power delivery a second Thunderbolt port for Daisy chaining another display and two USB 3 ports It might seem pricey at but when you consider you getting
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two HDR displays, it's honestly not that bad. On the cheaper side is the Scepter IPS 43.8 inch ultra wide display
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This is effectively two 1080p displays side by side. So you have a lower vertical resolution at only 1080p
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but of course that affords you a really high refresh rate of 120 hertz. It runs at a pretty bright 600 nits and it has 125% of the
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srgb range, which isn't quite full HDR, but it's a lot nicer than a lot of other displays on this
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list. Now in my experience, Scepter displays have pretty abysmal build quality, especially the
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speakers. They sound worse than iPod earbuds from 2001. But you got to understand what
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you're buying it for. The resolution, the brightness. It's under 500 bucks and it's hard to argue with
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that. Now let's talk small displays under 22 inches. There's a lot of reasons why you might want
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something like this. Maybe you're a student and you don't have a lot of space on your dorm room
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desk. Maybe you have a server running in a closet, but you want a backup display just in case
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Maybe you take your Mac Mini on the go occasionally and you don't want to lug around a giant thing
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The best small display I found is the Dell P2223HC. Now small doesn't have to mean cheap
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This is made with the same high-billed quality as the other Dell monitor I told you about earlier
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and it has a full 1920-by-1080 resolution. If you pay a little more, you have 65-watt power delivery to charge your MacBook 2
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and you have four USB ports on the back, so it's a full docking station. And it starts at just 120 bucks
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Now, cheaper than that is this offering by Scepter, it's a little short of full 1080p at 1600 by 900
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but it's a 20-inch display for under 80 bucks. It has a 75-hertz refresh rate
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a really thin bezel around the edge, and it weighs less than some MacBooks
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Now, as I mentioned before, a Scepter build quality isn't anything to write home about
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but it's a 20-inch display that costs less than a fancy dinner date at Texas Roadhouse
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So you get what you pay for. So if you want to read about these in more detail, if you want an easy-to-digest comparison table
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there's a link in the video description. If you learned something from this video, be sure to like and subscribe
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I'm DeGraffin-Jones with Cult of Mac
#Computer Peripherals
#Consumer Electronics