Mastodon
Birchtree
By Matt Birchler
I've been writing here since 2010! Back when personal blogs were all the rage. Kids, ask your parents.

Viable Mac Monitors in 2021

Casey Liss has compiled a list of viable Mac monitors, and I think it's a decent list, but I'd like to add to the discussion since I think his standards are a bit too specific.

Bitmap.jpeg
Bitmap.jpeg

I'm using the LG 27” IPS 4K UHD Monitor (model #: 27UP600-W.AUS) which cost me about $399 and technically falls outside of Casey's criteria, but I think works wonderfully. It's 4K, supports the P3 color space, and has the inputs I need for my (realtively) basic needs.

It also happens to look a lot better, in my opinion, than the budget option in the article.

back.png
back.png

Now there are a couple downsides, of course.

  1. HDR 400 is basically not HDR at all, so don't buy it for that.
  2. There's no Thunderbolt/USB-C connector, so no daisy-chaining things together.
  3. The interface is a bit clunky, but that's only an issue if you switch inputs (it does not auto-detect if you switch inputs, like some monitors helpfully do).
  4. To display at native 2x, you have to output at 1920x1080, which is a bit cramped depending on your use case. It looks unbelievably good to my eyes, though.

So that's it, that's my recommendation for a 4K monitor that works well with the Mac, looks nice enough, and is at a reasonable price point. I would love to see Apple put out something in the sub-$2,000 range, but I'm really not sure what that would look like at this point.

Show Comments