The State of External Retina Displays, [Almost] 2022 Edition

The State of External Retina Displays, [Almost] 2022 Edition(caseyliss.com)

13 points by picdit 4 years ago | 5 comments

lodi 4 years ago |

If your room has the space for it, you can make any monitor or television a "retina" monitor by just placing it on a second desk behind your main desk (or leaving a small gap between the desk and wall and just wall-mounting it). I'm using an LG CX oled tv as a monitor right now using this strategy:

Pro's:

  * solves any PPI issue
  * solves "too big" issues
  * reduced eye strain due to increased focusing distance
  * high end TV's are half the price or cheaper than high end monitors
  * great gaming performance (4K 120Hz adaptive sync HDR10 is common, 8K is coming).  Latency can be comparable to gaming monitors.
  * speakers, monitor, charging stuff, other junk are on second desk leaving first desk uncluttered
  * monitor is vibration isolated.  I bought a separate monitor arm to be able to pivot the screen for coding and I hate wobbly arms.

Cons:

  * takes up more space.  My setup is about 2.5 ikea desks deep (200cm).
  * TV subpixels are not always RGB.  Mine are BGR-White.
  * cost of second desk
  * wife acceptance factor

mikestew 4 years ago |

Where is the 27” 5K iMac display, only without the “Mac” part? Apple used to sell such displays, I still have one, and it didn’t cost $6K (it came with a stand, and for $1000 in 2010, it ought to). Are the panels just not available, so they all go in iMacs?

bzzzt 4 years ago | |

The first iMac displays were almost certainly 'built to order' for Apple. Later, Dell and LG both had 5K screens, but there were bandwidth problems with the common HDMI and Displayport connections requiring users to plug in two cables. Now the bandwidth is there, but nobody seems to bother making the screens anymore. Since most monitor builders seem to use TV resolution panels (which have much better economy of scale) I'm hoping for a nice 32" 8K monitor someday ;)

cmer 4 years ago |

This might be a good option for the brave. https://twitter.com/phillipcaudell/status/135269210470791987...

Zanfa 4 years ago |

And on top of this, I could not find a single place in the EU that actually had the LG 27” 5K in stock at all earlier this year.

The only way to get a good 27” 5K screen is to buy an iMac.

* solves any PPI issue * solves "too big" issues * reduced eye strain due to increased focusing distance * high end TV's are half the price or cheaper than high end monitors * great gaming performance (4K 120Hz adaptive sync HDR10 is common, 8K is coming). Latency can be comparable to gaming monitors. * speakers, monitor, charging stuff, other junk are on second desk leaving first desk uncluttered * monitor is vibration isolated. I bought a separate monitor arm to be able to pivot the screen for coding and I hate wobbly arms.