Has anyone compared the Apple Studio Display ($1600) to 4K displays like the LG at 1/3 the price? I’m using for Rhino and graphic design projects (Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo) and i’m wondering if i would see any difference between the two. I’m getting ready to buy a Mac M4 Mini so compatibility may also be an issue. Color accuracy is important since it will be used primarily for graphic design.
Larry, to be honest, I don’t have experience with the Apple display, but I am moving toward a new mini, and giving up my iMac 27 inch, 5K, which I assume is very similar to the Apple display. For a period of time I had access to an LG 5K it’s not a third the price, but it is cheaper than the Apple display and I found the display excellent if not just as good as the 27 inch iMac.
I’m planning to order one of these along with my Mac mini. Bolstering that decision as the fact that I’m gonna try to move to a standing desk, sit stand desk I had a sneaking suspicion that the ergonomics of standing and sitting or different enough that it might be desirable or necessary to change the height of the monitors from the table top when switching from standing sitting. Therefore, I see vesa mount in my future, and the LJ comes ready for that.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m actually leaning towards getting the new ASUS PA27JCV now. It’s half th d price of the ASD, its 5K, and color accuracy is supposed to be fantastic, as good as the ASD. On the downside, I heard their customer service sucks, the build quality is of course better on the ASD, the glass is non-glare (I prefer glossy), and it doesn’t have Retina Display (not sure how much of that technology is hype and how much is really noticeable in real-world use).
You can usually get the standard Studio Display (without the over-engineered height-adjustable foot and textured coating) for roughly €1400 on amazon (in the US too), but it’s currently sold out.
The Apple displays (as well as their other products) are simply mostly premium, largely well designed objects that come with a hefty price tag. I mean the display housing is entirely milled out of aluminium and anodized. There are hardly any visible plastic parts (compared to the LG, Asus, or BenQ alternatives).
I’m still on the LED Cinema Display, which is similarly sized than the Studio Display, but I’m soon migrating to the latter, since it features a much higher resolution and I prefer the design and build quality (compared to the two or three available alternatives). I’ve seen it a couple of times at a friend’s and I like the image it produces.
With the Studio Display you get a great (not the best) 5K display in a sturdy aluminium frame that comes with all the bells and whistles that will make it a great experience on the mac.
I especially like that it auto-adjusts the color temperature and brightness by reading the ambient light information with a sensor. It’s nothing new though, but has been a part of Apple products for the last decade or so.
The biggest downside of every Apple display, besides the price, is that it can really only be used with a mac, meaning you can’t really hook up, a PlayStation, Switch, or XBox, or even a Windows computer, or Raspberry Pi, but it will work with pretty much all your Apple devices.
Another downside is that if you get the “normal” tilt-adjustable stand, you probably need to set it on a pedestal, since you’re supposed to look straight onto the top border of the screen (cf. ergonomics) when sitting straight. However, the screen is missing roughly 10 cm in height (for me, I’m 184cm). This might be less or more of an issue depending on your upper body size. It’s the same with my current Cinema Display which is also 27". I prefer the pedestal, to the height-adjustable stand, since I’m setting the height once, and that’s it.
You might already be aware of this, but you absolutely need to pay attention to what display resolution you get as a mac user, when you don’t get an Apple display!
If you don’t buy a display that has one of the few preset macOS resolutions, your mac will need to scale each displayed frame, which means that you’re dedicating parts of your GPU performance to only that.
In the past, this was detrimental to the performance of the mac, but with the advent of the more powerful ARM CPU/GPU technology has been lessened, but still scaling requires resources.
It doesn’t suffice to simply look at the consumer labels here. You need to look at the actual display resolution. It’s best to match the Studio Display resolution, which is 5120 by 2880, exactly.
Many people don’t like that the Studio display has a relatively low refresh rate, only 60Hz (which means that you can’t surpass 60fps), which is largely only important for some very serious gaming (I guess), for which the mac is most certainly a bad choice either way. And that it isn’t an OLED, which I don’t know anything about.
It’s certainly not a bad display. What people are doing is nitpicking at a high level.
I finally ordered the ASD, despite the price. one other option I could mention. BandH has an LG 5k, for 800+, I had access to an LG 27" 5k a couple of years ago, and it was the closest I’ve seen to the 5k 27 screen on my iMac.
If that’s the monitor I had (and that one was sold by apple for a number of years), it’s really very nice. What kind of drove me crazy, I could’t figure out IF it’s the exact same monitor, I think it is, but not sure, and no easy way to return it for free (if I lived in NYC that would be different).
I’ll be interested to know how satisfactory the ASUS is if you buy it, bc I really do want a second monitor, and since it might be more for menus and pallets than the visualization, I’d be hard pressed to spend another 1,800 on that. but I do like keeping them the same size, (I have heard some good reviews of the Asus, that’s one I was interested in, but I couldn’t find one I could look at prior to ordering.)
Will do, but it will probably be a couple weeks before I can get back to you. My 2017 iMac died so I just ordered the ASUS and a Mac M4 mini, 256 GB storage / 24 GB RAM from B&H Photo and a Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini 2 TB + 2TB from OWC. The ASUS shipped but B&H won’t get in the new Mac 'till sometime next week. The advantage of buying from B&H was that I was approved for credit and plan to pay it off within the first month. The deal is that B&H will then reimburse me for the tax. Both B&H and OWC offer excellent customer service and technical support.
I got a lot of opposing feedback from both Apple and B&H regarding a comparison between the two monitors. I spoke with probably a half dozen reps from both companies. Some said the difference is barely noticeable while others said I’ll notice the difference right away. One B&H rep said he previously worked at an Apple store for 3 years and he said the difference viewing the display is very subtle.
Two things they all agreed on is that the build quality of the ASD is much higher and ASUS’s customer service sucks. I’m not too concerned about build quality because the monitor will stay in one place. And fingers crossed, I won’t have to reach out to their customer service. For audio, I’ll probably buy a pair of Kanto ORAs. That will provide far better audio for nearfield listening than any built-in monitor speakers.
I won’t be able to give you any feedback on color accuracy because I don’t have any color calibration tool. But the rep at B&H told it should be as accurate as the ASD right out of the box. And he has no reason to be deceptive, given B&H sells both monitors and the sales reps are not on commission.