I have a Dell 1,600 x 1,200 which I probably bought around 2004 and it works fine. I don't use it anymore except in a pinch or to test a system but monitors can last decades. My current monitors are Dell Ultrasharps which are 4-6 years old. I also use a 2010 iMac 27 and a 2015 iMac 27 and their screens are fine.
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A warning: Do not buy a Mac Mini unless you have a high resolution (4K+) display.
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I have a Dell 1,600 x 1,200 which I probably bought around 2004 and it works fine. I don't use it anymore except in a pinch or to test a system but monitors can last decades. My current monitors are Dell Ultrasharps which are 4-6 years old. I also use a 2010 iMac 27 and a 2015 iMac 27 and their screens are fine.
My understanding is that the ASD panel is pretty close to the late model 27 inch iMacs. I'm typing on right now with it set to 3,200 x 1,800 and it looks great to me. You can set it to 4 other resolutions where the characters look larger. I really do love these 5k displays.
The Ultrasharps run on my Mac Studio.
I used to have 4 Ultrasharps on the Mac Studio and then a program that I need to run wouldn't work with such a huge horizontal resolution. So I had to remove the 4th Ultrasharp from the Studio.
The fourth Ultrasharp was a 2k 25 inch. I would have ideally preferred a 27 inch but they were running about $580 at the time. But I saw a 2015 iMac 27 for sale for $200 and bought it and it sits next to the Ultrasharps that run off the Mac Studio. So I run my office stuff on the iMac and my production on the Mac Studio with 3 4k Dell Ultrasharps.
My preference for monitors, of course, is for 5k panels. But I'm not going to spend $6,400 for 4 ASDs.
What I like about the ASD is the all-in-one approach. Fed up with all those cables. Would buy the nano though as I sit next to a window. Can imagine it ‘d be a shiny mirror otherwise.
This is exactly why I love the iMac 27. I have to run cables for speakers (1 for power, 1 for signal, 1 between the two) and my microphone. On the iMac, there's just the power cable and the Ethernet cable. It is hard to shell out for an ASD when I was able to get an iMac for $200.
I snagged the Mac mini m2 pro. Old speakers have known there best days. Huge question of course is how long the u2713h will last. Awesome display but it’s over 10 years old and nothing lasts forever…
I have a Dell Inspiron Pentium 3 from around 2000 and that laptop still boots up and runs. Just use it until it stops working. Sometimes you can find used Ultrasharp monitors on Craigslist too. We've had Asus and Samsung monitors die but all of our Ultrasharps are still working.
Thing that troubles me that I’d like new decent speakers and I am clueless if the webcam will work properly on the new MacOS.
Speakers generally suck unless you spend a fair amount. There are cheap speakers to $50 and then it seems that you have to jump to $150 to $200 to get nice speakers. I love the iMac speakers; they just blow my Anker speakers out of the water.
I do not really like clipping a webcam to the top of a monitor either. The 2015 iMac is fine for video calls or recordings. I can use my MacBook Pro for video calls too but I really don't like the camera angle when I'm sitting at my desk.
Speakers and webcam should probably be their own threads.
Dell used to have soundbar options on their old monitors but they dropped them around 2007-2010. That would make for a nice solution.
As someone who moved from a late 2014 27" Retina iMac to the Mac mini M2 Pro in March 2023, I can say that I could not be happier with the decision to pair it with the Apple Studio Display. While it is not a 27" iMac, with the mini mounted to the wall behind the desk, this is as close to a current 27 iMac I could get. Plus I do like the added flexibility to upgrade the Mac mini as time goes on and keep using the ASD. To me, it is worth the premium to pair the Mac mini with the ASD.
I don't know. I started looking and was disappointed. Perhaps ask in another forum on speakers. I just play videos and audio on the iMac if I care about the sound quality.
While I was waiting on the Amazon customer service the last one got sold out. 😅😭😹
If you could post a picture that would nice as I'm thinking of getting the same pair (ASD + Mac Mini M2)
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Meh - personal preference. I still like the old school white keyboard and trackpad.