Have an Lg 5k bought for 800 from eBay few months ago. Not too impressed by the price and feature of the Mac studio display. It's mostly the web cam upgrade, but for conference calls most people can't even support 1080p smoothly not to mention higher resolutions. Hope it drives down 2nd hand price for Lg 5k so I can grab another one to form a pair.
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Apple Studio Display v. LG 5K
- Thread starter andrewj
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Sounds like a bad cable. I recently bought replacement power supplies (that I’m happy to resell) when in fact I had a bad cable. Bought the Belkin and have had zero issues since. The 40GB/s FireWire cables seem really delicate.
Never had issues with my Lg 5k as well. Works perfectly. It's almost always the cables.
That’s exactly what I told a price-sensitive friend yesterday. There’s going to be a bunch of 5Ks on eBay soon. They have limitations, just not sure I want to spend $1800 after tax right now to overcome them (especially if they aren’t using the A13 for keyboard / mouse bluetooth)
The Studio Display cost is just about equal to the previous $1299 LG UltraFine. Add the A13 chip to offer a better camera with mics, centerstage, Hey Siri listening, universal control(?), and Dolby Atmos with better speakers, then the additional $300 is totally justified.
I think it's a big miss not to make better use of the A13. Build in iOS? Build in AppleTV? So many great ways that can really improve the usability fo the display.
One advantage of the LG is that it ships with both a stand and a VESA mount. With the Apple Studid you have to choose between getting a fixed stand, a height-adjustable stand, or a VESA mount, all of which are built-in and can’t be changed later. However, the LG stand is a bit wobbly.
LG is making the display. The display specs are very similar to the LG UltraFine 5K except the Apple display goes up to 600 nits. The port layout is virtually identical.
Same here... if you so much as move my 14" MBP a half inch the monitor freaks out and flashes off an on.
Every third or fourth time I login the screen brightness goes into full brightness mode, and I have to reset it.
Overall, I love the image quality of my LG 5K, but I ordered the new Studio Display for a hopefully more stable setup. The other improvement like the speakers are a nice extra also.
Not sure this is much of an upgrade over my LG 5K monitor, first generation but overall pretty stable 90% of the time. Three main features that I think this will have over the LG 5K: HDCP compatibility (for 4k content), HDR, and centerstage. However, I don't use my monitor for anything besides work and bought a 3rd party web cam that is much better than the built in so don't really see a point.
Will save up and wait for an Apple mini-LED monitor at some future point
Will save up and wait for an Apple mini-LED monitor at some future point
Great comments. What I think is exciting is a lot of people who were hesitant to get the LG 5K will now buy the Apple Studio because it's no longer "outside" the Apple ecosystem... Even though Apple doesn't sell anything in stores that would embarrass them...
Well, it's not going to help any of us who need to buy something NOW, but perhaps this move by Apple to more headless systems might encourage the monitor makers of the world to move into this space.
Gotta admit, I may be in that group. Still not sure about dropping that much on a display, but we'll see if prices get a little better at other retailers in time.
Even though they share the same size and resolution doesn't make them the same.
The old LG 5K display and iMac 5K are using LG panels LM270QQ1-SPA and LM270QQ2-SPA2. They are only 8-bit + Frame Rate Control (FRC) for "fake" 10-bit color by flashing two alternating colours quickly to be able to display billions of colours.
The newer panel used in the Apple Studio Display is the LM270QQ2-SPA3, which is a true 10-bit panel with higher luminance.
The old LG 5K display and iMac 5K are using LG panels LM270QQ1-SPA and LM270QQ2-SPA2. They are only 8-bit + Frame Rate Control (FRC) for "fake" 10-bit color by flashing two alternating colours quickly to be able to display billions of colours.
The newer panel used in the Apple Studio Display is the LM270QQ2-SPA3, which is a true 10-bit panel with higher luminance.
There are quite a few 27" screen out there which are 4K or 5K (a lot of people won't notice the difference or need 5K).
The issue with non-Apple screens is compatibility which seems to have been sketchy-as-hell since the move to thunderbolt over usb-c. Whether its screens that don't wake from sleep reliably (I've had that with a number of LG screens) or resolution issues where they just disappear from macOS or the fonts are fuzzy, if you rely on an external screen, it can be a frustrating issue.
I've got a 34" 5K LG Ultrawide which is so close to being great.
But there's no built-in webcam (so I have my laptop open on a stand) and the speakers aren't anything amazing.
This morning, it failed to wake from sleep, even after unplugging the thunderbolt cable to the laptop, so I had to unplug the power to get it back on. Which isn't a massive inconvenience, but its still an inconvenience.
I think the new display is still a bit over-priced, but given the speakers, mics, webcam w/centre stage, expected Mac compatibility, how much is that worth to someone?
When considering the price, also consider the useful life of such a monitor. I can imagine it'd be fine for several years; my wife uses a 24" 1080p Viewsonic that I bought in 2010.
I'll be curious to see if the aftermarket addresses the stand situation in some way, and I'm curious to see if it'll work with a dock such as the Caldigit TS3+.
I've had the Ultrafine 5K since 2017. The amount of ghosting the display has is painful to watch. Occasionally the display will not turn on, so I have to unplug it and plug it back in my MBP. Even slightly moving it will cause the power cable to dislodge, and it will turn off, and then you have to wiggle the cord around for the display to turn on again.
I just ordered the Studio Display to replace it.
I just ordered the Studio Display to replace it.
I wonder about the longevity though. My 2015 5K iMac 27 has a slight discoloration near the edges of the screen. It's not enough to make it unusable, but enough to make me want to replace the display.
If a monitor is going to last through 3 or 4 computer replacement cycles, it needs to look good through its entire life.
i have this issue with my UP2715K at times. I “solved” it by plugging it into a remote controlled outlet if it doesn't wake up, I toggle power with a press of a button. Not the most elegant solution , but easier than unplugging from the wall.
I second that! I bought the LG 5K right after COVID hit in April 2020 and it has worked flawlessly for me, absolutely ZERO issues and I kinda like the black boxy industrial look.
Is the Apple version worth the extra $$$ ? Better webcam (center stage) and likely better speakers and 100 nits extra brightness, and better appearance (to most) seem to justify the cost.
No, and it used to upset me, but I'm starting to think that 4K might be enough at 27", and possibly even at 32" for some people. I found this cool calculator that shows how close you need to be to distinguish individual pixels. https://www.designcompaniesranked.com/resources/is-this-retina/
Here's what it says:
5K 27" - 16 inches
4K 27" - 21 inches
4K 32" - 25 inches
So what this is saying is that a 4K 27" monitor will look just as sharp as a 5K 27" monitor if your eyes are at least 21 inches away from the screen. You should measure how far your eyes normally are from your screen, and from that, you can determine whether you actually need a 5K monitor or not.
In my case, when I lean back in my chair, which I do most of the time, my eyes are 27 inches from the screen, so most of the time even a 4K 32" monitor would look just as sharp as my 5K iMac. However, I do occasionally sit up straight, and in that position my eyes are only 21 inches from my screen, so I would be able to notice that a 4K 32" monitor is less sharp in that position, but it seems like I could get away with a 4K 27" screen and never be able to tell the difference.
The only problem I ever had that wasn't from dropping the thing was a cable problem. I ended up with a Belkin from a local Best Buy in an emergency and it has worked flawlessly.
If someone bought my 5K for a ≥50% of a new Apple Studio monitor, I'd upgrade, just not sure it's worth the hassle otherwise. Would like to see the A13 provide more features than just Center Stage and sometimes that turns into hardware upgrades in future versions that I'd rather wait for.
I use http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de/index.html and crank up the effective resolution much higher than Apple allows by default. Combined with strong glasses, I end up with a single monitor that may regress closer to pixelation, but the amount of info I can get on the screen is outrageous.
This is exactly how I moved from lugging 16" MBPs to moving to the 14". I can finally fit the latptop on an airplane tray table again and am not sacrificing effective screen real estate to do so.
I had a IBM T221 DG5 in 2003. Bought it used for about $3k and loved it, well before HiDPI was heard of. These new monitors (including the LG 5K) are a joy in comparison.
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