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Cons of 5K retina display
- Thread starter andriasl
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No, but it's definitely not as good as a 4k Youtube video. For example if you watch a 4k Youtube on a 1920x1080 monitor it almost looks over sharpened because of all the detail. On the retina it looks amazing
1080p upscales fairly well. Not as crisp as it'd be on a 1080p display pixel-for-pixel, but the difference is unlikely to bother you. Instead, you'll simply notice how much more crisp 4K or 5K content looks by comparison.
The first one or two gen of retina 27" iMacs suffered a very small niche of "con" where twos ends of resolution and application efficiency didn't meet. For example, some users reported Adobe Lightroom was struggling to operate full screen, while working on a 36MP RAW image in development module. It was unclear if it's the GPU not powerful enough or the application code itself was not optimized, or the CPU, or a combination of specs that caused it. Users found a solution by sizing down the Lightroom window to approx. 2/3 of the full 5K screen and they got smooth operation back. I haven't seen the issue reported anymore on the 2015 5K, so I supposed it is gone. But it is hard to say if similar issue won't appear on the better 2017 iMac if the task also gets heavier duty.
Cons:
- Relatively high incidence of image retention (but a non-issue for most users)
- Relatively more taxing on system resources for equivalent tasks
- Higher cost
- Makes everything else look terrible - you'll hate using a 'normal' screen ever again
- Limits multi-display setups (if you like a three monitor workflow, you can't do that in 5K today; if you like any kind of multi-monitor set-up, the choice of similarly pixel-dense monitors is limited to the LG UltraFine, or a couple of inferior options from HP and Dell)
- It's probably the best display on the market today. And now it's brighter and even more colourful. Nothing else competes*
All 5K LCD panels are currently 60Hz (consumer ones, at least).
We'll also need a better video connection as DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 both only support 60Hz at 5K over a single cable.
Well I can tell you from my Mac Pro with two Dell 5k Displays attached to it that there are significant performance issues in certain applications. For example Lightroom raw editing is suuuuper slow, and after effects with a lot of layers makes scrolling in the timeline extremely painful. Not talking about scrubbing, wich would be CPU related, no just displaying many layers and scrolling through them takes the machine to its limit. Very annoying.
Still, everything else works great and the 5k is a pleasure to look at.
Still, everything else works great and the 5k is a pleasure to look at.
Are not Adobe apps optimized for nVidia and CUDA? On AMD they have to use Open GL which is woefully outdated on macOS.
That might be part of the problem! At least in Lightroom though I can tell that it is faster if I turn on GPU acceleration, but it's still painfully slow and laggy. If I turn GPU off it's near unusable. Ridiculous, since the CPU usage is pretty low all the time, and this is not about actual calculating power, but just about pushing all these pixels. I get it though with the 2013 mac pro.. guess it never was meant for two 5k displays
Just a shame that it can't tap both GPUs, one for each display..
Keep in mind that 4k & 1080p does not define the actual bitrate. You can have a 1080p video at 1.5kbps & a 720p video at 1.5kbps look a little better. There's a lot that goes into the compression. H265 will double the compression without the performance hit, so you could in theory have a 1080p video at 1.5kbps look like a 3kbps video.
True
True. But, constantly I've noticed grannies in 1080p and lower resolution YouTube videos on my iMac.
True. But, constantly I've noticed grannies in 1080p and lower resolution YouTube videos on my iMac.
I own a 5k iMac late 2015.
The only con I can think of is the image retention, that still exists.
After 20-40 minutes, you can faintly see some image retention, if you change your desktop to a dark grey. However the only thing I have been able to see, is the dock, and the display has to be at full brightness, and I almost need my nose in the display to spot it.
And if I hadn't read about here on the forums, I would never have known my display did that. Even after long use periods, I haven't seen any image retention shine through anything I do.
So the only con I can see is, use a screen saver when away from the mac (unless you put it to sleep). I use a hot corner for activating my screen saver.
The only con I can think of is the image retention, that still exists.
After 20-40 minutes, you can faintly see some image retention, if you change your desktop to a dark grey. However the only thing I have been able to see, is the dock, and the display has to be at full brightness, and I almost need my nose in the display to spot it.
And if I hadn't read about here on the forums, I would never have known my display did that. Even after long use periods, I haven't seen any image retention shine through anything I do.
So the only con I can see is, use a screen saver when away from the mac (unless you put it to sleep). I use a hot corner for activating my screen saver.
I have been working with computers for over 35+ years and I have seen image retention wayback then. The worst case of retention that I have ever seen is at one of my jobs where a green screen monitor (I know I'm dating myself) looked like an Etch A Sketch because it sat on the same screen for hours and hours at a time. That is why it's important with monitors that have this tendency to have image retention to have a screensaver or have the computer/monitor go in standby when not in use. Getting back to the 5K Retina Display, I personally can't see any cons to owning one. Working n Photoshop to me is simpler on my 5k Retina Display, for I no longer wondering if I'm see the whole image for image has that much clarity.
That is why it's important with monitors that have this tendency to have image retention to have a screensaver or have the computer/monitor go in standby when not in use. Getting back to the 5K Retina Display, I personally can't see any cons to owning one. Working n Photoshop to me is simpler on my 5k Retina Display, for I no longer wondering if I'm see the whole image for image has that much clarity.