This is almost exactly where I am at. I just bought a Mac mini and stupidly thought I would find a fair monitor in a few hours of trolling the internet and I am six hours in and still don't know what to buy.I took the plunge and bought the M1 Mini last week. I had been thinking about waiting for the first M1 iMac but I needed a machine now and decided that the base model Mini and a monitor would be a similar price to any base model iMac.
But looking for a monitor has been horrible, and it's really made me appreciate the simplicity and quality of Apple's devices.
There's no point to this really other than to rant. I've spent way too much time looking at monitors, reading specs, reading reviews and am still none the wiser about what to get. Or rather, I'm not certain I've found something that would make me happy and leave me without any sense of having compromised on one or more features.
- Monitor names are impossible to decipher. It's just a list of letters and numbers that - screen size apart, gives you no information about the device
- It seems that even the well-rated monitors are compromised in some way. Uniformity, backlight bleed, colour accuracy, response time. It's almost like manufacturers aren't able or willing to make a device that's 'no compromise'
- For some reason manufacturers don't think that having a screen that's calibrated so that colours look like they are supposed to is worth investing their time in, unless you pay more
- Grainy matte displays - it's all well and good having QHD or 4k resolution, but if the screen is textured and grainy it'll still look blurred
This all makes me appreciate Apple even more. I look at my iPhone XR and iPad Pro displays and they are just incredible. And the entire device costs less than a third party monitor of equivalent spec.
I just wish Apple made a consumer screen.
---prefer to spend $200, but would spend $400
---prefer 4K.
---don't need gaming responsiveness
Apple claims "One display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz connected via Thunderbolt and one display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz connected via HDMI 2.0" but apparently not all monitors can support 4k through usb-c.
