I just want one thing when it comes to buying a new Monitor and that's a no dead sub pixel policy or a PPI that's so high you won't notice. Every time I buy an LCD panel it has dead sub pixels and it annoys me. Every single frigging time, I just went through 5 Samsung KS7000's and all of them had a single dead sub pixel, I just got a refund with the shop as Samsung wouldn't give me a guarantee.
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LG 27UD88 Review: A Well-Rounded Ultra HD Display With USB-C
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Still can't believe desktop monitors are so expensive if you want something better than 1080pleb. Price hasn't gone down in like 5 years for 2560x1600. I'll bet the average desktop user has lower res monitor than the average laptop user, thanks to all those retina displays.
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Or elite hacks. *thinks back to the first-gen Apple TV's diagnostics port*
One more mediocre - crappy - monitor. Fine for doing email, useless for any graphic or photographic use.
Saying it has 95% of surge is like saying it's as solid as a Ford Pinto. (For those of you old enough to remember, that's the one that kept exploding when another car hit it...)
Saying it has 95% of surge is like saying it's as solid as a Ford Pinto. (For those of you old enough to remember, that's the one that kept exploding when another car hit it...)
Is it worth getting at any price or would you say it's just pure garbage no matter what?
It depends on what you want to use it for. If you mainly use your computer for programming, web browsing, writing a letter and email, then it's fine. If you ever want to pull up PhotoShop, or Illustrator, I wouldn't touch it.
That said, LG and Apple really need to hear this feedback. They have this strange dichotomy. One one hand they make exquisite things themselves. Then they give us tools that are sub-par, to do things ourselves. They get to express excellence, and yet the tools they give us are for the 80%. They don't give us the same capability that they want themselves.
They don't make powerful computers anymore, they don't have competitive server software, every piece of software they give us is good for most of what people want to do, unless you want to do something really excellent. Then you have to go elsewhere. Consider the AppleScript Script Editor - it's a complete joke compared to Script Debugger. I could go on and on - but I've already answered the question so I'll run along now...
Just when an interface technology becomes widespread, cheap, and bug free...an expensive new one eventually forces us to abandon the old for the new and cough up dollars for yet more stuff. Eventually, audio/video can only become so realistic. After that what are the tech companies going to do to try and pry yet more money out of us?
In this case, they are asking us to pay good money for going backwards. Adobe RGB 1998, today's most standard color space, was based on a CRT monitor made in 1998, that would be 19 years old. I think it was the LaCie Electron Blue, but I could be mis-identifying this. It's old. Now they want us to pay good money for poor color spaces.
I should also mention that I'm a photographer and for many years was a custom photographic printer. Everyone talks about resolution. However, that isn't the real game. Printing is all about tonality. It's all about how the tones come up against each other, the subtlety of the difference between pixels, or groups of two or three pixels. When you see something that moves you, that is incredible color, or smooth as silk black and white, it isn't the resolution that's doing it, it's the tonality. In a monitor that has a tiny color space, you won't even see it. If you can't see it, you won't be able to control it enough to print it well.
They should make monitors that reflect at least a "very good" version of current technology vs this half-baked stuff. To suggest that they can do sRGB, well that just tells you its the cheapest thing they could find.
Exceptional review. Thank you!
I've been obsessively researching 4K monitors and recently bought a Dell P2415Q which is extremely highly rated and closely spec to LG 4K Ultrafine. Used it for 24 hrs and tried every setting - between MBP and 2016 MB, I had to return it. The colors, black levels and brightness didn't even match up to my 2013 MBP retina screen. Watching Blu-ray on the Dell is even worse. On MBP and MB, the best resolution that looks good was 1920 x 1080 at 30 Hz. I could not get it to run at 60 Hz if my life depended on it. Spent 5 hrs researching why without any results.
For $385, the Dell is a good price, but not if you expect Apple quality displays. I am going to pick up LG 4K Ultrafine this week. As much as I don't want to spend that much money, I would be more happy with the display quality in the end. I wish the LG Ultrafine displays has at least one HDMI port. That would be a no brainer for a lot of users.
I've been obsessively researching 4K monitors and recently bought a Dell P2415Q which is extremely highly rated and closely spec to LG 4K Ultrafine. Used it for 24 hrs and tried every setting - between MBP and 2016 MB, I had to return it. The colors, black levels and brightness didn't even match up to my 2013 MBP retina screen. Watching Blu-ray on the Dell is even worse. On MBP and MB, the best resolution that looks good was 1920 x 1080 at 30 Hz. I could not get it to run at 60 Hz if my life depended on it. Spent 5 hrs researching why without any results.
For $385, the Dell is a good price, but not if you expect Apple quality displays. I am going to pick up LG 4K Ultrafine this week. As much as I don't want to spend that much money, I would be more happy with the display quality in the end. I wish the LG Ultrafine displays has at least one HDMI port. That would be a no brainer for a lot of users.
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I still can't believe Apple that makes a 27" iMac with a 5k screen can't repackage that screen as a stand alone product.
This screen looks better than the black plastic upside down thick bezel at the top Frankenstein LG 5k, but not by much.
It looks like any screen made by dell etc any time in the last 10 years.
Not Apple enough to be plugged into an Apple for me...
This screen looks better than the black plastic upside down thick bezel at the top Frankenstein LG 5k, but not by much.
It looks like any screen made by dell etc any time in the last 10 years.
Not Apple enough to be plugged into an Apple for me...
We bought this display at work to pair with a 2016 retina MacBook m7 version. It is great and the user is very happy with it.
I am a bit confused by some of the content of this review: higher resolution scaling options such as 1440 is definitely possible using the rMB. This is running Sierra.
I think the biggest downside of the display is the fact that it does not "talk" to the apple keyboard and thus you cannot use keyboard buttons for adjusting brightness. The lack of a web cam may also be a deal breaker for some.
I did not know about the UsB speed issue. However, We chose the display because it can act as a hub for the rMB. It gives us an external for Backups and access to UsB Ethernet adapter. So I don't think speed is all that important. But...I do find this rather confusing. We assumed the downstream ports were USB3 speed.
I am a bit confused by some of the content of this review: higher resolution scaling options such as 1440 is definitely possible using the rMB. This is running Sierra.
I think the biggest downside of the display is the fact that it does not "talk" to the apple keyboard and thus you cannot use keyboard buttons for adjusting brightness. The lack of a web cam may also be a deal breaker for some.
I did not know about the UsB speed issue. However, We chose the display because it can act as a hub for the rMB. It gives us an external for Backups and access to UsB Ethernet adapter. So I don't think speed is all that important. But...I do find this rather confusing. We assumed the downstream ports were USB3 speed.
Supply of these in the UK is pretty poor. The LG rep on OcUK said it will be going up in price soon. I can already see it. eBuyer are taking pre-orders at £522.99. And Lambda Tek apparently have 9 available but have hiked the price to £660! Probably because they are the only place in the UK that have stock.
...because the end result would probably have almost no components in common with the iMac apart from that l-shaped stand.
Internally, the iMac drives the display via a custom interface that can handle 5k@60Hz.
The only external interface that can handle 5k@60Hz in a single stream is DisplayPort 1.3 which is still as common as hens' teeth and, crucially, not supported by Thunderbolt 3 (or the TB3 incarnation of USB-C DP alt mode) or Intel's integrated GPUs. All current external 5k displays use two DisplayPort 1.2 connections, each driving half of the display.
Thunderbolt 3 is capable of combining two "virtual" DP1.2 connections into one TB3 cable - but inside a TB3 display, that is split up again into two DisplayPort signals.
So the internal "architecture" of an iMac and a TB3 display are very different. Externally, the iMac case is unnecessarily big for a display, too (the old TB/Cinema displays never used the same case as an iMac, even before the iMac was slimmed down).
Essentially, the LG Ultrafine 5k is what we'd have got if Apple had made their own display, just without the pretty aluminium-and-black-glass box. Oh, yeah, and these days 'natural' anodised aluminium isn't good enough for Apple, so they'd have to make separate "silver" and "space grey" models too...
Actually, I can kinda understand Apple getting out of the display business until Thunderbolt 4 comes along and, hopefully, brings some sort of single-stream 5k display solution.
@theluggage I think the gentlemans point was...
Why not have LG do all this work they did together with Apple but put the end result inside a much more iMac like enclosure, if not one that is nearly identical?
I don't think he was saying anything beyind the aesthetics of it all.
Why not have LG do all this work they did together with Apple but put the end result inside a much more iMac like enclosure, if not one that is nearly identical?
I don't think he was saying anything beyind the aesthetics of it all.
Yes, that was an error. I initially tested with a MacBook running El Capitan and didn't fix that section of the review when I was putting it all together. I've updated the review.
So you wrote the review.... Why does MacRumors blindly gush about things which are not very good at all? I won't believe that you are unaware of color spaces and how inadequate sRGB is. Why not call this what it is - it's what we could scare up in a very cheap and mediocre monitor. It might actually encourage people to make better things...
I don't believe there was blind gushing going on. I pointed out that it's sRGB, which is still extremely common. Wide gamut is better, no doubt about it, and I said the UltraFine 5K is a much better display.
If you're not doing design work that depends on the most accurate color possible, this display is a fine option, particularly if some of the other things it does offer are important to you.
If you're not doing design work that depends on the most accurate color possible, this display is a fine option, particularly if some of the other things it does offer are important to you.
Not everybody is a graphics pro. sRGB is perfectly adequate for general use, business, development, snapshots, home movies etc. - maybe better for non-graphics/video-pros who aren't going to use a color-calibrated workflow and think that a RAW file is a photo taken on a cold day.
From the review:
...that sounds clear and honest enough to me. Its a £500 UltraHD display for Pete's sake - you can pay 2-3 times that for a colour calibrated Adobe RGB display that isn't even UHD.
Perhaps blind gushing was too strong a term. I don't mean to direct all my frustrations at you. I just need a new monitor, have been waiting for a good one from Apple for a long time, and I didn't get it. I'd also like them to update the Mac Pro computers and I don't have that either. I've been on the mac since 1985 and I don't want to switch. (I do have Windows 10 running in Fusion for my scanner and yes, its as bad as they say it is.)
All that said, I do believe supplying a decent color space is more important... We're paying good money for these monitors and getting the equivalent of a Geo Metro.
Regards to the WARRANTY on this monitor not sure if you folks know but model number 27MU88-W is the same EXACT monitor only its classified as "commercial" vs "consumer" and has a 3 year warranty. Also on a side note the 27MU88-W can be found for a few bucks cheaper than the 27UD88-W.
I know what you are saying.
What I mean is that Apple already procures the 27" 5k lcd screen parts from LG or whoever.
They also know how to implement Thunderbolt 3 as they put it in the Mac Book Pro.
To bolt the 2 together in an enclosure would really not be that hard for Apple to achieve.
The fact that Apple can get 5k with 1 Thunderbolt cable is great and good enough for me.
I have a Mac Pro and my only option is to run 2 Display port connectors to get 5k.
True, the electronic design isn't quantum physics* - but tooling up for mass manufacture of circuit boards and machined aluminium enclosures is probably pretty expensive.
All joking apart, the need to produce multiple colours (the 2016 MacBook will probably be able to use these displays, so they'd need a rose gold option as well!) might even have been a factor...
Can't prove it but the LG Ultrafine displays could easily have started out as Apple displays, right up to the point where it was time to pony up for the nice Aluminium and glass enclosure. Look at the choice and placement of ports c.f. the LG display in this review. The "forehead" to accommodate the webcam also smacks of a last-minute kludge (the iMac and old TB display don't have that problem).
(* I know a quantum physicist who sneers at that high-school Newtonian "rocket science" stuff)
Ive spotted a few QA issues with the monitor.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...440p-scaled-mode.2026551/page-4#post-24244257
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...440p-scaled-mode.2026551/page-4#post-24244257
That is the firmware update port. LG just released and update for the firmware this month.