Last year, accessory company Alogic launched its 27-inch "Clarity" display, offering a 4K experience with 90 watts of power delivery to charge a connected computer, an array of connectivity options, and hub functionality for connecting peripheral devices.
With an IPS display for viewing across a wide range of angles, 97% coverage of DCI-P3 color, HDR 400 support, and the ability to quickly transition between landscape and portrait orientations, the Clarity display offers a solid set of features, but Alogic is now tacking on some extra features with its just-launched Clarity Pro and Clarity Pro Touch models.
I've been testing out the two new models for a few weeks, and I've found the clever new features included on them to be interesting additions that give buyers some nice options to consider depending on their needs.
All three models use the same basic display and design, and I've found them to be bright with vivid colors for a high-quality viewing experience, thanks in part to the quatum dot (QD) backlighting that offers good contrast and supports over a billion colors.
I've been using a pair of LG UltraFine 5K displays for a number of years now, and I was pleased to find that I didn't really notice any difference in the day-to-day experience when running these 4K displays at a scaled 2560 x 1440 resolution to match the desktop size of my previous 27-inch 5K displays, even though the Alogic displays aren't running at exact retina scaling in this scenario.
What the Clarity Pro adds beyond the standard Clarity display is an integrated webcam, which has a clever privacy-related feature in that it automatically tucks itself away behind the display while not in use, ensuring that the camera can't be surreptitiously accessed by malware or other attacks without your knowledge. If the camera is up, it's active, and if it's down, it can't see anything except the inside of the display housing even if video capture were to be activated without your knowledge.
The camera does make some noise as it moves up and down, which reminds of the potential for motorized parts like this to break over time, but I appreciate the automated privacy aspect of it. I also like the small adjustment wheel that allows for the camera's field of view to be moved up or down to better frame the subject. It doesn't offer as much flexibility as a standalone webcam accessory might, but it's better than a fixed camera integrated into a display bezel, for example.
The 8-megapixel webcam offers solid video quality compared to many other options built into Apple's notebooks or external displays, although the Continuity Camera feature recently added to macOS and iOS means you could do even better by using your iPhone as your Mac's webcam.
I did run into one camera bug with Zoom while trying to use a pair of these displays, as the app would only recognize one of the webcams regardless of which of the identically named Alogic display cameras I selected in video settings. Alogic says this is a known issue without a resolution yet, but I didn't have the same issue with other apps I tested including Skype, FaceTime, and Teams, so it appears to be something specific to Zoom.
Stepping up to the Clarity Pro Touch adds one additional major feature compared to the Clarity Pro, and that's touchscreen support. While macOS doesn't offer as much support for touch functionality as Windows, some drivers and a configuration app from Alogic help provide a decent amount of functionality on macOS. With touchscreen support, you can use either your fingers or a capacitive stylus (Apple Pencil not supported) to interact with onscreen content.
With the UPDD Commander app, you can customize a fairly significant list of touch gestures involving one, two, three, or five fingers with taps, swipes, and drags in various locations on the screen. For instance, a one-finger tap can register as a traditional mouse click, while a two-finger tap can register as a right click and you can even customize which of the two fingers should be considered as the location of the tap.
A swipe up from the bottom of the screen can be configured to show/hide the dock, while other combinations of fingers and gestures can do things like invoke Mission Control, hide or quit apps, minimize window... Click here to read rest of article
Article Link: Review: Alogic's New Clarity Pro Displays Include a Retractable Webcam and Optional Touchscreen Functionality
