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Samsung's ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor Hits All-Time Low $999 Price ($600 Off)
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A 4K image on a 27” screen comes out to 163 ppi.
That’s just slightly worse in terms of clarity to a 1080p image on a 13.3” laptop screen (165 ppi). It’s fine for gaming or sitting back watching a movie, because you don’t care about sharpness so much, but it’s not ideal for productivity applications. In fact, a lot of gamers use 1440p monitors - not because they can’t afford 4K displays, but because they’d rather have higher frame-rates and enable processing-intensive realistic lighting feature over crystal-sharp text.
A 5K image on a 27” screen comes to about 220 ppi, so 35% more pixels per inch than 4K. It’s a significant improvement to image clarity, and lots of people value that.
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Nah, Samsung does this with all their products. Their $2000 flagship soundbar is on sale all the time. So are all of their high end TVs and monitors. This has nothing to do with sales and everything to do with Samsung religiously discounting products on their website.
The studio display price doesn't bother me as much as the specs do for it. I don't mind paying a premium when things "just work" but the specs are laughable for the price.
XDR is awesome but 32" and I'd need a bigger desk and office 😂Make a 27" with the stand included and I'd buy it
XDR is awesome but 32" and I'd need a bigger desk and office 😂Make a 27" with the stand included and I'd buy it
Title says “all time low”. That’s what the other poster is referring to:
Samsung's ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor Hits All-Time Low $999 Price
Amazon currently has 15 in stock at the same price
Samsung has a new sale on computer monitors this week, including a match of the all-time low price on the 27-inch ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor. You can get this display for $999.99 on Samsung's website, down from $1,599.99.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Samsung. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
This is a massive $600 discount on the Smart Monitor, which features a matte 5K display, modular 4K SlimFit camera, and support for Thunderbolt 4. The monitor is a good (and cheaper) alternative to Apple's Studio Display. The last time we tracked this deal was in early December, so if you've been waiting for a solid markdown on the Samsung display, now is definitely the time to buy.
<SNIP>
Article Link: Samsung's ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor Hits All-Time Low $999 Price ($600 Off)
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"Lie" is a pretty strong word here and suggests intent. Maybe it's just "inaccurate"?
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I have a 27 inch iMac but I need two screens for the work I do. How hard would it be or what would I need to be able to use both screens where I can drag stuff from one screen to another/use it for work? Sorry I'm a dummy when it comes to this stuff
I hope it goes down enough for my cheap-ass employer to buy them for us. You'd think a graphic design firm would have good monitors, but we're all working on dim old 1440p displays and it's just sad.
I know the web page says Intel macs are not supported, but is anyone using this while they wait for the M3 mini or studio computers?
Depends where the light is coming from.
If the lights are coming from the side - a glossy display will reflect it away from your eyes, a matte display will scatter some of it into your eyes, and reduce the contrast of the screen.
If the light comes from behind you, a glossy screen reflects it all into your eyes, while a matte screen will scatter most of it away from your eyes.
Overall, I think glossy is marginally better unless you're stuck with bad lighting that you can't change. I've recently switched from a glossy iMac display to matte 3rd party displays on a Studio and have noticed that I now have to close the blinds on the window at certain times of year/day because the matte displays are completely wiped out by incoming sunlight, whereas the glossy display was still usable.
Then, not all glossy/matte coatings are created equal. The glossy coating on the 2017+ iMac (and I assume on the studio display) has a pretty effective optical anti-reflective coating while cheaper screens (even older iMacs/Cinema displays) are just polished glass and show more reflections. Some cheap matte finishes are horribly grainy - others are far better. I haven't seen Apple's super-nano matte coating, but at the price I'd expect it to be pretty impressive...
ppi is one measure of resolution, but a far more useful one when dealing with optics is angular resolution. That means you have to take viewing distance into account.
The angular resolution of the human eye with "20/20 vision" (which represents typical human vision, not the best) is - by definition - 1 arc-minute (= about 0.0003 radians). (If I recall correctly the test is being able to see a 1 arc-minute gap in a "c" and distinguish it from an "o").
If you look at a 300 ppi screen from 11" away, the angular size of a pixel is (1/300")/11" = 0.0003 radians, so close to the limit of what a typical human can resolve. That was the most likely basis for the term "retina display" coined by Apple for the 326ppi display on the iPhone 4 (for which 11" is a reasonable minimum viewing distance). I.e. from more than 11" away, people with 20/20 vision will not be able to perceive 1-pixel size features on a 300ppi screen).
If you do the same calculation for a 27" "4k UHD" display (there's a calculator here) then the "retina" distance comes out at about 21" - so if you typically watch your 27"display from twice as far away as you hold your iPhone 4, you should get a similar "retina display" experience without obvious pixelation.
The whole "retina" thing is very hand-wavy (for starters many people have better/worse than 20/20 vision - and how various eye conditions affect the result is somewhat more complicated than that) but really, beyond 21" viewing distance, increasing the resolution beyond 163 ppi leads to rapidly diminishing returns. That doesn't mean you won't see the difference between 4k and 5k in a side-by-side comparison, but it should make you question whether the "improvement" is worth paying 3x or more extra for 5k.
(And, while we're at it, a "looks like 1440p" image on a 4k display is effectively a 5k image downsampled to 4k and contains a lot more detail than you'd see on an actual 1440p display - although you do need to ask yourself whether your game/3D package can render smooth motion at 4k, let alone, 5k - which is also why you shouldn't be jonesing for a 120Hz 5k display until we've seen another iteration or two of Apple Silicon GPUs).
Had this monitor but did return it and bought the Studio Display. Although the Studio Display is more expensive, it just works flawless with macOS out of the box, no stupid smart tv options to go through, all brightness settings work smooth and far better backlight distribution. If you have the budget, don't punish yourself with this monitor.
Which may be true at MSRP, but at less than half the price of the Studio Display most people are willing to put up with a slightly less polished experience, especially since most people don't buy Apple monitors anyway.
Thanks for the tip. I tried using my AAA info and it's telling me the membership info is invalid. I guess 31 years as a member is not enough.
Well, while the sharpness could be true, if you work on a bright enviroment with lots of windows, the nano is a must. The glare and reflection of a standard screen drives me nuts. 😂
i'd be all in for a dumb monitor. even at this price.
i don't need another piece of pseudo-computing-junk that will run an outdated OS in 2 years, has a ton of security holes and desperately wants to use wifi for some "cloud services".
i don't need another piece of pseudo-computing-junk that will run an outdated OS in 2 years, has a ton of security holes and desperately wants to use wifi for some "cloud services".
It will never be capable of being a gaming monitor because it only has one thunderbolt output. Samsung made a big mistake by omitting HDMI or display ports. It puts it into a very niche category. You may as well spend less and get the LG5K, or spend a little bit more and get the premium experience with the studio display. As soon as I read that it only has one output I was done. What a disappointment. It's a shame too, because it had so much potential. No one was asking for an inferior studio display which is essentially what they gave us.