What's the True Experience on: 16" Liquid Retina XDR Display Users, Do You Watch HD and 4K Movies and Videos on Your External Monitor Anyway?

[Alvin777]

Hi, those with 16" Liquid Retina Display, inspite of the miniLED, 2500 dimming zones, 3.5K resolution and 254 PPI do you honestly still watch high res movies and videos on your larger external monitor or 4K TV anyway or you're happy watching 4K (downscaled/supersampled on the Liquid Retina Display's 3.5K resolution) movies or videos on the 16" Liquid Retina Display?

Further going into the true experience with the 16" XDR Are you happy and contented with watching 4K HDR videos on quality 16" screen like that and there's no desire to say watch things on 27" or a 32-34" 4K or higher monitor (could be OLED, can be gaming with HDR not just high fidelity videos with HDR) or larger (55" and greater 4K TVs)?

Thank you.

 

[Chancha]

The size and real estate of a 16" laptop wouldn't have changed regardless how good the display itself is, with that reason alone I find myself resorting to external displays and even TVs whenever available.

That said, when new in 2021 or even now, these XDR screens are still considered top tier as far as laptop goes, they are no OLED so you get blooming issues and also poor response times, but for HDR content especially under bright environment the MBP screen can excel in some scenarios. Also it is always a hassle to plug the MBP to a display / TV if you aren't already docked, for connivence sake you may find yourself just sitting through a movie or a longer YouTube video not bothering to do it anywhere else, for the XDR is already quite nice, just the picture not large. Technically when you sit close to the screen though, the angle of view is already close to a typical sitting distance of a living room TV so unless you have other people around who also want to see the picture, as a personal screen the MBP size is more than fine.

By the way my above experience is mainly on the 16", for it is meaningfully bigger than a 14", also the speakers are better. With a 14" I would change the stance to "unless necessary" territory, not that much better than on a 13" MBA.