Recommendations for a monitor to go with my M3 15" MBA

[danb79]

I'll be getting a £500 voucher from work for Amazon UK and would like to sort as good a monitor as I can get for my M3 MBA

Only need one; I'll dual screen with the MBA if required; but the monitor will be the main screen; may look to add a webcam to it also

I don't game etc; but I do spend a lot of time working with MS Office, Adobe Suite and various online platforms for the company I work for & recruit into

I'd also like to use it for watching films via Apple TV and Youtube stuff in my home office when the wife's watching her drivel on the TV haha

Recommendations please - nothing bigger than 27" due to desk size

[mmm-five]

The LG Ultrafine, Dell Ultrasharp and BenQ are regarded as great productivity monitors.

You can get a lower end one for £250, or a higher end one for £500.

Higher end:

Dell U2723QE Ultrasharp (£439)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DELL-DISPLAY-ULTRASHARP-M...

LG 27UQ750 Ultrafine (£436)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-Electronics-FreeSync-C...

BenQ PD27060U (£415)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BenQ-Skintone-Validated-V...


Lower end:
LG 27UP650K-W Ultrafine (£293)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-27UP650K-W-UltraFine-U...

LG 27US550K-W Ultrafine (£235)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-Monitor-27US550-Respon...

Edited by mmm-five on Wednesday 26th March 13:17

[wyson]

I’d just get an Apple Studio Display. £1399 at John Lewis at the moment.

Older gen panel but seamless integration with your Macbook. Built in webcam, will dim / undim according to your laptop settings. 5k display so will pixel double perfectly. I noticed MacOS doesn’t much like 4k. Colour accurate for your Adobe Suite stuff.

I tried a bunch of monitors with my Macbook Pro in Currys. You could give that a bash as well, hook up your laptop to various displays, see what you like best. I settled for native, old skool 93 ppi in the end. Just hated the odd ball scaling with 4k monitors. To my eye, native and pixel doubled Retina looked best on MacOS.

Edited by wyson on Wednesday 26th March 13:28

[danb79]

wyson said:

I’d just get an Apple Studio Display. £1399 at John Lewis at the moment.

Older gen panel but seamless integration with your Macbook. Built in webcam, will dim / undim according to your laptop settings. 5k display so will pixel double perfectly. I noticed MacOS doesn’t much like 4k. Colour accurate for your Adobe Suite stuff.

I tried a bunch of monitors with my Macbook Pro in Currys. You could give that a bash as well, hook up your laptop to various displays, see what you like best. I settled for native, old skool 93 ppi in the end. Just hated the odd ball scaling with 4k monitors. To my eye, native and pixel doubled Retina looked best on MacOS.

Edited by wyson on Wednesday 26th March 13:28

You did see where I put: "I'll be getting a £500 voucher from work for Amazon UK"...?!

[wyson]

I just assumed that was some sort of bonus, you’d be putting towards your own monitor. My company dishes out vouchers like these, end of year awards etc. My mistake.

[danb79]

wyson said:

I just assumed that was some sort of bonus, you’d be putting towards your own monitor. My company dishes out vouchers like these, end of year awards etc. My mistake.

Alas no; already had that

This is because most of my colleagues have crap old laptops etc and they're all jealous of my MBA But they're all in Dublin, I'm the only on here, so they've all got new iMacs instead (and iPads as part of our quarterly bonus) - I've got the Amazon voucher for a monitor; so will stick with £500 and under

It's really for MS docs, PDFs etc - I don't do much in the way of the rest of Adobe Suite bar looking at candidate portfolios for any of the UI/UX/creative roles etc

[BlueMR2]

The Asus Proart monitors can be nice.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-Display-PA279CRV-Pro...

https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/asus/proart...

https://www.asus.com/events/infoM/activity_proart5...

Edited by BlueMR2 on Wednesday 26th March 18:04

[danb79]

I've gone with this BenQ monitor; lands today:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096B3PBFZ

It's all I need really for looking at documents; fine turning them and sending them onto the hiring managers etc; I don't need full 4K as I'm not doing anything with pictures/any editing etc

Plus it's left me with £150 to buy myself a new USB C full numeric Apple keyboard

[blackscooby]

Amazon Voucher - how does this get handled in terms of Tax ?

It's a genuine query, as we're often told stuff about say a bonus, obviously that gets taxed as it's paid into our wage, but say if they gave an Amazon voucher, does that escape the tax requirements?

I'm intrigued, our place is very very dot every i and cross every t, pedantically so.

[mmm-five]

danb79 said:

I've gone with this BenQ monitor; lands today:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096B3PBFZ

It's all I need really for looking at documents; fine turning them and sending them onto the hiring managers etc; I don't need full 4K as I'm not doing anything with pictures/any editing etc

Plus it's left me with £150 to buy myself a new USB C full numeric Apple keyboard

If not using the 4K resolution, I'm assuming you'll select 1080p to give your the best alternative resolution (2:1 pixel ratio)? Anything between those 2 resolutions may not be as clear/crisp as there's no exact pixel scaling at those resolutions.

[LeeM135i]

Ive had one of these for about 18 months and it makes life easy with my M1 MacBook Pro.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-S3423DWC-USB-C-3440x...

It's a USB C monitor so its a single plug to connect the monitor to the MacBook and charge and it uses the monitor as a USB hub, very convenient.

I originally purchased it as I had a 27" and 24" monitor but I could only connect 1 to the Mac, which wasn't quite big enough, through a dock so I had a HDMI cable through a USB C dock and a USBC power connector it was OK but a pain and looked untidy.

Screen has a good resolution and is clear and crisp for what I need. 100Hz is more than the Mac can output.

I also have a Belkin MagSafe stand thing on top of the monitor so I can use my iPhone as a webcam which is really useful when the Mac is off to one side.

[danb79]

mmm-five said:

If not using the 4K resolution, I'm assuming you'll select 1080p to give your the best alternative resolution (2:1 pixel ratio)? Anything between those 2 resolutions may not be as clear/crisp as there's no exact pixel scaling at those resolutions.

Think I had it on 1440, something like that - looks spot on to me and the blacks are really black

It's all I need really; full 4K would have been wasted; I'm not editing pics or doing video work etc

[danb79]

blackscooby said:

Amazon Voucher - how does this get handled in terms of Tax ?

It's a genuine query, as we're often told stuff about say a bonus, obviously that gets taxed as it's paid into our wage, but say if they gave an Amazon voucher, does that escape the tax requirements?

I'm intrigued, our place is very very dot every i and cross every t, pedantically so.

No idea; just received it and used it as requested

[Ikemi]

danb79 said:

mmm-five said:

If not using the 4K resolution, I'm assuming you'll select 1080p to give your the best alternative resolution (2:1 pixel ratio)? Anything between those 2 resolutions may not be as clear/crisp as there's no exact pixel scaling at those resolutions.

Think I had it on 1440, something like that - looks spot on to me and the blacks are really black

It's all I need really; full 4K would have been wasted; I'm not editing pics or doing video work etc

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474306/which-external-monitor-to-choose-for-macbook

The above guide is pretty useful and something I referred to when upgrading my previous HD monitor. As such, I connect my MBP to an Asus ProArt 27" 2K monitor and the image quality is nice and sharp! Perfect for my needs, which include video editing and thumbnail creations in PS ... Also, £1K less than an actual Apple display.

I'm pretty sure there were some monitor-specific comparison websites that suggested there are other, cheaper monitors that are better than the Apple displays e.g. Dell etc.

[wyson]

Apples 5k panels are previous gen and been round for donkeys years. Many 4k displays have surpassed them on technical metrics. If you want upto date display technology and to go retina, you need Apples 32 6k display. Dell also do a 32inch 6k display with the latest panel technology, which is half price.

I prefer bigger text, so went 1440p at 32inches and set my Macbook Pro display one notch bigger than default to somewhat match the text size between the two screens. It also works well, although obviously looks more pixellated than 1440p at 27inches.

I think the next commonly available monitor resolution will be 8k once the TV market starts scaling at that resolution. These monitors should be a lot cheaper than niche resolutions like 5k and 6k, and have high enough ppi to scale however you want. At least that’s what I’d hope. It’s ridiculous that you can see pixels in this day and age. Phone and tablet screens went to ‘retina’ resolutions a decade ago.

Edited by wyson on Monday 31st March 18:42

[xeny]

wyson said:

It’s ridiculous that you can see pixels in this day and age. Phone and tablet screens went to ‘retina’ resolutions a decade ago.

]

They have far smaller screens, much easier to make defect free, much less video memory required.

[Baldchap]

Can't comment on the Mac front, but for productivity a single ultrawide has always been my go to. Works exactly like two monitors with half the cables and just one stand taking up desk space. Much smarter solution and no 'edges' like you get with multiple monitors of different sizes etc.

Nice curved ultrawide if you chuck £8 in here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-Curved-LED-Monitor-Ult...

[mmm-five]

Baldchap said:

Can't comment on the Mac front, but for productivity a single ultrawide has always been my go to. Works exactly like two monitors with half the cables and just one stand taking up desk space. Much smarter solution and no 'edges' like you get with multiple monitors of different sizes etc.

Nice curved ultrawide if you chuck £8 in here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-Curved-LED-Monitor-Ult...

That (3440x1440p) is not the equivalent of 2 monitors though as it's only got 25% more horizontal space than a standard 1440p.

For 2 monitor equivalence it would have to be a 'super' ultra-wide @ 5120x1440...such as the 49" LG
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-UltraWide-5120x1440-Co...

But it's moot as the OP has already told us that he's bought a 27" 4k monitor to run at 1440p.

Edited by mmm-five on Tuesday 1st April 10:52