Is there a monitor in the $500.00 range that I can use with my MacBook Air that will have the same resolution? It is so much faster than my 4 year old iMac so I would like to use it for processing images.
Monitor suggestion
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abc123brian
Well-known member
Do you mean identical resolution or high resolution that would look good? If identical, would need to know which MacBook Air you have as the resolution varies slightly and it would be very difficult to impossible to match. Apple scales the image to look nice on the display instead of a 1:1 pixel ratio which would result in tiny text and icons. While 4K does not scale well on macOS it is going to be the highest resolution you can get for $500. A 5K display will scale perfectly and allow you to achieve a very similar look but will cost between $1k-$2k.
You can find the LG Ultrafine 5k for $500-$700 used. Once you use a high rez display it’s hard to go back
The MacBook Air is 2560-by-1664. So what resolution would you suggest on a 27” monitor that would come close to that?
I have a cheap 27” Acer that is 1920 X 1080 but is too low res.
Would this come close to the MacBook?
Would this come close to the MacBook?
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abc123brian
Well-known member
The 5K would look near identical but they are more money. You can often find one on sale for just over $1k but this is still way over budget. A quality 4K would look pretty good and is what I use. If you can afford it, a nice 5K is going to be worth it.
This is really close to the one I have which I really like. I’m sure some others will jump in and give some good advice on color accuracy.
It's a big hard to explain but like mentioned above Mac OS scales by default. So your MacBook is 2560x1664 but it scales the UI so it looks like it's 1470x956 because if it ran at the native resolution it wold be tiny! The reason they do this is because Apple believes that there the native resolution should be ~2x what the screen is scaled to, that is what makes all the UI elements look so smooth etc.
If you get a 4k display and it's to small to run at native resolution you can scale it back, but it will scale it in a way that it won't be quite as sharp as if you had a higher rez monitor. Some even say that if you are going to get a 4k monitor @27" and let the OS scale it you may as well just by a 1440 monitor.
Google "Apple 4k monitor scaling" and you'll get a ton of stuff back. Some people are more bothered by it then others. I know at work I have a 27" 1440 monitor and I see a huge difference in sharpness compared to my 5k monitor (that is scaled to 1440).
Personally I'd look for an used LG ultrafine 5k if I had that budget.
Photof2as
Member
I see the LG Ultrafine 5k had a resolution of 5120x2880 pixels. I am looking for a monitor that will help with checking to see if an image is sharp. I have a Macbook Pro M1 max that has a resolution of 3456x2234 pixels. Would I see a substantial increase in being able to check image sharpness with this or am I looking at the wrong spec for monitors?
Thanks for any advice or information you can share.
Thanks for any advice or information you can share.