LG APPLE UltraFine 5K Display

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Martha Stewart

Gawd
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Apr 14, 2011
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N0zWVuQ.jpg



Tech Specs
Display Size: 27-inch (diagonal) 5K display with IPS technology

Resolution: 5120-by-2880 with support for billions of colors

Brightness: 500 cd/m²

Color Gamut: P3 wide color gamut

Ports: One Thunderbolt 3 (input), three USB-C (USB 3.1 gen 1, 5Gbps)

Power Delivery: Up to 85W over Thunderbolt 3 for host power and charging

Camera Type: Built-in camera

Speaker Configurations: Stereo

Power: Built-in power supply

Height: 18.3 in./46.4 cm

Width: 24.6 in./62.6 cm

Depth: 9.4 in./23.9 cm (with stand), 2.1 in./5.4 cm (without stand)

Weight: 18.7 lb./8.5 kg



So I guess Apple isn't making there own display this time and just using LG for their official 5k.....Too bad it would have been nice to see a real Apple display with high gloss and Apple design :|

nice to see wide color though :)
 
Last edited:
Looks sweet.

Too bad it doesn't even have one HDMI 2.0 on it. C'mon.
 
That much resolution is complete overkill and sort of wasted on a measly 27" display though. Text is going to have to be mega up-scaled to be readable, something like 150-200%. They really should have opted to bring it out as a 34" or even 40" display instead.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
That much resolution is complete overkill and sort of wasted on a measly 27" display though. Text is going to have to be mega up-scaled to be readable, something like 150-200%. They really should have opted to bring it out as a 34" or even 40" display instead.
Click to expand...
The effective resolution would be 2560X1440 if you use it on a Macbook Pro.
 
So, it's used at a locked in scale of 200% right from the get go then? Seems a waste of resolution then...
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
So, it's used at a locked in scale of 200% right from the get go then? Seems a waste of resolution then...
Click to expand...
Resolution ≠ Workspace
Resolution = Detail & Sharpness
Display Size = Workspace

You can't just cram lots of resolution onto a small display and expect to have more usable workspace. Everything would be far too small.
With phones and tablets having pixel densities north of 400 PPI for years, text and images on a standard ~110 PPI monitor looks terrible now. That's why everything is moving to high DPI displays like this.
Buy a 4K television if you want lots of low DPI workspace.
 
In all fairness, OS X/macOS actually has proper DPI scaling ever since they made this big "Retina" push for high DPI, so it would actually work pretty respectably. That's the intended market for this monitor, after all.

Windows, on the other hand, is still godawful with its DPI scaling to the point where I wouldn't want to use anything above 100% lest DPI-virtualized apps look like crap and other apps just have completely broken UIs due to enlarged text where it shouldn't be. I shudder to think of what the Boot Camp experience would be like when using one of these.
 
NamelessPFG said:
In all fairness, OS X/macOS actually has proper DPI scaling ever since they made this big "Retina" push for high DPI, so it would actually work pretty respectably. That's the intended market for this monitor, after all.

Windows, on the other hand, is still godawful with its DPI scaling to the point where I wouldn't want to use anything above 100% lest DPI-virtualized apps look like crap and other apps just have completely broken UIs due to enlarged text where it shouldn't be. I shudder to think of what the Boot Camp experience would be like when using one of these.
Click to expand...
I wish people wouldn't keep repeating this. It hasn't been true for years.
  1. Windows 8/10: non-DPI-aware applications are rendered at 100% scale and the output from this is scaled up to fit the screen as an image. With integer scales this uses nearest-neighbor filtering, with non-integer scales this uses bilinear filtering.
  2. Windows 7 and earlier, or Windows 8/10 apps using compatibility modes: non-DPI-aware applications will attempt to scale up their UI. Text is typically rendered at native resolution. The rest of the application may work, may work partially, or may be completely broken. This is the old method of DPI scaling which is no longer used by default.
  3. DPI-Aware Applications: Everything is rendered at the native resolution of the display regardless of what scale you are using.
One area which Windows does not handle well is mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups. Everything is rendered for the scale of the primary display and then scaled as an image to any other display.
Since macOS can only render at 100% or 200% scales, I believe it handles mixed-DPI setups more elegantly.


macOS handles DPI scaling in a similar manner to Windows 8/10.
  1. Non-retina applications are rendered at 100% scale, and then scaled up as an image to 200% size. This uses bilinear filtering by default, and can optionally be set to use nearest-neighbor scaling as a compatibility option.
  2. Retina applications are rendered at 200% scale only.
If you select a scaled resolution in macOS other than 200%, what happens is that it renders the entire desktop at 200%, and then scales the result to fit your screen. Even retina applications are being scaled on your display when you do this.

So if you're using a non-integer scale with macOS, the entire display is blurred.
Windows will at least render DPI-aware applications natively when using a non-integer scale.
The equivalent on Windows would be setting the OS to 200% scale and then using NVIDIA DSR/AMD VSR to select a higher resolution than your display supports to increase your workspace.

And Windows' handling of non-DPI-aware applications is the same as macOS's handling of non-retina applications now - only it automatically selects whether to use bilinear scaling or not based on whether you're using an integer scale or not.

The main difference is that Windows has an additional "legacy" scaling method available as a compatibility mode which may allow for a non-DPI-aware application to render correctly on a high DPI display - or it may break entirely - that's why it's disabled by default.

The other difference is that macOS does not have the support for legacy applications that Windows does.
On a Mac, you're far more likely to be using up-to-date apps which all natively have retina support.
On Windows you're far more likely to still be using applications/utilities which are not DPI-Aware.
And Windows developers don't seem to care. Many are stuck with the '90s attitude of "more resolution = more workspace" and just don't seem to grasp the concept of DPI scaling at all. So they don't build support for it into their applications even if they're still under active development.

So it's no that the OS is at fault, as much as it is the developers/ecosystem which is the problem.
And it's only going to get worse with this push to move away from sRGB to DCI-P3 displays for the mainstream.
Even the Surface Studio has a button on it to enable "sRGB mode" because Windows' color management sucks.
macOS and iOS on the other hand seem to have made the transition to DCI-P3 displays without any difficulty at all.

I'm seriously considering a switch back to macOS as a result. The ecosystem there is built to handle modern displays, Windows seems stuck in the dark ages.
 
zone74 said:
Resolution ≠ Workspace
Resolution = Detail & Sharpness
Display Size = Workspace

You can't just cram lots of resolution onto a small display and expect to have more usable workspace. Everything would be far too small.
With phones and tablets having pixel densities north of 400 PPI for years, text and images on a standard ~110 PPI monitor looks terrible now. That's why everything is moving to high DPI displays like this.
Buy a 4K television if you want lots of low DPI workspace.
Click to expand...

Well before your long rant that follows this, which I agree with, I think you entirely missed my point and read into my statement your own meaning. I'm not advocating low DPI large workspaces and I never meant to convey that more resolution necessarily equates to more workspace. I was simply pointing out that a panel capable of 5K resolution would be far better suited to a larger display size than 27". Bump it up to a 34" display size and that 5K would still look phenomenal as far a DPI goes. What's missing in the PC monitor world are larger 5K screens. If that 27" display can actually show 5120x2880 resolution and the Mac can address it all when displaying high res photos, then to me at least, the image detail would be so fine that much of it would be lost as to actually being able to perceive it due to the limitations of our eyes.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
That much resolution is complete overkill and sort of wasted on a measly 27" display though. Text is going to have to be mega up-scaled to be readable, something like 150-200%. They really should have opted to bring it out as a 34" or even 40" display instead.
Click to expand...


Wasted? No.

Serif fonts will finally not look like ass.
 
The input is ThunderBolt 3, apparently it uses dual DisplaPort Alt Mode streams. So it's MST over a single cable.

Price is good compared to the Dell equivalent, too bad it doesn't have a DisplayPort 1.3 input for SST.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
That much resolution is complete overkill and sort of wasted on a measly 27" display though. Text is going to have to be mega up-scaled to be readable, something like 150-200%. They really should have opted to bring it out as a 34" or even 40" display instead.
Click to expand...

What makes you say this? I still use a Dell 5k as a main monitor and its fantastic. Razor sharp text and games look insane. That DPI is like looking through a window. (Its a noticeable difference between a 4k monitor )
 
Martha Stewart said:
What makes you say this? I still use a Dell 5k as a main monitor and its fantastic. Razor sharp text and games look insane. That DPI is like looking through a window. (Its a noticeable difference between a 4k monitor )
Click to expand...

Simply the desire for a 34" or larger 5k screen.

I've been using a 30" U3011 for years and recently upgraded to a 4K 32" screen (XB321HK). I don't want to go smaller. I want LOTS of resolution on a larger screen.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
That much resolution is complete overkill and sort of wasted on a measly 27" display though. Text is going to have to be mega up-scaled to be readable, something like 150-200%. They really should have opted to bring it out as a 34" or even 40" display instead.
Click to expand...

It's exactly 2x the ppi of the traditional 27"/2.5k displays. It's not intended to increase the workspace, just reduce text blurriness. It's only around 200ppi, which isn't excessive. A 200ppi printer would be considered bad, even 20 years ago.
 
5k would about as useless at 34" as it is in a 27".
text looks great with 200% scaling seems an empty excuse when we hear people complaining that text is too small in the now main stream 110 PPI monitors.

i want contrast, refresh rate and desktop real space. good looking text is the least concern in a PC monitor.
 
I work with construction drawings all day, and 5K on a 27" is not a waste. I can see far more of the blueprints than I can see in 4K and lower resolutions. I use windows 10 on 175% dpi and I don't lose that much work space. I'm ready for that 8K resolution. I wonder if that would eliminate zooming completely.

When I was working at 1080, I probably did 70% zooming. Then I upgraded to 4K, I did about 40%,with 5K I'm down to 15%-20%.
 
NomadicSoul said:
I work with construction drawings all day, and 5K on a 27" is not a waste. I can see far more of the blueprints than I can see in 4K and lower resolutions. I use windows 10 on 175% dpi and I don't lose that much work space. I'm ready for that 8K resolution. I wonder if that would eliminate zooming completely.

When I was working at 1080, I probably did 70% zooming. Then I upgraded to 4K, I did about 40%,with 5K I'm down to 15%-20%.
Click to expand...

This is a good point and why I prefer having 1080p or higher on smartphones. Noticeably less need for zooming on websites that do not have a mobile layout.

To me LG seems to be really shooting themselves in the leg by making essentially an Apple-only display when just adding a Displayport connection would probably give it wider appeal.
 
zone74 said:
I wish people wouldn't keep repeating this. It hasn't been true for years.
  1. Windows 8/10: non-DPI-aware applications are rendered at 100% scale and the output from this is scaled up to fit the screen as an image. With integer scales this uses nearest-neighbor filtering, with non-integer scales this uses bilinear filtering.
  2. Windows 7 and earlier, or Windows 8/10 apps using compatibility modes: non-DPI-aware applications will attempt to scale up their UI. Text is typically rendered at native resolution. The rest of the application may work, may work partially, or may be completely broken. This is the old method of DPI scaling which is no longer used by default.
  3. DPI-Aware Applications: Everything is rendered at the native resolution of the display regardless of what scale you are using.
One area which Windows does not handle well is mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups. Everything is rendered for the scale of the primary display and then scaled as an image to any other display.
Since macOS can only render at 100% or 200% scales, I believe it handles mixed-DPI setups more elegantly.


macOS handles DPI scaling in a similar manner to Windows 8/10.
  1. Non-retina applications are rendered at 100% scale, and then scaled up as an image to 200% size. This uses bilinear filtering by default, and can optionally be set to use nearest-neighbor scaling as a compatibility option.
  2. Retina applications are rendered at 200% scale only.
If you select a scaled resolution in macOS other than 200%, what happens is that it renders the entire desktop at 200%, and then scales the result to fit your screen. Even retina applications are being scaled on your display when you do this.

So if you're using a non-integer scale with macOS, the entire display is blurred.
Windows will at least render DPI-aware applications natively when using a non-integer scale.
The equivalent on Windows would be setting the OS to 200% scale and then using NVIDIA DSR/AMD VSR to select a higher resolution than your display supports to increase your workspace.

And Windows' handling of non-DPI-aware applications is the same as macOS's handling of non-retina applications now - only it automatically selects whether to use bilinear scaling or not based on whether you're using an integer scale or not.

The main difference is that Windows has an additional "legacy" scaling method available as a compatibility mode which may allow for a non-DPI-aware application to render correctly on a high DPI display - or it may break entirely - that's why it's disabled by default.

The other difference is that macOS does not have the support for legacy applications that Windows does.
On a Mac, you're far more likely to be using up-to-date apps which all natively have retina support.
On Windows you're far more likely to still be using applications/utilities which are not DPI-Aware.
And Windows developers don't seem to care. Many are stuck with the '90s attitude of "more resolution = more workspace" and just don't seem to grasp the concept of DPI scaling at all. So they don't build support for it into their applications even if they're still under active development.

So it's no that the OS is at fault, as much as it is the developers/ecosystem which is the problem.
And it's only going to get worse with this push to move away from sRGB to DCI-P3 displays for the mainstream.
Even the Surface Studio has a button on it to enable "sRGB mode" because Windows' color management sucks.
macOS and iOS on the other hand seem to have made the transition to DCI-P3 displays without any difficulty at all.

I'm seriously considering a switch back to macOS as a result. The ecosystem there is built to handle modern displays, Windows seems stuck in the dark ages.
Click to expand...
Many of my displays seem to be defaulting to 125% scaling in Windows 8.1/10, which just doesn't look good to me at all because of the DPI virtualization and its bilinear filtering that you mentioned. 200% scaling may fare much better with the bilinear filter off, but I don't have a display with that much DPI, where it makes sense to use 200% in the first place. Maybe if I made the jump to 4K, like replacing my Cintiq Companion Hybrid with a MobileStudio Pro 15" several years from now...

I'm more concerned about not having incorrectly rendered text in EDF4.1 (too large, gets cropped and unreadable), having a rescaled, non-pixel-perfect view of Paint Tool SAI or some other drawing app (which you obviously do not want to happen in that kind of app), and other weird crap like that which tends to crop up in Windows programs. The former case is just a port of a game I never would have expected to be ported to PC (and am immensely grateful for, even with its quirks), the latter is just based on a really old codebase to the point where I started moving over to CLIP STUDIO PAINT instead for proper touch + pen support and a greater likelihood of hi-DPI usability.

You're right about macOS's general disregard for legacy applications; I've seen it happen as Mac OS X displaced Mac OS 9 forcefully before it was ready for prime time (gotta have that preemptive multi-tasking and memory protection out the door!), yet any version older than 10.4 Tiger (maybe 10.3 Panther) was completely useless from a third-party software support standpoint. My 10.2 Jaguar install discs might as well be coasters for all the software they can run; you're literally better off just sticking to OS 9. At least 10.9 Mavericks and later are free upgrades.

Funny thing is, it's that same disregard for legacy software that makes me relatively disinterested in modern versions of OS X. SheepShaver is crap compared to the old Classic Mode you had on Tiger and PowerPC Macs, and even that isn't a total substitute for natively booting OS 9. My main interest in Mac software is very specifically from a legacy gaming standpoint, and for that, it's still best to have real hardware that can natively boot the Classic Mac OS for a litany of compatibility reasons.

Don't get me started on Windows' excuse for a color management system. You generally have to hope that you can manage color spaces on the monitor side, because Windows sure isn't doing it for you. Even retaining a monitor calibration profile made with my i1Display Pro is a pain because things like games will just drop it entirely for the default, uncorrected sRGB profile, and when that happens, why bother?

What I don't know about the macOS side of things, though, is how they're handling different gamma standards now on top of different gamuts. You may recall that they used to use 1.8 gamma as the standard back with OS 9 and prior, but I figure they've switched to 2.2 because that's what the sRGB spec calls for, not to mention that it's what Windows has always targeted.
 
Price on store.apple.com is $974+tax. Seems like a great price compared to the Dell 5k!
 
geok1ng said:
5k would about as useless at 34" as it is in a 27".
text looks great with 200% scaling seems an empty excuse when we hear people complaining that text is too small in the now main stream 110 PPI monitors.

i want contrast, refresh rate and desktop real space. good looking text is the least concern in a PC monitor.
Click to expand...


I think both of you make good points and aren't mutually exclusive. I too think that 5K on a 27 inch display is a bit of overkill and would also prefer it on a 32 or 34 inch screen. I have a dell u3011 and it almost seems like a downgrade (not resolution wise), but size wise to go to a 27 inch. Plus I loos the 16:10 ratio, which I find to be the perfect ratio for PC monitors. I can excuse it going to 32 or 34, but not so when going down to 27.

I also agree with you in that text sharpness really isn't the issue at this point. My u3011 has about 100PPI and the text is fine. What I want is actually usesable real-estate and if text at 5K become so small that I have to double the scaling, I then lose a certain amount of real estate. However, the real reason I want a 5K monitor is the sharpness in everything else. In the photos, in the videos, playing with lightroom and have my A7RII images not be as downscaled. being able to watch 4K or even play with a home video that is 4K and still have room in the UI of the software to play around. Another is contrast ratio. My panasonic VT25 image still looks better than nearly all of the 4K TVs (except for the OLED ones and maybe a few of the ultra premium HD certified HDR LCD TVs). This is simply due to having a great black level, creating excellent contrast ratio as a result. Refresh rate is another, The drop off in resolution in 5K 60hz may be worth it to go 4K 120Hz, with displayport 1.3. Speaking of ultrapremium certification, for LCDs, you need a brightness level of 1000, and black level of 0.05, 500, which this monitor have, if it turns out to be true, is actually not that bad for a monitor. It wouldn't qualify, but perhaps the contrast ratio for this monitor might be some of the best we have seen in a non-VA monitor.
 
Looks like a nice montior, but why only Thunderbolt?? I get that it's an Apple display, but still... other people might buy this thing!!!
 
I was excited about this and the pricing until I realized they didn't make it a true docking station type monitor set up and that it has no card reader or legacy USB ports built in.

Those seem like a really odd omissions given that the old Apple thunderbolt display was specifically built to plug your laptop in and get access to more ports and power etc when docked.

Here you get "power" but nothing legacy. In fact you'd literally have to have dongles hanging out of the monitor just like the laptop itself. Totally ridiculous.
 
This thing is looking like a beast... I'm hoping for a DP1.4 version soon. Come on LG, make it happen!
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
Well before your long rant that follows this, which I agree with, I think you entirely missed my point and read into my statement your own meaning. I'm not advocating low DPI large workspaces and I never meant to convey that more resolution necessarily equates to more workspace. I was simply pointing out that a panel capable of 5K resolution would be far better suited to a larger display size than 27". Bump it up to a 34" display size and that 5K would still look phenomenal as far a DPI goes. What's missing in the PC monitor world are larger 5K screens. If that 27" display can actually show 5120x2880 resolution and the Mac can address it all when displaying high res photos, then to me at least, the image detail would be so fine that much of it would be lost as to actually being able to perceive it due to the limitations of our eyes.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that it would be nice to start seeing some larger displays with higher resolutions.

However, in regards to limitations of the human eye, based on everything I've read on the topic, from a viewing distance of 2.5 feet the limitation is between 300 PPI and 500 PPI -- depending on person's age and visual acuity. Even a 27" 8K monitor is at the low end of that range at 326 PPI.

So, this 5K 27" display hasn't reached the limitation. I have a 4K 27" display and it doesn't look good to me any more after using a 5K 27" iMac.
 
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