My iMac needs replacing and I'm considering a Mini. Do any Mini users have a display they're particularly fond of?

Have one of these at work on a Windows PC and at home on a Mac Mini:
BenQ GW2760HS 27" Widescreen LED Backlit LCD Monitor

we actually use a mac mini in our living room attached to our TV and have no cable box. It works perfectly; Netflix, Hulu, youtube, itunes. I can't imagine NOT having a computer in our living room now.

 
First of all, whatever size you go with, an IPS panel will please you the most. It has a very wide viewing angle, as opposed to the low-end TN panels that you have to be directly in front of to view clearly.
 
For 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200), I wouldn't go any larger than a 24". You will just lose detail (see the jagged edges of the individual pixels). Dell makes some nice IPS panels in 22"-24" that do that resolution nicely.
 
The Mini will support up to 2560x1440 (or 2560x1600), which is ideal for a 27" (or 30") panel. This is via the Thunderbolt port (which is also a mini display port). The 27" iMac (prior to the 5k retina) was nothing but an LG IPS panel running at 2560x1440.
 
The nice thing about having a separate CPU, like the Mini or the Pro, is being able to pick a monitor that is superior to what Apple offers in the all-in-one models. For one thing, I hate a glossy screen, so I go for matte, anti-glare panels. Plus I am now running a 32" panel at full 4k resolution. Apple does not offer that in any model.
 
When I had my Mini, it was paired with a 27" IPS panel at 2560x1440, and later a 30" at 2560x1600. Even Monoprice now sells these. Dells are good, too. There are lots of choices.
 

Minis are good. Make sure you know what you are buying though. The older ones (mid-2014 and pre) are upgradable (RAM) but the newer ones are not (late 2014 and newer) so max out the RAM at purchase of a newer model.

There are no shortage of high quality 27" LCD displays in the $150-$200 range. I have purchased a bunch for my company of he following types.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0043T34RK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009HNEBLK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMKOVPQ

I have a 2015 MacMini with 1 TB drive, and an ASUS 27 inch 4K monitor.
It works fine for me.
An iMac looks good, but in reality you're going to have peripherals plugged in to the iMac (external HD, scanner, printer) so it never looks as clean as it does in the ads.
I'm hoping they will upgrade the Mini but don't have a lot of hope for that.

quote:

Originally posted by Jimbo Jones:
Minis are good. Make sure you know what you are buying though. The older ones (mid-2014 and pre) are upgradable (RAM) but the newer ones are not (late 2014 and newer) so max out the RAM at purchase of a newer model.

There are no shortage of high quality 27" LCD displays in the $150-$200 range. I have purchased a bunch for my company of he following types.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0043T34RK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009HNEBLK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMKOVPQ

That's a real important distinction between the different models with regard to RAM. I found a decent deal on an 8gb model I liked but it wasn't upgradable. They also had one with the same specs but with 16gb but that seemed far more expensive than it should have been for just having an additional 8gb.

Thanks for all the leads and links. I'm getting eye strain reading all these specs. I definitely need to get back to a large screen.

I use a Mac Mini with a 2.6GHz i7 CPU and 16GB of RAM, and I find it to be a very powerful little beast for the price. It can run hot, which means fan noise a lot of times, but it's not that bad.

I use an Apple 27" thunderbolt display, which is no longer made and probably not best in class for the price anyways. The Dell Ultra 4k monitors are also outstanding.

I am using an ASUS VE278 on my Mac mini, it works well in 1080p. As noted above, connect via DisplayPort (mini DP to DP cable) gives the best performance. HDMI works OK. DVI via a mini DP<->DVI adapter, not so much.

I gave my daughter a mini - late 2014, 1.4ghz core i5, 4 gb ram - really a nice machine

I've got a Samsung 28" 4K monitor hooked up to mine through the display port connector. No problems with the graphics card driving it at all

I have a 2012 Mini with a Dell 24" IPS panel. My husband has a 2011 Mini with a 27" Monoprice IPS panel. We both like our monitors

Both Minis have SSDs and 16 GB RAM. I also use iStat Menus to monitor all sorts of things and adjust my fans the way I want.

I just picked up an LG 34", 2560x1080 IPS display at Costco for $280. The resident Apple-head at work told me a Mac Mini would have no problem driving that at all. (I'm thinking of getting one, eventually. Two, actually.)

Tomorrow I'm going to hook it up to my existing Linux box, using the i5's GPU, to replace the dual 1280x1024 19" displays I've been using. Got to go buy an HDMI or Displayport<->HDMI cable, first.

I wouldn't get a mac mini right now... the older ones are faster (quad core vs dual core) for many tasks, and they haven't been updated for quite a while.

Many thanks to all who replied. The information contained in your responses allowed me to target the specs important to me based on my usage and narrow the dizzyingly large field of available monitors to a manageable few.

I ultimately chose a 27" Monoprice, a brand which wasn't even on my radar when I first began this search (thanks, Leann).

You're welcome. It's a really nice monitor at a good price.

Just wondering what is wrong with your current iMac ? God Bless

^^^^

My iMac is an early 2008 and had some transient monitor issues earlier this year. Due to its age, I can't even upgrade the OS to the latest version so I decided against trying to replace the video card.

I began searching in earnest for a replacement earlier this week and it died for good a few days ago. Good timing for once.

The company I work for just purchased me a new Mac Mini with the i7 processor.

So I bought that 34" LG 2560x1080 IPS monitor Costco has and hooked it up, last night. (Btw: The box doesn't say it, but, it does come with an HDMI cable.)

WOW!

I had dual 1280x1024 Dell "Pro" series monitors, before. Ok, so I'd get another 24 pixels of vertical out of it. And the bezels in the middle would be gone. Should be nice. But, the physical viewing area is also 1/2" wider and an inch higher, meaning everything is just a bit bigger, plus this sucker is bright. I've got the brightness down to 30% and it's still bright in a brightly-lit room. Images, text, etc. are so much more detailed, rich and crisp, I was actually able to move the monitor back a bit more, and I still might drop my font size. (Which will be a boon to coding.)

Definitely an improvement. Big improvement.

As for the future of the Mac Mini:

quote:

"On that I'll say the Mac Mini is an important product in our lineup and we weren't bringing it up because it's more of a mix of consumer with some pro use. … The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup, but nothing more to say about it today." -- Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller via Daring Fireball

Source: Apple Says Mac Mini is 'Important' But Remains Tight-Lipped About Future Updates