Many of us enjoy quality experiences, such as a P229 Legion punching the eyeball out of a paper target at 15 yards with ten shots grouped in about 1.5 inches.

In that quest for a similar experience, with a new MacBook Pro, I needed (really!) a new monitor. I looked into the Apple Studio Display. Entry price is $1600. Not a relevant bit of kit. My first car cost $900.

So, I thought I'd use a Costco LG widescreen. $349. Can't be that bad. Resolution should be OK. Why not? Well, when you connect a typical monitor to an atypical MacBook Pro, it looks horrible. Pixel size is huge. Fuzzy. Cheap plastic chassis. Worst of all, it was "smart" and tried to connect to the internet all by itself so it could display TV, Prime Video, etc. Not needed. Back to Costco it went.

So, I discovered that a higher quality and higher cost monitor was required. With a little research, I found the 4K2K "UHD" variant for a MacBook Pro, using Thunderbolt as a connection. Dell of all people makes this monitor for Apple computers.

It's the U2725QE. 120 Hz refresh rate. What I appreciate most is the single cable connection to the MacBook. One Thunderbolt cable does it all (and comes with the monitor). Sound, video, ethernet, downstream USB-A or USB-C connections (such as a video camera). Far more connections than the Apple product. And, with that single connection, it even charges the laptop with 140W of power. This means I can leave the Apple power supply and MagSafe cable in the backpack!

The display is low reflectivity, also, which is a cost adder for Apple products. The office window does not show any light reflection on this monitor.

And, now, the photo library finally looks sharp and clear! 4K2K is just fine, on a 27 inch display.

Is it expensive? I think so, but it is worth the cost. 10% off with that typical give us your e-mail nonsense. About $700. So, comparing to an equivalent Apple Studio display with matte display and height and angle adjustment stand, it is 69% cheaper. That's significant. It has a standard three year warranty, vs. the Apple one year promise.

Is it all metal? No. Is it exactly a color match to any Apple product? No. But, for a typical user, at a typical viewing distance, this is all I could ask for. Big smile.

I have two 27"ers on the Mac Mini I am using right now, an ASUS VE278, and a ASUS PB287Q, both are flawless, I have been using the former for over ten years on multiple computers. It is "only" 1920x1080 pixels, the latter is about five years old, and 3840x2160 pixels. I don't run it at max. resolution because the letters get too small for my aging eyes when I move a window from the main display to it.

I have placed many Cinema displays at client sites over the years, you will not find a better monitor, but I firmly believe that the cost associated with them is what has given Apple its premium price reputation. I would not buy one of these unless I had DGAF money, and could haul it home in my Koenigsegg (nahh, it probably wouldn't fit anyway).

Photography has been a hobby for me since the 1970's so I've seen it all. Went digital in 2003 with a 6mp D70 and now have 24.5 and 46mp Nikon's in my kit.

Back in 2015 I built a high power system with a whopping 32gb of RAM and a 512gb hard drive that got replaced up to a 1TB SSD over time. Monitor was a very highly rated Philips 2K 19 inch. This year when I finally want to mirrorless and 46mp I decided the time had come to upgrade my computer(s). It started with a 16 inch Thinkpad with a 2K screen and thunderport 4 connections. It ended up with a desktop based on an Intel I9 24 core 14900K CPU, an MSI 3060 GPU, 128 gb of RAM and an M2 2GB main disk. I'll also note that a driving force for the RAM is because I am also working my way thru scanning all my 4x5 and 120 negatives and 300mb scans are a typical starting point. The monitor is an Asus Procreator 27" 4k display. BTW it is a Windows system due to the lack of compatibility for some image editors for MAC computers.

Today Photography seems to be all about Pixel Peeping which I think is flat out STUPID. Photography shouldn't be about sitting at a computer looking at 200% and high pixel peeps. That is in fact a form of Masturbation. What really gets me is when some idiot claims his new super duper lens is soft in a 200% peep. The reason that 200% peep looks soft is because that cheap moron doesn't realize that the softness he is seeing is due to the resolution limit of his 2K monitor he thinks is "just fine". If you are doing something where good image clarity is required that starts with a 4K monitor and goes up from there.

BTW, text size in Windows apps can be adjusted by your display settings. I currently have the display zoom on my machine set to 217% and it results in readable text. However Corel's software is quite poor at adhering to the Display zoom so some of the text is small while other areas have the magnified text and the result is a confusing visual mashup.

For using my MacBook Pro on the desktop I have a 32” LG UltraFine UHD 4K Thunderbolt 3 IPS (3840 x 2160) Monitor I bought in 2020 and a Dell UltraSharp 27”Infinity Edge IPS Monitor (2560 x 1440) that dates back to 2017.

I use the LG in “normal” (landscape) orientation directly in front of me with the Dell in portrait orientation to the right. The computer uses Thunderbolt to the LG and the LG has built in “hub” that the Dell connects to as well as my desktop speakers.

LG handles on the photography stuff and is an awesome monitor, wasn’t cheap though at just shy of $1000 at the time. Dell is a bit older and not quite as sharp but is fine for text, internet, etc. it served as my main monitor for 3 years before I got the LG.

Neither are made any longer but it looks like LG has similar models that are “monitors” with high end specs in addition to their “Smart Monitors” with the extra features (that I wouldn’t want).

Last I heard the Apple branded monitors were being made by LG.

I've also recently upgraded to a 4K2K UHD monitor, an MSI 321URX QD-OLED. I've never experienced 4K and it's amazing. The bump from LCD to OLED is quite noticeable, especially since I like it dark in my computer room.