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rado

In a world of 5K displays and Apple's insistence on smoothness, this GPU just won't work.

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There isn't a "world of 5k displays" unfortunately, only Apple's high-end all-in-ones offer this option.

Philips 275P4VYKEB, but yeah, just one monitor.

Edit. Remembered Iiyama ProLite XB2779QQS, but it uses 6bit colors.

There's also an LG one.

Appears to be discontinued along with the Dell 5k. Only current option is the LG.

Supposedly Apple is planning an 8k display to go with the modular Mac Pro.

I suspect if they release a new display it will somehow be beholden to graphics capability of new Apple machines, possibly requiring A chips or their ilk. https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Is that really an issue with Intel's integrated GPUs? Honestly asking.

I'm considering a Mac Mini, but there's no way I'm going back to low PPI displays and the lack of affordable 5K / 27" options concerns me (in my opinion 4K/UHD at 27" is a borderline unusable combination with its effective resolution of 1080p - feel free to convince me otherwise).

If those few 5K options can't be driven smoothly by an Intel GPU, it's settled and I'm waiting for an iMac update instead. Ideally I'd like a multi monitor setup though.

Looking to buy a 4k 27 inch external monitor for my 2018 macbook. What's the problem with it and why is it not better than a 1080p?

It's better than 1080p as it is much sharper and crisper, but 1080p at 27 inches results in rather large UI elements. An effective resolution of 2560x1440px (as seen in any iMac 27) seems like the proper resolution for a display of that size.

Read more about it here: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/

I'm curios about this too, does the Mac Mini offer "scaled" options, like MacBooks do with their built-in display, when connecting to an external 4k monitor? I think it does some supersampling, resulting in higher effective resolution.

Sure, it does offer scaling, but you really want 2x scaling - I tried non-integer values on a 5k display, just to get a sense for it, and it was as disappointing as expected. Slightly blurry text, rather obvious that this wasn‘t the recommended native setting.

In my opinion 2x scaling is the only option and that leaves you with an effective resolution of 1920x1080 points - sure, it‘s sharp, but far from true 5k and more importantly the same screen real estate we used to fit into 20-24 incch displays for years. It‘s the wrong resolution for 27“.

Yes, it does. Though at that point it's effectively rendering at 5k anyway, so any performance problems you have with a real 5k you'll also have with that setup.

I found I preferred 4k at 27" to 24", because the larger sizes help with eye strain. Would definitely recommend trying both before buying if possible.

I have an iMac 5K and I need to scale things up a little bit for my (tired) eyes.

For me personally 4K 27'' would be better. At 163 PPI it would be worse than the 218 PPI of the 5K display, but it would not be a deal breaker if the color quality was the same.

The 545/645 found in the 13" MBPs can drive a 5k display adequately. Not sure about this 630, though.

My Thinkpad with Intel integerated graphics is unable to power a 4k display as smoothly as my desktop with 1070. It definitely makes a difference.

I bought a 2016 13" MBP to use it on an external display. It only works well on 2.5K. Always consider the GPU nowadays.

That's strange. I use an early 2015 13" model which happily drives two external 4k displays simultaneously. I'm not running them high-DPI though – the performance there is noticeably worse.

I have a 2017 13" and while it was working with a single 4k screen at 60 Hz, it simply isn't fun working on it since everything is laggy and stuttering.

I guess that high dpi then as well?

I found that wasn’t really nice to use because of the stuttering, but native 4K was much better. You need good eyesight though :)

Scaled down to 1440p yep. Native 4K is no option :D

On scaling other than 2x, it's unusable, while the MBP mobile Radeon Pro is good enough. They should have included that at least.

Yeah, I was doing 2x4k plus the internal screen off of the MacBook with a 555, and it was totally fluid. I would have happily forked out for the Mini if it had that GPU; it seems like a bit of a strange decision for such an otherwise powerful machine!

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