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I have been waiting for good external Retina displays for years. That the situation has not improved after all this time is incredibly frustrating. Why is no display manufacturer [0] interested in setting itself apart by producing and marketing a lineup of reasonably priced external pixel-doubled (~200 ppi) displays? For some reason everything must be 16:9 and 4K with no regards to display size, resulting in some very awkward pixel densities. The fact that Apple is able to mass-manufacture a 5k display with a whole computer in it for just a little bit more than an UltraFine 5k is to me an indication that at least it’s technically feasible.

[0] There is LG, but these displays have their issues as the article explains.

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The monitor market as a whole is pretty underwhelming.

TVs and mobile/portable devices get lots of attention. But pc monitor they are very far in manufactors priorities.

Focus is on 1) gaming, where response time and high frame rate is more important than high resolution, and 2) regular offices, where price is more important than any other feature.

Add to this fact that manufacturing displays is a costly affair, so there are no "artisinal" choices.

If you're looking for a 5k display, I've found Wikipedia's list of 5k devices to be valuable reference point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5K_resolution#List_of_devices_...

Personally, I'm hanging out for a 5120x2880 display larger than 27". We've had 27" 5120x2880 displays for 6 or 7 years now, you'd think someone would have taken that res to a larger panel by now. But nope, still waiting.

I'm aware of all of these monitors, but most are discontinued or unavailable. Luckily I've recently been able to acquire a used LG 5K monitor and it's pretty great most of the time, but my model has some display quality problems.

If a 5120x2880 display were larger than 27", then it wouldn't have a good pixel density. In my experience, either slightly above 100 or 200 ppi are the sweet spots for screen resolution, because you get along well with an integer scaling factor.

it's a matter of connectors and display bandwidth. Apple's extra-expensive display doesn't use HDMI or DisplayPort connectors, it uses a proprietary connector.

edit: I'm wrong on that. oops. apparently that invalidates my entire point. (it doesn't)

display bandwidth matters, and connectors are where display bandwidth goes to die. apple had to design a special one for the bandwidth requirements of that display.

it's not so much a matter of panels, but display protocol bandwidth and connectors that allow it.

even Microsoft have the Surface Studio, and it's excellent 4500x3000 display, and it's only available as part of the Surface Studio because that's the cheapest way they can get the display bandwidth all the way to the screen. eliminate the connectors and hardwire it.

this is also why laptops (especially apple laptops) have such good displays. they don't have to destroy the signal integrity with connectors, and they can use more wires to carry the signal than HDMI or DisplayPort allow.

high resolution, high framerate monitors just won't happen over DisplayPort or HDMI without serious advances. I expect a new connector to appear before that.

It's using a Thunderbolt 3 connector I wouldn't call that proprietary. There are quite a few TB3 monitors out there.

DisplayPort over Thunderbolt is not a proprietary connector (this is what the Pro Display XDR uses).

It's really stupid to force Thunderbolt usage though when USB-C has an alt mode for DP directly.

The DP altmode didn’t provide enough bandwidth, which is why the best experience is over the Thunderbolt alternate mode.

edit: you can in fact get HBR3 working, what's not working at full rate with DP instead of thunderbolt is the USB3 hub on the display.

Oh it does? Nice. Kinda expected Apple to go full asshole mode on that.

You mean Intel - older Thunderbolt displays don't support USB-C alt-mode because Intel didn't support it as input until Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers.

I believe the reason, IIRC, is it's actually doing two DP streams because one isn't enough bandwidth for the full resolution, which you can't do in alt mode where the PC is literally using the pins of the connection as though it were a single DP cable (although this may be more viable with newer DP specs these days, not sure).

It uses a usb 3 connector, although, given bandwidth and power requirements, I guess it has to be rated for the task.

DisplayPort 1.4 (quite old and common) has 8k at 60Hz. DisplayPort 2.0 has 16k at 60Hz. How is that not enough?

Why in the world do you need proof from me?

the proof is that video cards and monitors and TVs either simply don't support that bandwidth, or they're so expensive that they're essentially hand made.

That's how you know, you look at the market and see what's available, and what it costs. People would buy the heck out of this stuff if it were possible to make it work with common, sloppy, reusable connectors like HDMI or DisplayPort. The fact of the matter is that it isn't possible to make this stuff with removable connectors, yet.

That's why you see very high DPI displays in applications where there isn't any need for high cycle-count connectors, or only single-use connectors well before you see the same displays with high-cycle count connectors.

or they use display compression to fake it.

but what do I know? you did some google searches.

I think at the time the 5k Mac screens arrived only DisplayPort 1.2 was available, and probably some of the chips they use still only support that. But indeed - since time moved on and DisplayPort can now do 8k/60Hz it would be nice to see more screens going beyond 4K and supporting it.

The "serious advances" is DSC, which the XDR is already using to support 6k over a single DisplayPort HBR2 link. Which, as others mentioned, can be carried via USB-C alt-mode in addition to Thunderbolt.

6k 120Hz and 5k 144Hz are both possible over a single HBR3 link with DSC. Such monitors don't exist because the panels don't exist; rather the closest panel for sale is perhaps the 5120x1440 at 240Hz in the Samsung G9. Which has the same bandwidth requirements as a hypothetical 5120x2880 at 120Hz.

If you want 240Hz at >4k, or 8k 120Hz, then sure that exceeds existing DisplayPort 1.4 and ThunderBolt 4 bandwidth capabilities even with DSC, and you'll need the upcoming DisplayPort 2.0 link rates. (or DSC+chroma subsampling)

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