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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

I'm reading this on a 27" 5K imac from 2014. It's a nice screen. But it's eight years old now. So, what's new?

Speaking as someone who's in the market for a new display, I haven't been able to find a quality 27" 5K screen. LG has one, but it gets poor reviews. Everybody else is selling 4Ks, which is lower effective resolution than what I'm using now (a 23" 1920x1200 Apple Cinema display). So this is definitely appealing to me.

The effective resolution of 4K is 2x in both directions because to match the size you just set the 27" screen a bit farther away so it fills the same field of view. The jump in resolution from going 4K will be very noticeable and a 27" 4K IPS screen is less than 300€. Well worth the upgrade.

Because I’m on a Mac, everything will be rendered at 2x resolution, giving me the same usable area as a 1920x1080 display, even though the physical area is larger. That’s a step backwards—I’m not willing compromise on usable area or 2x resolution, so a 4K display isn’t good enough.

(Edit: my Cinema Display is something like 15 years old, so I’m confident I’ll get my money’s worth out of a new purchase.)

OSX does have intermediate steps so you can use those instead. It's not true fractional scaling but as the resolution increases the artifacts are less noticeable. Don't know if there are any 2400px tall 4K screens if you want to go for exactly the same dimensions.

I am in the same bucket. LG Ultrafine is the only option which seems available. But it's an old model and I am surprised the lack of availability from the other manufacturers.

I have the LG ultra fine 5k and it's a very good monitor. It has a small defect: occasionally there is a small flickering on the central vertical line. It goes away if you put the screen to sleep and wake it again (it takes a few seconds, and I had to do it a handful of times in a year)

in 2014, you could buy a 27" 5k iMac for 2000$.

Now you can buy the exact same monitor, for 1600$.

We've made a lot of progress.

That's $2300 in todays dollars if it helps the cost comparison

And $2500 in next month's.

That really is a shame. Mac screens have been amazing for a long time now, but as soon as the computer inside them is outdated and slow, the whole device including the still awesome display is obsolete. Thats the main reason I'd probably never buy an iMac.

If you've ever tried to get an apple monitor repaired, you find out it has one part inside which costs roughly the same as the monitor.

Same here. My 27" iMac has been my longest running and best desktop computer. It still feels pretty fast!

In comparison, my "late 2014" Mac Mini feels slow (after an OS upgrade).

OS upgrade might be the problem. I'm still running Mojave!

Do you not get ghosting issues?

iMac 2015. Yes, and it is bad.

I now set all my monitors to turn on screensaver within 1 minute.

Shameful. Mine started doing it after 2 years. How convenient that's when your warranty ends

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