LG 27UK850-W: An Acceptable 27-inch Display for the Mac

Article Comments
41

Here’s a tip: be sure to use the cables that come in the box. My monitor was jittering and blanking out when connected through DisplayPort. @SwiftOnSecurity on Twitter mentioned that you should use the included cables instead of your own, because newer monitors are more exacting in their requirements. I swapped my cable for the included LG one, and it instantly cleared up the problem.

It’s also possible that my old cable had gone bad. In any case, if you have trouble with this monitor, try using the included cables.

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42

the entire discussion was very helpful. This comment re LG 5K display cinched my decision. Thank you, and all.

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43

LG connectors in the monitor or TV are of poor quality and/or connected weakly connected to the circuit board which makes them susceptible to failure when repeatedly plugged in and out or if strain is continually placed on the cables, often resulting in a time consuming or expensive repair. I speak from experience with two products: the product mentioned above and a 65" LG TV. The solutions are once plugged into the monitor, do not unplug and replug the cable into the monitor but affix the cable to the back of the monitor with a cable clip, ensuring that there is a loop in the cable between the cable clip and the connector to minimize strain on the cable. If you need to unplug the cable. do it from the computer leaving the cable attached to the monitor. I used a 3M command clip to attach the cable to the monitor and instead of the adhesive material with the clip, I use nano tape, sometime referred to as alien tape as it is very strong yet removable. You could also use high strength double sided tape or epoxy glue but I would not recommend the instant adhesives such as the Crazy Glue types as they might melt the plastic case of the monitor and impossible and if they give way, regluing could be an issue.

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44

I have fallen in love with the LG UltraFine 5K Display, I will try to assemble my thoughts in a brief review of this at some point. But in sum, although I don’t do a lot of graphic/video intense work, I can already tell that the various features of this display are sufficiently significant to me to have warranted the expense (though I can hear the cognitive psychologist in myself saying “Watch out for Cognitive dissonance Beaudoin!” :blush:)

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45

I bought one of the LG UltraFine 5K displays the instant they were available. Once you go retina, going back is so, so painful. Seeing the difference between my laptop screen and the older Dell display I had was so irritating, I had to spend the extra money for the LG.

I’ll never love the display. There are enough design and feature flaws that it’ll never be a great display overall. (The most irritating is it only connects to one computer at a time, while I have three on my desktop right this moment. Working from home… The most severe is the occasional ghosting, but that fades enough to not be a distraction.)

But that screen. So sharp. Even with a cataract in my left eye, I can see the difference, clear as day. I can’t go back.

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46

Me too. I bought two LG UF 5K’s back in Mar 2017 – after the shielding issues the first batch had, had been fixed – which I still use as my displays today.

AFAIR for the first 9 or 12months they were released, Apple knocked 25%-off pricing for all the new (at the time) USB-C connector accessories gear they sold, which took it from £1180 to £885, making them a fairly decent deal at the time.

The fact they remain at the higher MSRP pricing now is partially ridiculous (can’t currently find on Apple UK, only here on LG: 27'' UltraFine™ 5K Monitor | 27MD5KL | LG UK ), given we’re pushing half a decade(!) on from their initial release. But, without going for Apple’s stupidly expensive 6K XDR, as it’s really the only “Retina” option currently on the market (all the other 5K’s have been discontinued, and are technically inferior anyway for little price differences), I guess LG think they can still command such a price for it.

The only thing that’s different, is LG did a slight updated rev.B a couple of years ago to allow 5K connection over vanilla USB rather than the previous rev.A that was TB3 only (allowing things like USB-C iPad Pros to connect in mirror mode at 4K only). But really nothing to shout about.

While the image sharpness is great, and colour accuracy very good, they’re still not as refined as they could be in things like smooth volume control, et al. And absolutely agree that being able to at least connect to TWO Macs at the same time and flick between them would be very useful! (obviously current connection speeds, at least when these were released, could not handle it.)

As has been said countless times by seemingly everyone, if only Apple could release a new more affordable offering, especially now they’re doing M-series Macs, I’m sure the years of pent-up demand would shift major units for them.
…Well, one can dream, as I’ll only believe Apple really care about this issue when and if they release them, which looks less and less likely as time goes on unfortunately! :slightly_frowning_face:

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47

I bought mine before the shielding issue had come to light, and had to send it back to LG for fixing. Which went fine.

I really do have to wonder what Apple is doing about external displays internally. Are they giving all of their engineers XDR displays? What does that line item on the budget look like?

I suppose they’re not hurting for cash, and finding something expensive-and-deluxe to give their engineers as a perk is not really a downside. But I do wish it hurt a little bit, so they’d be more motivated to have a great-but-reasonably-priced display for those of us not sitting on billions of unspent dollars…

FWIW, let’s imagine that Apple does ship a great stand-alone display, basically the new iMac minus the computer part. I don’t imagine it’s going to support being used on multiple computers. Has any Apple display ever supported that? It’s why I stopped buying Apple displays, in favor of Dell. (Until the retina LG came alone.)

(My last Apple display was one of the ill-fated CRT models with that crazy A/V interface that stuck out three or four inches. It was compatible with, IIRC, just two Macs, the Centris 660AV that I had, and the Quadra equivalent. After that one, I said “never again”…)

My hope is that, just by sourcing the displays and building the electronics for the interface, they’ll “prime the pump” and we’ll see new hardware from other vendors that does include a couple of input interfaces, not just the single TB4 that I expect in an Apple version…

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48

I hope (likely in vein!) that Apple announce new larger MBPs and/or iMacs at a late 2021 event, and then do a One More Thing.

‘Ta-da… You asked we answered – matching our new iMacs, meet the new 5.5K external 30" display! Offering crystal clear 218dpi you’ve come to expect from all our Macs, to give you the desktop work space you need to get the job done.’

‘Blah blah blah… it also features not one but two of the very latest full Thunderbolt 4 ports, allowing you to connect each display up to two Macs concurrently, for the unrivalled versatility Mac users have come to expect.’

…oh yeah, silly me; that’s slated for 2025! Bugger. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

49

We really need a 27" as I have faculty needing replacements and they have 27" iMacs, and want M1 version from Apple. Heck one kicked and screamed over getting his iMacPro, only to get it, and 6 months later, discontinued from Apple.
Oh, and delays people! I ordered a Dell 49" curved back in March, to arrive in Sept. Now I am seeing delay of March 2022!!! :rage:

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Well, there are supposed to be massive supply constraints due to Covid, after all.

But in this case, Mar 2011 to Mar 2022 sounds more like a manufacturing/production issue, than simple delays in supply, we’re seeing elsewhere.

Note: According to some reports from the Apple-rumour mill, Apple are supposed to be largely immune to these delays, thanks to securing chip manufacture et al. So hopefully this won’t be an issue for at least their stuff, but maybe not the peripherals from others needed to be plugged into them! :upside_down_face:

51

Linus Tech Tips explains this pretty well:

TL;DW:

  • Chipmaking factories were impacted by COVID, but only for a short time. They’re all up and running at full production.
  • The automotive industry shot themselves in the foot. They predicted reduced sales and cut back their orders for chips. The reduced sales period didn’t last nearly as long as predicted, but the chipmakers already sold their chipmaking capacity to other customers, so they are now stuck waiting for more chips.
  • For most of the rest of the industry the problem is that we’re buying more electronics than ever before. So the chipmakers are all running at capacity. So they’re only shipping exactly what they promised and no more, since there is no slack.
  • The companies that got hit worst (e.g. GPU manufacturers) are suffering because their demand is far greater than they predicted. Companies that are doing well (e.g. Intel and Apple) are suffering less because their demand is pretty much in line with their predictions.
  • Everybody is building new facilities to allow increased production, but this takes a long time. For example, Samsung and TSMC’s new fabs won’t come on line until 2023.
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52

Definitely not all manufacturers are equally affected. Even beyond Apple. Since this thread is about displays, I can add that Dell was having trouble supplying us at work with some screens, but nothing of this magnitude.

I’m expecting a fancy 27" 4K U2720Q myself, ordered Aug 16 that’s now been delayed by two weeks. Nothing major, but clearly a departure from the “old normal” where we’d see items ship the moment our procurement dept forwards our request to the supplier, with drop off delivery usually within 48 hrs.

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If the primary use of the monitor will be for text, shouldn’t I just get a 1440p monitor rather than 4K? This avoids any text scaling issues that would occur with a 4K monitor. (This is to replace an 11-year old Apple Cinema Display, which is also 1440p).

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What text scaling issues are you thinking of?

If you’re talking about macOS display scaling (Retina display), it shouldn’t have any issues. Apple has been supporting this since 2012 and I don’t remember anyone complaining about it. If your third-party display isn’t recognized as Retina/HiDPI, there ways (e.g. SwitchResX) to let you manually configure it as such.

If you’re talking about the display’s built-in scaling (if you configure macOS to output a 1440p signal), then that may or may not look worse than an actual 1440p panel. But I wouldn’t use it in this manner. If the native 4K image is too small, I would use macOS scaling (manually configuring it, if necessary) to make the image larger.

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55

I’m also hoping for upgraded iMac and or Mac mini early next year…looking to upgrade my 2019 Intel iMac. I’m unsure at this point whether I want a mini and display or an iMac…since the display will likely outlive the Mini there’s some justification for that and the ports/speed/etc on both will likely be the same. I would like a 30 inch display for photo work…but something up in the $5K to $6K range is more than I can really justify for my needs for a monitor.

Either way…since I’m retired whatever I get will last 6 to 8 years at least…my needs are not that great but a faster box for Lightroom is always a good thing.

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My job revolves around text, and I want the absolute sharpest display I can get my hands on, which is why I primarily write on a 5K iMac. macOS does text scaling very well, so you can always bump up the text size. Also, Apple optimizes for Retina displays so text looks lousy at lower resolutions.

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57

Thanks for the responses to my question about 1440p vs 4K 27" monitors primarily for text. To clarify what I am thinking, I have a Retina 15" MacBook Pro, which is 2880 X 1800, 220 pixels/in, scaled to “look like” 1440 X 900 (default setting). This was paired with a now-dead Apple Cinema display that is 2560 X 1440 at about 110 pixels/in. At normal viewing distance of about 2 feet text on both looks “great”; the retina display might look a little sharper, and this becomes more evident if leaning in closer. The larger monitor is the primary workspace where I can view two pages of text.
If I bought a 27" 4K monitor, 3840 X 2160 and about 160 ppi, I would want to set it up to view the same amount of info as a 1440p monitor; at native resolution text would be too small. So, the text would be scaled (yes, using MacOS scaling, not by outputting a 1440p signal) and not by an integer factor of 2x as on the retina display. This article seems to confirm that using a 4K 27" monitor as a 1440p equivalent is perhaps not a great idea. But that’s what I was looking to confirm - that I might as well buy a 1440p monitor and save a little money (the difference is not really significant) rather than getting a 4K monitor and scaling it to 1440p.
I think you’re saying no, get the 4K?
(A 5K monitor is not an option at this time; a larger 30" or so 4K monitor is not a great option either as a 27" barely fits the space). Thanks

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That article seems a bit biased. For instance, the video clip where they show shimmering (which I can barely see even on their clip) is magnified quite a bit. You may not see it in actual practice on a high-DPI screen.

It also claims that there are certain DPIs that will always look bad, whether you treat it as a Retina display or not.

I say that this is a very personal decision. Your eyes are not the same as anybody else’s and what someone else likes will not necessarily be what you like, even if he’s got lots of charts and graphs to back it up.

Since you have a laptop, see if there is a local store where the manager will let you plug it in to various displays in order to see for yourself. (Be sure to come prepared with cables and possibly also software to force HiDPI mode, so you can perform good tests.) Not all stores will let you do this, but some will, so call up and ask before you go.

I personally think a 4K screen scaled to 1440p may look a bit better, but if that display costs significantly more than a display with a native 1440-line resolution, I don’t think I’d pay the difference. But it’s not always the case that higher resolution costs more. 1440p panels are only used in computer displays, while 4K panels are also used in TVs, so they often have the economies of scale necessary to drive the price down.

Ultimately, I think you’ll be happy either way, so I’d decide based on factors like price, panel type (IPS vs something else), brightness, color accuracy and brand reputation.

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59

So can anyone recommend which model of 27" LG monitor with a USB C type socket to buy in the UK now? Thanks.