Monitor Opinions

TidBITS Talk
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Maybe, but you may find issues at that resolution. macOS’s UI elements are designed for a display with about 110 pixels per inch or a retinal display with about 220 ppi (using double-sized graphic assets).

27" at 4K resolution is about 160 ppi - right in between. Which means you may end up dealing with one or more of these problems:

  • Objects too small, if you pick an apparent resolution of 2840x2160 (no scaling). Unless you like that size, of course.
  • Objects too big, if you pick an apparent resolution of 1920x1080 (2:1 scaling). Unless you like that size, of course.
  • Significant GPU usage to implement non-integer scaling to bring the apparent resolution to 2560x1440. This may have a significant impact on the performance of GPU-intensive apps like video editing and gaming.

I’ve read, and agree with recommendation that at the 27" size, you should either get a 2560x1440 (1440p) resolution display (110 ppi, no scaling) or a 5120x2880 (5K) display (220 ppi, with 2:1 scaling) in order to avoid the GPU overhead of non-integer scaling factors.

See also;

I generally agree here. IPS panels have very good color accuracy and very little color shifting when viewed off-axis. But they do not support the highest refresh rates (important for gaming, probably not for other applications) at 4K resolutions and they don’t exhibit the highest contrast ratios (good for watching movies).

VA panels tend to have higher refresh rates and contrast ratios, at the expense of color accuracy and off-axis viewing angles (but the good ones come really close).

So although I do recommend IPS panels for non-gaming applications, I wold also have no problem recommending a good quality VA panel.

FWIW, my (very old now) Dell 2405 FPW display is a (1920x1200 60 Hz) VA panel and I’ve never had any problems with it, even when viewing from extreme angles.

See also:

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