LG just recently released another beast of a 5K widescreen; looks like what the Dell above is based on.
Now we have Ming-Chi Kuo suggesting Apple’s new display will be a 6K retina quality 218ppi model.
Sounds a weird option to me that Apple would go for this. But then, it may be they simply cannot wait for Thunderbolt 4 to arrive, which would offer enough bandwidth for 8 or 10K options along with hub like functionalities. So a 6K may sell well when marketed especially for use with a new Mac Pro. We’ll see.
We now have the answer. At WWDC last week Apple announced their own display, the 32 inch Pro Display XDR. But with a $5,000 price tag, there are undoubtedly less expensive alternatives. If you’ve got the scratch, though, it looks to be a great monitor. You can see it at https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/.
One thing that’s not clear to me is what Macs, other than the Mac Pro, will be able to drive this 6K monitor at full resolution. I’m guessing that the iMac Pro will be able to, since it can drive two 5K displays along with its built-in screen, but the MacBook Pro can supposedly drive only one 5K display—will it have enough overhead to run a 6K display?
And regardless, I’m sadly priced out of it. I was hoping for a 5K Retina Thunderbolt Display to replace the non-Retina one I use now with my Retina iMac (and that’s noticeably lower quality).
I’m sad about being priced out of both Mac Pro and the display. Dell does sell an 8k monitor, and they just dumped the price from $4,999 to $3,899. B&H is selling it for $3,415, and you can pick it up at the store or have it shipped to you today:
Samsung’s got an 8k on sale for $3,999, down from $4,999 at Best Buy. This is way out of my price range too:
Apple is, once again, disrupting the high end professional market.
No doubt Apple will announce compatible Macs when the monitor is released for sale. Most of us, though, like you, will be priced out of it. Not that I’m dissatisfied with my current iMac. Because I am visually impaired, however, I don’t need a Retina display of any kind. That said, there are plenty of Retina Macs available for those who do. Nor are many people likely to dispose of their current investment in big monitors to pick up an even bigger one. The market for that Pro Display XDR is likely to be as limited as the market for the new Mac Pro. Given the small potential market, I’m surprised Apple went for it. But, even though I’m no longer in the market for a Mac Pro, I’m glad Apple did, if for nothing else than for bragging rights. I can’t wait to see which, if any, PCs will even try to contend with it, at any price. Though Apple mentioned a way expensive “reference” monitor in the keynote. Who owns one of those, except, maybe, James Cameron?
5K is the new “curved display.”
While appealing and cool to most people—it’s simply not useful for the overwhelming majority of users. And it came at a time that fell in the middle of the more popular 4K and the hot new 6-8K.
5K not a gimmick when it’s used to provide the same pixel density (i.e. “Retina”) on a larger screen. The Apple iMac Retina 4K and Apple iMac Retina 5K have basically the same DPI (~218) but the former is 21.5" diagonal and the latter is 27". Apple’s Pro Display XDR is 6K but it’s also 32" diagonal so it’s still 218 DPI.
The Dell 32" 8K is 280 DPI, I expect there are diminishing returns from increasing the DPI. For example, I wonder if anyone notices the higher DPI of the iPhone X, XS, XS Max compared to the XR and previous generation iPhones. I feel like it only matters if you put it in a VR headset, where there are lenses magnifying it.
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The new display is wonderful but most of us wanted a 5K display based on the iMac. One possibility is that Apple wanted to started high and there might be a new much lower cost display in a year or 2 that incorporates lessons and technology from the announced display.
Another possibility is that the iMac is undergoing a case redesign and they want a new 5K display to match the new iMac display.
Or they might just not going into the lower priced display market. Which would be a shame since I don’t think there are great displays for our Macs, the 3rd party 5K retina display market never appeared. No one seems that happy with the LG displays that fill this niche.
And those LG displays are disappearing. Not a lot of Retina-level screens available for the Mac in general, it seems, much less something that matches nicely with the 5K Retina iMac. 
If you total up all the people working in VFX shops on a superhero or James Cameron movie, there can be hundreds and hundreds of them for each special effect. Double or triple the headcount for each one of 3D is involved. And it’s not just special effects. Movies, TV shows, commercials, high end print, the overall graphics market itself profits from high resolution, super speedy rendering, color accuracy, etc. It might not be the largest market, but it is a very highly profitable one.
I just read this about LG the other day, and LG has been shipping and selling probably millions more mobile phones across the globe than Apple does each year:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/01/lg-mobile-still-losing-money/
I’m in the same situation. Still rocking the Thunderbolt display, as the 5K LG monitor looks ugly and cheap to me so I refuse using it at home. I’ve heard those 5K LG monitors are being discontinued soon. Wondering if they are being replaced by another LG or Apple might announce a non-Pro version of their XDR display?
Yes, it’s clear the LG Retina displays are on their way out. We wrote about the replacement, a 23-inch display that’s roughly 4K but not as high PPI as the older ones.
Yay! Apple is now carrying a new LG 27-inch 5K Display.
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Look what I just ran across. Dell has a 49-inch curved display with a resolution of 5120-by-1440 for $1500. Not cheap, and not as high resolution as the LG 5K Display or the Retina iMac, but still, that’s a lot of pixels in a single monitor.
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Interesting. With these displays Dell apparently just keeps making them wider and adding pixels accordingly. The 1440 pixel height and the PPI remains ~ unchanged.
I also notice that their USB-C does PD and DP 1.4, but only USB2 for data. At first my reaction was WTH, but then it dawned on me that when you push DP 1.4 across USB-C, you most likely no longer have enough bandwidth/lanes left for data at 3.1 Gen1 let alone 2.
That’s a huge issue. The reason 4K is so affordable is that monitor manufacturers are able to use the same LCD panels that are sold for use in televisions - which are produced in very large quantities.
5K, or any resolution not supported by consumer TVs, is going to cost more because the manufacturers can only sell them for computer use and specialized applications - they’re not going to be used in TVs.
I predict that when 8K TVs start to become popular, we’ll quickly find 8K computer displays costing less than 5K displays, for this very reason.
And looking back, compare the cost of computer displays at 1920x1080 (matching HD TV’s 1080p) and computer displays with 1920x1200 (which is not used by TVs). That small increase in screen size translates to a disproportionate increase in price and decrease in availability, entirely due to the fact that 16:9 displays are used in TVs and 16:10 displays are not.
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This is certainly true, and I also think that there’s a “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” scenario going on. Content providers didn’t shoot in 5k because there weren’t enough 5k TVs in the wild, and 5k screens weren’t selling because people were reluctant to buy unless they could be sure that they could have stuff to watch in 5k.
Netflix was the first service out of the gate with 4K, and picture quality was one of the ways they differentiated their internet streaming service vs. On Demand from HBO and other cable TV services. HBO still doesn’t broadcast or stream in 4K because cable is by far their biggest revenue stream, and not all cable providers have the bandwidth or storage capacity. If they Streamed 4K in HBO Now, cable companies would go ballistic.
https://help.hbonow.com/Answer/Detail/23
I’ll bet Netflix has plans for 8k up its sleeve; it’s as big a differential as 4k was. And the same goes for Apple TV+, which is 100% 4k because it’s all original programming.
Except that there never was any concept of a 5K TV. None were ever sold for any amount of money and I don’t have any recollection of there even being prototypes demonstrated.
The TV industry plans are to move from 4K to 8K, not stopping at anything in between. Any display panel with a resolution in between is only going to be used for computer displays and vertical-market applications and will therefore be more expensive than either (once 8K screens enter mass production, of course).
There have been 5K TV’s produced, but they were highly specialised stuff. For example this one was released in 2014, for a mere MSRP $120K! Others were ‘only’ in the tens of thousands.
8K UHD TV’s are around now, although still pricy and non-mainstream yet, and almost no native content, so upscaling is the key to using them (much as 4K’s have had to upscale FHD content, already).
It’ll be interesting where computer displays go here: 8K or 10K? And likely will have to be Thunderbolt 4 using DSC (Display Stream Compression) at a minimum, if not Thunderbolt 5 for 120Hz of something. It’s related to the DP standards (i.e. DP 2.0, and beyond):
EDIT: Should have added, that those later standards may finally make a 32:9 widescreen 2x 5K3K display possible.