A monitor for a Mac

[cos]

I'm looking for a new 27" (or maybe a bit bigger?) standard "4K" monitor (or maybe 5K if not too expensive?) and it's hard to figure out which ones I'd like from online reviews. So looking for comments from people who have monitors!

I want:

• Good color and brightness, but doesn't have to be amazing. Just, white should look white, colors should look reasonably accurate, and nicely bright.
• Solid stable stand that doesn't take up too much desk surface area, but stands on the desk - doesn't require attaching or clamping, and doesn't require any fiddly or tricky assembly.
• Built in speakers that sound decent.
• Easy controls for volume, brightness, and input source select, using buttons/knobs. Nothing requiring multilevel on-screen menus where I have to navigate up/down or left/right to select options, yuck! Volume, brightness, and input select should be EASY to do frequently. This is the hardest point to find information on when reading reviews.

Do you know a monitor to recommend, or can tell me how it does on those criteria?

Comments

[macthud]

The part about the decent sounding built-in speakers makes me think you want a TV, not a monitor, though you can probably find a tunerless model with a few HDMI inputs. I have a 27-ish inch, 1080p, dumb Vizio with 4 HDMI ports and mostly acceptable sound. It predates 4K and I think it was Vizio's last dumb TV, so I won't go further into its details.

The part about easy controls pushes you towards using a remote control, not on-device buttons, because all the manufacturers want to hide those buttons now, and they're not all easy, especially the brightness. That might always be in one of those multi-tier menus. Unless you're willing to use a phone app, like Vizio Mobile (which I have on my iPhone; I presume they have a similar app for Android, if that's your poison), where brightness is one or two levels deep, depending on how you count.

I don't know if you can get a "dumb" (no onboard apps nor independent Internet connection) TV anymore, but a smart TV might suit your other wishes.

*Some* of these TVs have monopod stands than are centered horizontally. Others have dual- or quad-pod stands that are on each end of the set. Consumption of desk surface area is somewhat indeterminate, because there's also the question of vertical clearance. If you just want papers or a couple of books to slide beneath, possibly atop the monopod, most of the stands will probably work for you. If you need more vertical clearance under the screen, you may be SOL unless you resort to "boosters" under the feet, or shift to one of the clampy gimballed things.

I'll be curious to know what you settle on, and what tradeoffs were necessary.

[cos]

My impression is that TVs have much lower resolution, are fuzzy at the pixel level, and are souped up with all sorts of TV-specific features like streaming services, and would not make a good monitor at all. Am I mistaken?

"4K" level resolution, with very crisp text, is a minimum requirement.

[macthud]

I think you're mistaken.

The guts of these screens are the same whether they're "monitor" or "TV". The main difference is that "TVs" have some built-in hardware — tuners, special purpose CPUs for their apps, etc. — which "monitors" don't include because they expect you to provide them with the video signal, from your computer, DVD player, descrambling cable tuner, etc.

There definitely exist 4K TVs (3840 x 2160 pixels) and even 5K TVs (5120 × 2880 pixels). These are driven by sportscasters, which are today's main source of crazy-hi-def video.

Of course, you need to remember that those resolution specs say nothing about the size of the pixels, which are influenced by the size of the screen. Text crispness depends a lot on your pixels-per-inch. There are OS settings that can make text more and less crisp on the same screen.

I think you'll need to visit at least one brick-and-mortar store that can at least show you the basics, and maybe let you connect (or already have connected) a computer like what you want to be working with at home, so you can judge the text crispness.