LG 5K and MacBook Pro 2016 15"

[Hans Kruse]

Today I received the LG 5K monitor co-developped by Apple and LG. Apple have stopped producing and selling monitors. This means the only 5K option from is the iMac 5K. So when the long overdue ending of the Thunderbolt display was decided by Apple they decided to work with LG and over a special monitor to work with the new MacBook Pro 2016. This monitor only has tb3/usb.c ports and it can charge the MBP 2016 15" with the supplied TB3 cable. The monitor is 27" and the DPI is 218 where the MBP 15" is 220 DPI. The colour space is P3 like the MBP 2016. The maximum brightness is the same on both screens. I calibrated the LG screen the same way as the MBP screen with my Spyder 4 unit and for the same brightness. The result is that they look very closely the same. It's not that different from my Dell 32" 4K screen after calibration, but the resolution difference is quite big. The DPI is 218 on the 5K screen and on the Dell it is 138. So a huge difference and it shows. After having the 32" I find that 27" is a more ideal size for me. I find the higher resolution pleasant to look at. Photos look really great on this display.

Set the monitor scaling in the monitor preferences to 2560x1440 and images will be displayed pixel perfect at 5K resolution zoomed into 100% or 1:1 for checking sharpness. 4K screens need full HD scaling to be pixel perfect at 100% or 1:1. This means large fonts on a 27" or larger screen, so in my opinion this is not ideal. 5K fits perfectly.

Design is not at all like the iMac 5K or the old Thunderbolt display. But the screen itself looks gorgeous. It has built-in speakers which are not that great, but usable for speech, but not really for music.

The price is discounted until March 31st at $974.

So if you are looking for a single machine solution and a MacBook Pro for photography then the 15" MacBook 2016 and the LG 5K screen is a very good solution.

The LG 5K is officially only supported with the MacBook Pro 2016 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207448. I did connect the monitor to my previous MBP mid 2015 and it did run 5K from what I saw using a TB3 to TB2 adapter. But there maybe other compatibility issues, so the safe bet appears to be to use a MBP 2016.

[Kevin Raber]

Just received mine the other day and I concur with Hans.  Very happy with the set-up.  I ordered two of these to do a dual screen set up.  The other monitor will be here on Monday.  I have noticed a slow down of devices attached to the USB ports on the monitor.  So for external drives, I will use the ports coming off the MacBook Pro.

[sbay]

Thanks for your helpful user report. I'm still debating with myself if I want to go mbp+LG 5k or iMac or .

[Hans Kruse]

Thanks for your helpful user report. I'm still debating with myself if I want to go mbp+LG 5k or iMac or .

Here is a comparison http://www.imore.com/imac-vs-macbook-pro-lg-ultrafine-5k-display-which-should-you-get

For me the choice is simple. I travel a lot for my business running workshops and research trips. On these trips a need to bring all my email, documents needed for my business so I can handle the business while I'm not my trips as I do not have admin people hired to run this for me. I also need a powerful laptop for photo editing in Lightroom on my trips. Back in my office I need a desktop setup with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. So I have an external monitor, keyboard and with the LG screen there is just one cable to plug into the MBP and it is a desktop machine. The MBP is powerful enough for that. I would not like to need to synchronize documents, mails and photos between two environments. So that's the simple reason for my setup. It is also more economical given that I need a powerful laptop anyway.

[davidgp]

Hi,

I remembered that you Hans bought one this monitors and Kevin was interested into buying one... looks like it is better to have your wireless router far from the monitor: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/30/14439850/lg-ultrafine-5k-monitor-router-issues-apple  . just in case you are noticing some flickering from time to time.

Best regards,

David

[sc_john]

Reviews at Apple on-line store:
LG 5k reviews

[Hans Kruse]

Reviews at Apple on-line store:
LG 5k reviews

As so many times before when I looked at reviews on the store I was wondering who were writing these as they almost never matched mine. I have had the LG 5K monitor now for about 2 weeks and I have not had ANY issues at all. I definitely recommend this monitor with the MacBook 2016 15".

[Morris Taub]

Would this monitor be a better solution than say the nec 27 inch? I ask because I'm using a summer 2015 macbook pro, tb2, and a nec 2690wuxi from 2009. It is still going strong, but I wonder what to do when it finally needs to be updated.

I've been very happy with this nec monitor, so I consider staying with nec.

m

[davidgp]

I will say they are completely different beast, the NEC and the LG one.

LG will have the advantage of the resolution, the NEC will have better uniformity and will cover Adobe RGB 100% that maybe is interested for you to print


http://dgpfotografia.com

[Morris Taub]

I will say they are completely different beast, the NEC and the LG one.

LG will have the advantage of the resolution, the NEC will have better uniformity and will cover Adobe RGB 100% that maybe is interested for you to print


http://dgpfotografia.com

I think you are right. I'll have to research a bit. And I just saw, on the french Apple site someone saying that you could use that tb2 to tb3 connection but it makes resolution less than 4k. There would be no point if this is true.

[davidgp]

I think you are right. I'll have to research a bit. And I just saw, on the french Apple site someone saying that you could use that tb2 to tb3 connection but it makes resolution less than 4k. There would be no point if this is true.

Yes, I see it... no, without being able to drive it at full resolution will not make sense... everything will look soft


http://dgpfotografia.com

[kers]

As so many times before when I looked at reviews on the store I was wondering who were writing these as they almost never matched mine. I have had the LG 5K monitor now for about 2 weeks and I have not had ANY issues at all. I definitely recommend this monitor with the MacBook 2016 15".

The crashes seems related to being in the neighborhood of a router- apparently the frequencies of the router makes the combination unstable.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/30/lg-ultrafine-5k-display-router-disconnecting/

Maybe Apple should make their own displays after all - Or at least test the only one you can connect to get 5K.

[EricWHiss]

Ive got one for a 2nd display for my iMac 27in retina. The screens themselves are exactly the same size which is nice.
The LG display will showed some odd wave patterns in the solid blocks of color put up by the i1 display calibration software but I don't see those in the images.  For a second I thought I was seeing the interference from the Wifi base station which is about 6 feet away but I don't know.   Overall I'm quite pleased with the display.

[Rajan Parrikar]

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/09/apple-delays-lg-ultrafine-5k-display-shipping/

[Hans Kruse]

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/09/apple-delays-lg-ultrafine-5k-display-shipping/

The monitor is still on the Apple website for sale. I have not experienced the issue since I don't have a router next to my screen, but I will consider getting mine repaired for this issue. I have experienced that if the cable is taken out of the MBP when the lid is closed that the MBP will crash. So therefore I will always open the lid before disconnecting. When I reacted to all the bad reports on this monitor, this was basically because I see so many reports that are either fake or grossly incorrect. This does not, of course, mean that all user reviews are wrong.

So what do I think about the monitor now after about 3 weeks of use? The screen in gorgeous and matches the MBP display very well. It is really nice to photos in 15MP resolution on a big monitor. Not seeing pixels is great and the over magnification of images as on low DPI monitors is gone. I really like that there is only one cable to connect to the MBP that includes everything including charging. The MBP 2016 works well with this display and the speed using Canon 5DSR files is adequate although there are times when I'm waiting for the final rendering to take place in the develop module after bringing up a new picture. This has not changed since I changed from the previous 4K monitor to this monitor. Basically the workshop that Lightroom has to do is exactly the same in the two cases. Since I used a display scaling resolution of 2560x1440 on the 4K display Lightroom would render exactly 5K in both cases. On the 4K display the 5K was then mapped onto the 4K physical display.

What is there to like less? The overall black plastic is ok, but not gorgeous at all. The elegant all alu design og the MBP really asks for a better styled companion, but at the moment there isn't one. The built-in speakers are not good and would have liked better. The volume control needs updating in OSX as the volume is too loud and only dragging the volume slider will do. The extra ports on the back do not support a tb3 to tb2 dongle, but they do support the usb-c to USB-A dongle so that I can use external HD's. For spinning HD's the speed is ok, but not for e.g. a SSD external USB drive. All in all I really like the display and the rest I can live with.

[Rajan Parrikar]

The new BenQ SW320 looks very compelling for performance to price ratio. That has to put pricing pressure on Eizo & NEC.

[Hans Kruse]

The new BenQ SW320 looks very compelling for performance to price ratio. That has to put pricing pressure on Eizo & NEC.

Except that it is a 4K screen which is something I would not recommend for a Mac.

[davidgp]

FYI - https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/15/lg-ultrafine-5k-shielding-fixed/


Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk

[ppmax2]

Hello Hans--

I got to play with the LG 5K display the other day and am considering a switch from my iMac to an MBP w/ the 5K monitor.

Regarding the MBP, the 15" feels a bit too big for me, so I've been drawn to the 13 inches. Do you have any experience driving that 5K panel with the 13 inch model? I'm concerned the dedicated graphics may not have enough oomph.

Thanks much,
PP

[Hans Kruse]

Hello Hans--

I got to play with the LG 5K display the other day and am considering a switch from my iMac to an MBP w/ the 5K monitor.

Regarding the MBP, the 15" feels a bit too big for me, so I've been drawn to the 13 inches. Do you have any experience driving that 5K panel with the 13 inch model? I'm concerned the dedicated graphics may not have enough oomph.

Thanks much,
PP

Hello PP,

No, I have not seen the 13" in use with the 5K display. I have seen some say that it is ok in performance. I got my MBP 2016 15" with the highest spec GPU and that was mainly because I use Lightroom for all my photo processing and wanted the best performing GPU since the develop module uses the GPU heavily. It works really well although I would like the performance to be improved. I shoot mostly with the Canon 5DSR so there is a lot of pixels to handle. The 15" is larger but compared to the older 15" it is smaller and lighter. It depends on your needs, of course, but I would recommend to go for the 15" model and especially if this is going to be your only computer.