On one hand, companies willing to spend more than $250 on monitors will rather give you a 32" ultra-wide, because that's more useful to the typical office monkey worker.
On the other, the PC enthusiast customer base is almost synonymous to gamers, who'd rather want high refresh rates than a silly 5K resolution they cannot use.
The thing is, only Apple computers really need it, because of their technical choice on resolution scaling, where only x2 do not give you a blurry mess on macOS.
5K is nice but not necessary for other platforms, you can get a 4K display scaled to 150% and it's still a good pixel density with same workspace size as a 2560x1440 display.
For what its worth, I am extremely satisfied with my Studio Display. The 5K resolution makes 2x pixel perfect scaling look great, built in webcam which fantatic for meetings, good speakers, and charges the MacBook Pro with the same cable, and acts as an USB-C hub.
It has a few upsides that don't get written about often, compared to other monitors:
- Apple is extremely picky about panel QC, making things like dead pixels and patchy backlights much less common
- Its design practically eliminates the backlight bleed that's common with other monitors due to variances in bezel/panel fastener tightness
- No coil whine (surprisingly common even in other high end monitors)
- Some of the best glossy antiglare treatment I've seen, without the "gritty" coating that can cause a "sparkle" effect that's common on Dell monitors
- It wakes up and displays a picture almost instantly
It's not perfect and I'd prefer better specs for the money, but it's not a bad monitor. I've tested models that are more expensive than the Studio Display that fail to check some of these boxes.
Everything you list is basically part of any display that is not bottom of the barrel.
Yes, it's a very good monitor but it would be crazy otherwise considering the price. And it has one fatal flaw: you can only connect to it with USBC/Thunderbolt making it an almost Apple only monitor which is extremely annoying in the long run...
The biggest problem with it, frankly, is the occasional requirement for a full hard reboot, but no controls relating to that. When I was using a Studio Display, the UPS outlets were in a place that required as much as 45 seconds of effort to get to, and I while that was a real annoyance to me, it was only while typing this out that I realized that no one will see this as any kind of inconvenience. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thankfully, I’ve not run into that issue, at least not with any frequency. Might’ve happened once in a year and change, and I can’t remember clearly if even that actually happened.
I have both; I got the LG when they first came out and the Studio display last year during a good sale on Amazon.
The panels seem the same but everything on the Apple one is better, as you would expect.
But lately my LG is starting to have issues with ghosting and color shifts around the edges. It's still ok to use (I'm typing this on it) but I guess it's nearing the end of it's useful life.
What delineates it as an idiot product? There aren't exactly a ton of alternative 5k displays on the market. Dell and LG have some 5120x1440 options, but only Apple has a 5120x2880 option as far as I can find.
There’s a Samsung one, though it doesn’t seem to generally be much cheaper than the Apple one, and the LG Ultrafine 5K seems to be… maybe still available?
The Samsung is usually between $800-950 at Amazon, shooting up to $1600 about 10% of the time.
I've often it seen it in the $900 neighborhood at Best Buy and B & H. It's $1600 right now at both of them but I don't know if that is just one of those full price spikes like Amazon has or if they too are like Amazon.
Personally I wish they sold a version without the camera and speakers. I already have those. A ultra wide would be nice too. I can’t imagine using two of them side by side, especially because it seems incredibly wasteful to have a duplicate speaker / camera set up.
Could you please be a little more kind and a little less vitriolic? Not talking about right or wrong here, but if this comment chain keeps going in this direction, we're left with lots of anger and little in the way of interesting reading.
Your reaction is mine too, but it feels like you're fighting for the sake of fighting.
Yes, it's infuriating that they effectively made an iMac, don't let you run your own software on it, but do charge iMac prices for it.
Also, if you're a consumer who wants a retina-class desktop display, do you have any better option? So far as I can tell, the 27" 4Ks we bought for my office ~9 years ago are still state-of-the-art if you're unwilling to consider Apple's option.
People are taking exception to your "idiot product" remark, because you're standing so high on your principles that you're calling people who are willing to make a financial sacrifice to get the best available option "idiots." If you spend hours a day in front of a screen, you can justify amortizing out stupid-expensive over the amount of time you spend using it.
We'd all like to see either just-the-screen for half the price, or a revived iMac Pro at the current price; but neither of those are options anyone can buy right now.
I don't think I'm fighting anything. You just choose another product. In particular for design professionals, you're better off buying monitors with panels from Samsung or LG, who are also Apple's suppliers.
Edit: The real point is you've been conditioned into thinking you need a 5k or even a 6k display. As someone who has done professional media work, no you do not.
Apple's monitors are products sold to people who don't know seemingly don't know anything about monitors, color accuracy, who don't calibrate, or have to test against multiple devices to ensure readability or clarity of picture.
They're really nice toys for people with a lot of money, not unlike Teenage Engineering products, except Apple markets them in earnest to "pros" not "professionals." People who know better use different products.
Good to know that other companies are supplying 5K displays, but neither is significantly cheaper than the Apple. In fact, Samsung's MSRP is identical to Apple's.
It's insane that we've had retina displays for over a decade, and Apple still seems to be more-or-less the only game in town for a 5k 27" display.