Monitors: Retina displays reduce need for high end monitors?

[docgc60]

Hallo, I'm new and not sure whether this is the place for this question: Does anyone have experience of combining Eizo monitors with a Mac system and is it likely that the new Retina displays will reduce the need for the high end monitors?
docgc60

[klev]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

Retina is more of Apple's silly marketing nonsense. They use it to insinuate that you won't be able to detect visible aliasing, but it's actually a trademark of theirs. I can see much less in the way of aliasing on one of those, compared to a 24" 1920x1200 display, and they do a really nice job with text. I loaded emacs when I was at the Apple Store just to preview it. It doesn't mean anything for display uniformity, stability, warmup time, greyscale tracking, lack of banding, or anything else you would look for in such a display. It's the same thing they sold previously, now with higher resolution.

[brianclark4]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

Klev, there is another so called improvement on the old iMac and that is they have reduced the spacing between the protective glass and the monitor screen.This is supposed to reduce the reflection that was a problem on the earlier monitors, whether this is so, is another question.

[klev]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

This is supposed to reduce the reflection that was a problem on the earlier monitors, whether this is so, is another question.

That change was actually made in 2012, unless they made another change. Apple doesn't use the typical anti-reflective coatings, which is normally something I dislike. The newer ones seem tolerable in that regard if lighting is carefully controlled.

[insmac]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

If you're looking for a hi end 'retina' screen there are better options on the market. NEC EA244UHD has its all and although it's 3 inches smaller, with its wide gamut, uniformity, hardware calibration has all the perks of a high end display. There's also PA322UHD which is a 32" beast.

Look, iMac was always a consumer machine but it can work pretty well for anything that does not require colour control throughout workflow. It's popular because it's simple, does not have much of a cable clutter, plug and play stuff. Yeah the term "desktop computer" in this regard is an overstatement because the only thing you can safely swap its it RAM and judging by its teardown on iFixit if the latest version breaks in some way you're pretty much screwed. I've changed the keyboard, touchpad, a harddrive, a battery and an optical drive by myself in my previous gen Macbook Pro but with the current-gen Retina laptop I'm screwed the same way as with an iMac.

In fact, "Retina" has nothing to do with "high end monitors". It's all about resolution, but being advertised more like a pro tool some people may feel like it's high end. But it's not. High end is not about numbers, it's about achieving a desired level of precision within certain figures like resolution or screen real estate. Simply put, high end means stable, reliable and accurate and none of these are advertised by Apple for their latest desktop because they can't deliver.

On the other hand, the 5k iMac might be a perfect tool as a cheaper MacPro alternative for video editing. I have a friend who owns a small production company and they figured it will be cheaper to go with it and to buy a smaller reference CG than to bulk up with pricey MacPros.

[klev]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

On the other hand, the 5k iMac might be a perfect tool as a cheaper MacPro alternative for video editing. I have a friend who owns a small production company and they figured it will be cheaper to go with it and to buy a smaller reference CG than to bulk up with pricey MacPros.

It may still take a couple years, but we'll definitely see NEC and some of the others bump the resolution of their higher end displays.

[insmac]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

It may still take a couple years, but we'll definitely see NEC and some of the others bump the resolution of their higher end displays.

I think the lack of variety of pro 4k/5k lineup beside just a few models suggests there are technical matters to overcome before it could be production-ready. You have dozens of 4k TVs in your average shopping mall but these are aimed at moving image, not stills.

[klev]

Re: Retina displays reduce need for high end monit

I think the lack of variety of pro 4k/5k lineup beside just a few models suggests there are technical matters to overcome before it could be production-ready. You have dozens of 4k TVs in your average shopping mall but these are aimed at moving image, not stills.

Motion has a lot more gotchas. For example there's the issue of juddering when the refresh rate of the display cannot be locked to some multiple of the video framerate. There are issues such as ghosting. One of the attempts to deal with that on IPS panels was the use of overdrive circuits, which cause a kind of reverse ghosting. I'm not aware of any issues that go the other way. Dealing with image persistence of text is something that happens in either scenario.

I think the issue is more that it takes extra development time for professional displays and some stability in the available hardware. Color is also typically a higher priority than absolute resolution unless you must show 4K at native resolution, in which case you can apply a very high markup to a broadcast display with the appropriate inputs.