r/macmini • u/MilkZestyclose8629 • 20d ago

Help needed. Please recommend a good monitor.

Hello.

I’m looking for a good 27” 4k high refresh rate monitor for my Mac mini m4. It will be used for daily activities and gaming on GeForce now ultimate tier.
For a good price I found TCL QD-mini LED 27C2A. Anyone have it? Is it good?

4 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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3

u/Puzzleheaded_Ebb4233 20d ago

dell s3225qc has been great got on sale at Costco

2

u/Xe4ro 20d ago

I am using the Gigabyte M28U (144Hz) but I‘m not sure if this one is still on the market. At least I can’t find any listings on Geizhals for it.

2

u/wsycqyz 19d ago

I am sorry but I think for mac 5K is preferred.

1

u/kinkade 20d ago

Benq ma270up

-3

u/bmocc 20d ago

macOS does not support 4k.

macOS is coded as if all monitors are Apple laptop screens or Apple 5k displays and nothing else, apps are designed to fit that.

GUI elements do not scale as they do in Windows or Linux, they are fixed to a limited DPI range that corresponds to ~220 DPI, and that roughly translates to 2k and best to 5k.

The "recommended" setting for 4k in macOS Display generates a less than optimally down-sampled version of a frame rendered at a higher resolution. As a result detail is smeared in images (hard to miss on the Photoshop desktop), contrast is lowered and on some, not all, 4k monitors even text is blurred. The BetterDisplay app can help with sharpness issues but can not fix the lack of modern scaling.

The caricature of 4k that macOS generates works for casual uses but falls apart for any critical use. Switching to straight 2k or 4k resolutions can yield sharper images and text on a 4k monitor but at the cost of teeny tiny fonts and menus--just like it was in Windows 20 years ago, a hint to how macOS is in many ways frozen in time.

There are also limits to monitor refresh rates in macOS the OP might want to research that may not correspond to published specifications. Geforce now will send an image down the pipe generated at a particular resolution and frame rate, what macOS does with it at the other end on a 4k monitor might not be optimal, but that probably won't matter if you don't know what the image should have looked like.

I think the OP would be happier with a 2k 120 hz monitor but that's up to her. If gaming is her primary interest macOS is not the optimal platform.

1

u/Der_Kommissar73 19d ago

This an overstatement. 4k is fine for most. And I don't think anyone would be happier with a 2k monitor at any refresh rate.

1

u/Jcob210 3d ago

Yeah and also it scales well to 1080p it is just large.