I can't believe I have this sitting in front of me.
This is the upcoming Samsung Viewfinity S9 and it's one of the tech products I'm most
excited about this year. When it goes on sale in mid-August, it promises to be the only viable alternative to Apple's
$1,600 studio display.
It's not even that the studio display is bad, we're not even close.
It's just that it's been really hard being a Mac user looking for a monitor.
But along with Dell's new 6K monitor, the Viewfinity signals that the industry is no
longer ignoring the one feature that, until now, you could only find on Apple's displays.
And the feature I'm referring to is pixels.
These monitors have the right amount of pixels per inch, 218 pixels per inch to be precise.
And this is important if you use macOS, because it's what Apple considers retina for a desktop.
There are now two monitors outside of Apple's lineup that are blessed with this density
and they're rumored to be less expensive than Apple's studio display and Pro display
XDR. But what happens if you don't go for one of these?
And to explain, I gave our thumbnail designer, Maria, a 27-inch 4K ASUS ProArt display.
That has a pixel density of only 163ppi.
Hi Maria, I'm wondering if you can help us out with something.
I want to swap your monitor out with something else, with two monitors, and I just want to
see if you notice any differences between them.
Great. We're going to come back later and see if she actually notices a difference.
Since Apple has included displays on most of the Macs they have sold over the years,
they haven't had to care about optimizing for different display sizes and resolutions.
Therefore, when they designed OS X 20 odd years ago, they designed it to work best with
the pixel density of their displays at the time, around 100ppi.
That meant that text, buttons, and interface elements were rendered in their perfect physical
size in displays of that density. When they added the retina screen to the iMac, which was 1440p at the time, all they did
was double the density of the panel and the assets in macOS, hence the 218ppi we have now.
I actually agree with this way of looking at monitors. We tend to focus on resolution, 1080p, 1440p, 4K, when talking about monitor specs.
But that's an incomplete picture, because how it looks is dependent on how far away
the monitor is from you, and how big it is, and then the pixel density and all that.
This is what Steve was talking about when he announced the retina screen on the iPhone
4. So I think the trifecta of panel size, in area, pixel density, and aspect ratio together
are far more descriptive. If you go out to the store and buy an inexpensive monitor that doesn't fit with an Apple's
exacting ppi, like this 27 inch 1080p screen, well, that means everything's just going
to be bigger. It means there's no usable difference between this and a smaller 1080p screen, because they
fit the exact same amount of content. When Apple introduced the retina screens, they made an accommodation for that problem
with their display scaling feature.
So though this monitor I gave Maria is 4K, and therefore would render a big 1080p sized
desktop, we can actually set it to zoom out and render a 5K desktop instead, giving her
more space for her Adobe interface. But that creates a problem.
When you scale down a 5K image to a 4K display, the pixels won't line up.
That means things like text and buttons will appear a little fuzzy.
It also affects performance because the graphics card has to render more pixels and then calculate
the best way to scale them down, which requires more computation resources.
That's why we see this warning. If you get a screen with the right ppi in the first place, you don't have to worry about
that. So let's check back with Maria. Alright Maria, you've used both the ASUS ProArt and the Samsung Viewfinity.
What differences did you notice between them?
I mean, it's hard to tell because the response time, for example, of all of them, it's really
similar, if not quite the same. This one, the Samsung and the Apple monitor, the images look sharper than the ASUS.
So the actual thing I was wondering if you would notice is the sharpness, in fact, because
the ProArt is a 4K display and that's a 5K display, so it's interesting you notice that.
How important is that sharpness for your work?
I mean, details look way better in that way.
That's like, yeah, I think in details is the thing that I can really notice a difference.
For example, when I'm editing Linus or pictures of people, I can see faces look really, really
sharp. Yeah, I don't know how to explain. Okay, fair enough.
You want to know the price difference between the two? It's $1,000 different.
Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, for $1,000, maybe I'll choose the ASUS if I want to save some money because
it's not like, has to be. It's not entirely worth it.
Yeah, exactly. Dell's new 6K model is the U32-24KB and on paper, it looks to be the perfect alternative
to the person who wants a screen as big and as crisp as the $5,000 plus pro display XDR.
In fact, this monitor has even more pixels.
It doesn't, however, have the HDR mini LED magic, maxing out at 700 nits of brightness
in our tests. And while there's local dimming, there's a total of 12 zones, so no.
However, the Dell uses LG's new IPS Black technology.
This improves the contrast ratio to the 1800 to 1R demo model managed to display.
Even with that, it's not quite as accurate as Apple's displays, showing slightly higher
Delta E readings in all the color spaces we tested it in.
But it's still good enough for most creatives. The Dell also looks kind of peculiar.
What they did is essentially stuff the 6K panel in their existing video conferencing
monitor. That means there's this huge forehead for the speakers in giant 4K webcam, as well as
call and mute buttons.
The speakers are decent, especially compared to the pro displays, which don't exist.
But they are lacking in bass compared to the studio displays, which do.
The best thing about it is the 140W Thunderbolt 4 connector.
It means that there's a downstream Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining more devices and monitors,
countless USB ports, and even a 2.5G Ethernet port.
The pro display, on the other hand, has three inconvenient and slow USB-C ports.
Now, let's talk about the display that's more relevant to most people.
This new Samsung Vuefinity S9 looks a lot closer on the outside to Apple's studio display.
The design is really nice. It's just as silver and minimal, but more bolt upright.
There are some really nice touches, like this magnetic webcam module, which if you watched
our early Apple should make a TV video will know is my idea.
Even the cable management makes sense, as the power and input cables go right through
the stand in the back here. Though this is where the hub of USB-C downstream ports are hidden too.
We're so close, guys, I swear. Also, I wouldn't prefer an HDMI port over this mini-DisplayPort.
Despite what Samsung advertises, we measured an 1800 to 1 contrast ratio, which is pretty
good because, like the studio display, there's no local dimming.
That said, it can get very, very bright. We measured almost 800 nits.
I feel like you can use this outside. Though, with the bright highlights will come great shadows.
And while it does cover 100% of the P3 and SRGB color gamuts, the accuracy is not quite
up to snuff with the other monitors in this video.
On the color management front, we recommend staying with the graphic or custom picture
modes. Or, better still, you should calibrate the display yourself for the color space you can
work in. Which is what they're hoping to let you do, even with your iPhone.
Despite the silver appearance, and even metal on here, it's not exactly built like the
studio display. There's a bit of wobble here and there. But I'm actually fine with it, especially if that means the display will cost less.
Because this actually demonstrates that anyone can make an attractive looking monitor.
What I'm less fine with is the fact that this runs Tizen.
I'm not entirely sure how much I care about being able to watch the Netflix app on a screen
I intend to use as my computer monitor. But it's here alright.
Worse still, the speakers on here are not very good, and the only way to hook up external
speakers is through Bluetooth, if it works.
To my eye, text looks ever so slightly different on the Samsung display versus the studio display.
It feels like there's some sort of sharpening filter added here, which is wholly unnecessary
at this resolution. Right now, I've had to set the sharpness between 5 and 7 to get close to Apple's displays.
Minimum brightness, we measured at 84 nits, which is a little too high for dark environments.
The sRGB standard for instance specifies only 80.
And lastly, the monitor does not like plugging into 2019 Max with AMD graphics for some reason.
Both these screens have a matte finish, which is very common, but with Apple's displays
you have to pay $300 or $1000 to etch the glass.
Not everyone likes matte screens though, and these aren't available with a glossy finish,
which is something Apple does extremely well.
So neither of these displays is perfect, but that's fine if it's a good fit for you at
the right price. Well, the Dell in fact costs $3,200.
It's not exactly cheap, but it is a full $2,000 less than a pro display with only a
vase amount.
So the Samsung, I'm sure you're just as excited as me to find out how much they're going to
be asking. Well, when this goes on sale, the MSRP will be $1,600?
What? That's the exact same price as the studio display.
Brightness, height adjustment, matte finish. Buy this if you need those.
Thanks for upping the resolution of this Mac Address. If you're as pedantic about pixels as I am, give this video a like.
And if you don't care, well, you might as well subscribe. I'm curious in the comments below if running macOS at the native resolution is that important
to you, or if not, and if so, or not, explain why.