The best non-Apple display for your Apple Mac is coming in two weeks.
It’s been almost two years since Apple has officially discontinued the Thunderbolt Display, with no apparent plan to replace it with a new version. In fact, Apple has also immediately started recommending Apple customers to buy third party displays made by Samsung or LG, for their headless Macs, like the Mac Mini, or the Mac Pro, which almost prompted Apple customers to believe that Apple had given up on these products, in favor of devices with a built-in display, such as the Apple iMac, or the MacBook.
Fast-forward to 2018, this couldn’t be further from the truth, as Apple is now making its big comeback with confirmed plans of releasing a completely updated Mac Pro by 2019. Still, there is not a shadow of doubt on the fact that the Thunderbolt display is dead and buried.
For those of us whose surviving Thunderbolt Displays are beginning to die of natural causes, the options are fortunately plentiful. In addition to LG and Samsung, there is a plethora of 4K displays available for all kinds of Macs, but the best one is yet to come.
The first wave of G-Sync HDR displays created by Nvidia, and rebranded by Acer and a number of other manufacturers, is coming in two weeks, with luxurious IPS panels, 144Hz refresh rate, high-dynamic range capabilities, and 384 backlit zones. On top of that, Acer’s panels feature 1000 nits of brightness, in compliance with HDR10 requirements, for images that are spectacularly dynamic and life-like.
There is simply no comparison between these displays and anything else on the market.
The bad news? You guessed it: the price.
Much like any other premium device with comparably mind-blowing specs, the new G-Sync panels price tag ranges between $2000 and $3000, which means that most users who aren’t as invested in extreme image quality, will probably stick to more attainable products in the $700 range for a higher-end display minus the “Cadillac” treatment.
Pre-orders are already available, and many early adopters are most likely predominantly high-end gamers who already own powerful Nvidia graphic cards in the 1080 / Titan X range, but with regard to Mac users, some existing Mac Pro owners may be tempted to take a gander at what sort of image quality they can get out of their workstations, via G-Sync, as many 2013 Mac Pros integrate advanced Nvidia graphics hardware.
The bulk of Mac owners who may be interested, starting from next year, will probably be comprised of 2019 Mac Pro customers, as the upcoming Mac targeted at professionals, will almost definitely include extremely high-end configurations, with next generation Nvidia and AMD GPUs.
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