Review: Alogic's 32-Inch 4K Clarity Max Touch Display Offers a Large Desktop Canvas With Retractable Webcam and Touchscreen Capabilities

[Allen_Wentz]

I'm curious, do you use them at 4K or scaled to a different resolution?

That is a very insightful question. I have always used them mostly scaled, even before some eye issues brought my vision way down from the previous 20/10 a year or two ago. I use the 4 displays so windows from multiple apps are visible concurrently, and not all apps present the same by default; ergo various resolutions. Only if I want max rez for some image (uncommon in my workflow now) do I have a display at max rez.

Another interesting thing (to me anyway) is that I find the middle displays (I have three 4K side-by-side with MBP display under) by far the most visually relevant. Enough so that I will often move windows around to place what I am primarily working on on the middle 4K display. My eyes/brain really prefer looking at things straight ahead. E.g. Photos may normally be on a side display, but if I have to scroll through 1k+ images, a common task that after decades I can do very quickly, I will put the window on the middle display. TBH I wish the displays (32") were more square-shaped for my purposes. I keep experimenting with 90 degree pivoting of displays to try to optimize.

Note that my desk is a large home built 3'x5' standup desk and three external (2x32" and a 27") displays use all of that. The 27" display is old and now color-lame. If it dies I would love to replace it with a 32" Apple display for the middle display and use the two Viewsonics on the sides in portrait orientation. But I never see justifying $6k for a nano XDR; I need Apple to make a 32" Studio display.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Ahhh, an Ive lover comes out of the cracks. Me, I don't sit at my desk each day spending hours admiring how good my monitors look.

I wonder if that would improve my productivity.

Maybe my spouse would love me more if I had beautiful monitors.

Maybe my friends would be impressed if they saw my beautiful monitors.

I guess I just don't have my priorities right for the modern world.

Actually even if you are unaware of it, your eyes/brain do "sit at my desk each day spending hours admiring how good my monitors look." IMO (clearly just MO, but I am confident there are studies somewhere that support my premise) having good clean Ive-type design in your immediate visual environment changes the way your brain thinks from a visual-creative standpoint.

Your sarcastic commentary perhaps applies to folks looking only at words and numbers. For creative folks doing design of any kind the design environment does matter.

 

[gijsmans]

I don’t get the idea of a large low res display.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I don’t get the idea of a large low res display.

What do you consider to be "low rez?" Personally I do not consider 4K to be low rez even though higher and higher resolutions do keep becoming available. There are many more parameters to a display in addition to the resolution that the marketers hippity-hop about (and untrained eyes/brain can readily perceive in a large display). I would argue that for image pros brightness and color accuracy are far more important than 5K versus 4K, for instance.

Just my $0.02.

 

[jkool]

It's pretty crazy that the 2017 iMac Pro will probably be listed as obsolete soon and it still has a competitive display at 5120 x 2880.

 

[Jensend]

I do pro design work, so take my comments below with a grain of salt if all you do is use office apps and surf the web with your Mac.

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The specs on this monitor are garbage.

• The brightness is mediocre at best – I would seat that spec squarely in the middle of the "Cons" list.

The specs page says 320 nits, which is plenty unless you are specifically working on HDR content. For most other design work, I'd recommend using less than that maximum brightness.

• They don't even mention the PPI, but at full 4k it's going to be 106ppi – about as bad as you can get.

Based on a 31.5" diagonal, which I believe is the true diagonal of most or all 32" class monitors, it is 140ppi (would be 138ppi for a true 32")

And finally, the price. The website (as of the time I wrote this post) is showing $1,400 for the top-of-the-line model (which is the only one that truly competes with the Apple Studio Display). Might as well get the Studio Display with a VESA mount and buy your own monitor arm.

Can't disagree with you there.

 

[Michael.S]

I wonder if its picture quality is better than my 30" apple cinema display which runs 110 PPI natively.

 

[Veihl]

It really is not low. Based on how far it is from my eyes when I’m working at my desk, 4k 32 is perfectly fine. Can be sharper, of course. Based on this, 4k 32” is indeed retina at 25 inches away (~62 cm)

NVIDIA's Super resolution tech is fantastic for a 32" 4K screen. For the Mac Mini, I had to use a combo of BetterDisplay and terminal commands to get it just right.

 

[Radin.Y]

NVIDIA's Super resolution tech is fantastic for a 32" 4K screen. For the Mac Mini, I had to use a combo of BetterDisplay and terminal commands to get it just right.

Can you elaborate on that, please? I’m interested in your solution

 

[rb2112]

A USB-B port? I guess if you want to plug in your HP printer and have it sit on your desk next to the monitor that's useful.

That port is to accept an upstream connection from your computer, anything connected to the monitor's downstream TB/USB-C/USB-A ports will communicate with your computer. It has nothing to do with a printer. Unless that printer is plugged into one of the monitor's downstream ports.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

I just got a 32 inch 240Hz QD-OLED from MSI at that price and it’s the best monitor I’ve ever owned

Even the text clarity is surprising, I used to think PPI is all that matters but you’d be surprised how much of a difference subpixel arrangement makes

I just wish macOS wasn’t determined in being absolute garbage when it comes to using third party displays - I can’t actually run it past 120Hz and I’m not even allowed to use HDR (which looks gorgeous when I’m using it on PC) because I dared to pick a scaling mode that was more comfortable for me, but even with these limitations it’s still the best monitor I’ve ever hooked up to my Mac Studio

 

[Veihl]

Can you elaborate on that, please? I’m interested in your solution

My bad, just saw this. But I used an LG 3232SQ780S Monitor with the M2 Mac Mini. I adjusted everything on the monitor correctly first in the display settings, then I used BetterDisplay to set the ratio and slight color enhancements for the screen.

With the terminal, this command seemed to help me out a good bit: defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -integer 10 (On the latest Mac version atm for Sonoma)

Then I rebooted and signed back in to get the desired font effect. You will more than likely have to play around with that number though to see what works best for you. (My monitor does not have HDR, so I'm not sure about that either)

For the NVIDIA Super Resolution, that's completely PC or externalGPU based, I was just using my RTX card there to super sample the pixels to 5K and then it downscales to 4K again. (Makes the monitor look more crisp than it's max output at 4K on a Samsung M8 Monitor)

 

[nathansz]

I mean nifty, sure, but for $999, you can get a 48" LG OLED with HDR and 120MHz

Where can I find that?