I'm intrigued and terrified at the same time by this. Can you share a photo of your setup? How heavy is that 42" TV? What's the screen size in pixels?
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New monitor for a MacStudio
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I'm intrigued and terrified at the same time by this. Can you share a photo of your setup? How heavy is that 42" TV? What's the screen size in pixels?
I could in a bit, still rearranging and cleaning things in the home office. A lot of people are using the LG C2 and C3 42-inch for a monitor, because it is excellent and cost-effective. If you search Utube or others, you'll see tons of videos and reviews. As for screen size, below is the system report I just ran for you for GPU/displays.
A single person can fairly easily lift the box for this 42-inch OLED. Will easily fit in the back seat of a four-door mid-size car. And, the box is much larger than the actual TV/display. Not too heavy.
The only real requirement is desk depth. You want the monitor a bit more than arm's length away from you when your arms are outstretched in front of you, maybe a few inches beyond your hands. At that distance, text is large, clear, and the entire monitor is in view. Looks fantastic.
If I may, read my prior post. You need the 42-inch display a bit more than arms' length away from you, when your arms are fully outstretched. So maybe 15 to 18 inches away. It sounds like a lot, and you'd think it wouldn't work -- but it does, beautifully. Because everything is crisp, clear, and large. I'm never going back. I do have a large desk, it's got around two feet of depth, everything sits behind it. But you could pull this off with something smaller.
So, input lag and response rate. OLED is by far the best display tech concerning those items, you can read lots of reports or view videos about that, or go to /r/OLED_gaming and they will have tons of info (I don't game, I use it for specs and settings). Here is one video report concerning why OLED is the fastest tech by far.
Another key thing: all these OLED TVs come with an HDMI "PC" setting. Whatever port you plug your MacBook/Mini/Studio into, you select that TV HDMI port, and you tell the TV the HDMI port is connected to a "PC." Here is how you set it up. And for the latest LC C3, here are additional settings. That enables ultra-low input lag and increases chroma, among other things, for the best input speed and result.
LG knows tons of PC and Mac users, as well as console gamers, are buying their 42-inch OLEDs. So it also comes with a "game optimizer" panel which can do all kinds of things, including Variable Refresh Rate, further fine-tune input speed, adjust black levels, blue light, etc.
These OLED TVs, if you have the space, are absolutely killer monitors.
Thanks! Read your previous post too just now. That's all very interesting. My desk is actually bigger than yours, and I currently use a 27" 4K display at about the same distance.
I have used my Apple TV to screen share my MBA on my 55" LG OLED TV, and (even thought this is over the air, not connected by cable) I've found the picture quality to be pretty great.
This has me intrigued now!
Do it. Once you get it set up, you are going to conclude the same thing I did: "why didn't I do this two years ago?" I'd get the LG C3, the latest one, with the latest processor and slightly higher nits than prior models. It's worth the minor price bump over older models they are looking to clear out.
Watch a few videos on the best settings for the LG C3 as a PC monitor, you're in business. The 42-inch OLED will blow away the 27" screen.
The only way to do hardware calibration is through first-party software (e.g., Dell UltraSharp Color Calibration Software or EIZO ColorNavigator).
@theluggage - It seems like we're on a similar wavelength. Thanks for all the information--it's certainly helpful.
My main concern with OLED is whether the burn-in issue is solved yet. I've had OLED phones without obvious problems, even though I keep phones for 5 years or so, but I don't tend to keep my phone screen on for hours a day so the usage over that time is a tiny fraction of what a computer display would see.
I kinda expect about 10 years service out of an expensive TV or computer monitor (and my previous purchases have delivered that when they weren't welded in to an iMac). I've taken a risk with a LG 55" OLED for TV use, and enabled most of the anti-burn-in bells and whistles (like automatically detecting and dimming channel badges and fairly aggressive screen-savers) but that's not too intrusive when watching actual TV shows. Still, the very fact that there's a bunch of anti-burn-in features suggests that burn-in is still a thing. As a computer display, it seems harder to avoid the risk of things like the menu bar and dock getting burned-in (maybe not a problem until you want to full-screen something).
Quality wise, I can see it would make a great large screen computer display.
I've been using 60"+ Plasma and OLED screens for decades now without burn-in issues. The trick is to set up a low APL mode for 80% of your usage. So for most of your static window workflows set brightness and contrast at 10-20% of max.
For video and gaming you can of course set up for full dynamic range in either SDR or HDR.
I'm currently using a 65" Panasonic 4K OLED with a Studio Ultra M2 and sit 10' away - with a trackpad it's a total desk liberating experience. You can sit as close as 2-3' away without overly craning your neck.
I should caveat all that with the fact that the set-up is in a darkened room with a low candela light source next to or behind the monitor.
For video and gaming you can of course set up for full dynamic range in either SDR or HDR.
I'm currently using a 65" Panasonic 4K OLED with a Studio Ultra M2 and sit 10' away - with a trackpad it's a total desk liberating experience. You can sit as close as 2-3' away without overly craning your neck.
I should caveat all that with the fact that the set-up is in a darkened room with a low candela light source next to or behind the monitor.
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^^^^ This. A thousand times this.
Any discussion that does not start with human vision and viewing distance will be missing important ideas. Like really important.
Any chance of those desk setup photos?
I'm seriously considering the C3 - I do game a bit (on a PC) but I'm a writer so I use Office, etc, most of the day. The one thing that concerns me is text rendering and fringing. Having said that, when I connect my M1 MBA to my 55" LG OLED TV by HDMI using Apple's digital video adaptor (so only 60Hz), it looks pretty great even with my nose almost against the screen.