[gibby]

Good day.

I’m going to be purchasing a Mac Mini and I’ve somehow decided on either the LG 32UL950-W or the BenQ PD3220U DesignVue. Does anyone have an opinion on either of these monitors and if one has an advantage over the other for a Mac Mini application?

Thank you

[PCM2]

Hi gibby,

Be aware that this forum works quite differently to many ‘conventional’ forums. It does not have a large user base so don’t expect others to necessarily chime in and post their experiences. If they do, then that would be great. I have been chasing after a sample of the BenQ PD3220U for around a year but BenQ have not been able to provide one. Furthermore, they seem to be having some production issues as it still isn’t in full scale production or widely available – perhaps partly why the review sample has yet to materialise. Based on my knowledge and experiences of similar models from BenQ and what I know about this one I would expect it to be a solid performer. I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work well with the Mac Mini and I think the overall look and feel of the product, flexibility in the OSD and factory calibration will all be very strong.

The LG 32UL950 (‘W’ suffix just means white rear, silver stand) has some charm, but it’s something of a missed opportunity in my view. My biggest gripe with it is the fact it is not flicker-free, as advertised. This has annoyed a lot of users in the Asian markets in particular, where it was released first. It is not necessarily going to be an issue for you, however. The PWM frequency is 240Hz so is not super-low – although could certainly accelerate eye fatigue even for users who don’t active notice ‘flickering’. I’ve received some decent user feedback on the product itself, including from designers and photographers praising the factory calibration and from gamers stating that it is nice and responsive for a 60Hz monitor. The 240Hz PWM frequency does cause duplication/fragmentation of the image during motion, however, as covered in our article on viewing comfort (under “PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) – backlight flickering”).

[gibby]

Thank you for such a thorough and insightful response. I will take all of this into consideration. With a $1K budget for a “good” monitor… I suppose I should include a widescreen option. I’ll be driving it with a Mac Mini and at some point may add an eGPU, but I won’t know that until I can run it through some tests.

[gibby]

The widescreen option at this price point is the LG 38BK95C-W.

[PCM2]

You’d be gaining screen size but giving up ‘real-estate’, as the 3840 x 1600 resolution is lower than 3840 x 2160 ‘4K’ UHD. It might still work, that’s still a decent amount of ‘real-estate’. But you’re essentially paying a similar premium for the fact it’s UltraWide and a wider screen rather than having more pixels or a similar (or higher) pixel density. It depends how much you like the physical size of the screen and aspect ratio. Plus the curved screen. Compared to the greater number of pixels, superior pixel density and slightly higher screen of the 31.5″ ‘4K’ models. You might find this page helpful to help visualise the size differences.

Also, I don’t have any experience with that particular model nor any user feedback to share. But LG’s UltraWides are usually pretty solid. Be aware that it’s the business/commercial version of the LG 38WK95C – refer to this thread for more on how their model designations work.

[gibby]

something else to consider are the limitations of the Mac Mini.

From Apple:

With four Thunderbolt 3 ports built-in, Mac mini (2018) supports an HDMI display along with two 4K displays or one 5K display.
Mac mini (2018) supports one HDMI display with a resolution of 4096×2160 at 60Hz, plus one of the following configurations:
One 5K display with a resolution of 5120×2880 at 60Hz
Two single-stream transport (SST) 4K displays with resolutions of 4096×2304 at 60Hz
One multi-stream transport (MST) 4K display with a maximum resolution of 4096×2304 at 60Hz

Essentially, I’d like two 4K displays. Whether they are two 27″, two 32″, or widescreen is the question and value matters.

[PCM2]

I don’t see the limitation with connectivity. It would support 2 x ‘4K’ UHD displays. They’re SST (Single Stream Transport) as are pretty much all modern ‘4K’ displays and the Mac Mini would support two connected at once. Although “support” is one thing, running well is another.

Depending on what you’re needing to do, having two 3840 x 2160 displays driven at the same time could be rather taxing on the system. For general desktop work and non-3D stuff (or ‘light 3D stuff’) it should be alright. Performance attributes of modern Mac systems (or the Intel UHD Graphics 630 used in this case) really isn’t something I’m very familiar with.

[gibby]

The only thing I’m doing that is taxing is likely watching high def videos. I run a couple of financial packages that are java script apps with lots of graphics, but a good chunk of RAM should handle that task. A $1K monitor is starting to seem a little overkill for mac mini.

[PCM2]

Perhaps consider the significantly cheaper 32UL750 instead. Of course personal preferences come into play with the different panel types and their strengths, but it seems potentially well-suited to your uses. There’s a thread with some recent user feedback and other thoughts on that one here, which I see I see was linked to in a previous post of mine on this thread as well.

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