What Monitor Should I Buy for My Mac? 2025 Edition
No, this isn’t yet another LLM generated, SEO-optimized “Best 10 Refrigerators/Electric Cars/Laptops” listicle of badly written English designed to collect affiliate revenues. This was written by an actual human being with a real opinion, and contains no affiliate links. If you want to buy one of the monitors I mention here, you know how to use Google, right?
I decided to write this because the answer is actually relatively simple (unlike for PCs). There simply aren’t many choices, and it’s fairly straight-forward to pick the one that fits your needs, not that you’d know that if you just went to Amazon or Best Buy and started browsing.
I’ll order them from least to most expensive, which not coincidentally is also worst to best quality.
Option 1: Free
If you just want something a little bigger or more conveniently positioned than a laptop screen, or you already blew your entire budget on a Studio or a Mac Mini, any old monitor you or a friend have sitting in the basement will almost certainly work. Depending on age, you might need an HDMI, DVI, or VGA adapter, but it should still work. Just plug it in and go. It might look like crap, but only compared to a quality new monitor. It’s likely to still be pretty good, assuming it works at all.
Note that you shouldn’t pay more than zero dollars for a used monitor though. New monitors are just too good and too cheap
Option 2: $100-$200 27″ 4K Casual Use
If you want something a little better than the old NEC collecting dust in the garage, throw a couple of hundred bucks, no more, on whatever 27″ 4K monitor looks nicest at your retailer of choice. Don’t overthink it. The cheapest Brand X display they have in this price range is likely just fine. This is plenty good enough for word processing, web browsing, watching Netflix, and playing the sorts of games people play on the Mac.
It’s really hard to buy an actually bad monitor these days. If you want a webcam with the monitor, then look for one that offers that. Otherwise don’t sweat the features or the specs. They really don’t matter. But do avoid “smart” monitors. They cause more trouble than they’re worth. The monitor should be just that, not a TV or a computer. It should not connect to WiFi on its own.
Option 3: $800-$2000 27″ 5K Graphics Professionals
There’s now a huge bump in price and quality. If you’re editing photos or videos, or for any other reason want a picture perfect display and maximum performance, then this is what you want. It’s not just about the higher resolution either. Mac OS is designed and optimized to work best at this resolution, right around 218 dots per inch. 5k at 27″ gives you this. You don’t want a 30″, 32″, or even worse a 40″ display at only 4K resolution. It will perform poorly and look worse (though you might have to be looking very carefully to notice that).
When I started writing this there were exactly three consumer displays that give you 5K at 27″. Now there are four but still only two worth considering. The two are the Asus Proart and the Apple Studio Display. The two I wouldn’t are the I’d consider buying are the Samsung Viewfinity S9 and the newest of the lot, the Alogic Clarity 5K Touch.
The Samsung is the cheapest, and the panel is gorgeous. Unfortunately the monitor is unreliable and stuffed with bloatware. Prices run around $1000, but discounts and sales come around every month or two. I’ve seen it as low as $800. I bought one, and I have to power cycle it at least once a week when it inevitably loses connection to my Mac Studio. It’s more plug and pray than plug and play. Avoid.
The second option is the Asus Proart 5K. I haven’t tried this one personally yet, but if I needed a new monitor, I’d pick this over the Samsung, just because the Viewfinity sucks so hard. If you try the Proart, leave a comment and let me know what you think. It’s a bit hard to find in stock right now and prices seem to swing wildly, but it can be had for maybe $1100-1200.
The third option is the recently released Alogic Clarity 5K Touch. This starts around $1500. For this price you can have a real Apple Studio Display or even a Dell 6K, so I wouldn’t buy it unless I needed a touch screen for some reason. I suppose there’s a niche that this fills, but it’s not for me and not for most people.
Now that we’re in the $1500-2000 range, you can consider the best of the lot, the Apple Studio Display. This is from the company Apple accessories that like to charge $499 for a set of wheels (and no, I didn’t leave out a decimal point) so it’s no surprise it’s the priciest of the lot. However, Apple does routinely make the best available products and not cut corners with plastic cases, poor return policies, and ugly cabling. Despite the occasional round-mouse shaped misfire, Apple really does try to make the best products that can be made, pricing be damned. The Studio Display is no exception. If money is no object and 27″ is big enough for you, buy this. I do recommend spending the extra $500 for the adjustable stand unless you plan to mount it on a monitor arm. Yes, it’s overpriced, but you’ll be glad you have it.
There used to also be 4K displays at 24″, which had the same 218 dots per inch resolution for super crisp clarity and maximum performance. Unfortunately those no longer seem to be sold except as part of an iMac.
Option 4: $2000-$6000 32″ 6K Graphics Professionals
If you really want a big monitor (though most people would be better off with two smaller monitors for less money) there are two choices: the Dell 6K and the Apple Pro XDR Display. There are other monitors in the 30″+ range you can buy, but none of them have the resolution needed for super-crisp text, ultra-clear pictures, and maximum performance. At 32″ 6K is the number of pixels needed to get that ideal 218 DPI resolution. Much less or more than that and performance and picture both suffer.
The Dell Ultrasharp 32 6K retails for $3000 but can usually be found with various discounts for $2000 or even less. I own one, and it’s pretty sweet.
The Apple Pro XDR Display has an even better picture, but at $5000 with regular glass or $6000 with nano-texture glass, I can’t say it’s $3000 better than the Dell. If money is no object, buy this. Otherwise go with the Dell.
