A monitor can be used with a desktop computer or to create a more or less stable station for a laptop. There are several on the market of excellent quality, and in the past, for example, we talked about this LG monitor for productivity, even at very high resolution and this for gaming. We decided to test a particular solution, which arises from the idea that it is possible to make the most of the characteristics of a laptop by increasing its capabilities with a very large monitor, but nothing detracts from the fact that it can also be done with a fixed one, for example. a Mac mini.
The monitor chosen for the test is a Lg Ultrawide 35, which has particular characteristics because it is a curved ultrawide model with significant features and a relatively low price (around 500 euros). We tried it not for professional use in video, design or photography, but to push the possibility of multitasking to the maximum. That is, we tested it with a solution (using a MacBook Pro 16) that allows you to set it as a point of arrival for productivity on the go, and then with a Mac mini M1, which instead works well to create an extremely powerful and flexible setup but at much lower costs even than an iMac (which for now, however, does not yet have a version with an M1 processor).
Monitor characteristics
Lg spared no expense with this monitor, which is very large. The full diction is LG Monitor UltraWide 35 21: 9 Quad HD Curved HDR USB-C with code 35WN73A-B.
The monitor comes in a rather large box, especially in length. Inside, in addition to the monitor itself, there are the two parts of the stand (the curved base and the part that attaches to the back of the monitor, where there is also a standard VESA attachment) that allow you to raise and lower the monitor and make it tilt. Furthermore, the power cable with shuko socket is connected via a transformer of important dimensions as regards the power supply part. An HDMI cable and not a Usb-C cable would also be included in the “standard” package, although the trial version provided by LG does not even include an HDMI cable.
We did with what we had available, noting that the MacBook Pro power cables are not compatible with the video signal but only with data and current, so the Usb-C requires an ad hoc cable. We turned to Amazon quickly recovering a low-cost Rampow cable that “holds” the 60 Watts we were interested in (for powering the MacBook Pro 16) and 40 Mbps for the Thunderbolt.
Assembly of the monitor is very fast and requires no instructions: the two parts of the bracket are quickly coupled, and then this in turn attaches to the back of the monitor with a sharp “click”. To release it, a small lever releases the tabs that hold it in place. The bracket is solid and quite bulky, like the monitor itself, but it surprised us as we will see in a moment because it clutters more in width than in height.
The installation of the monitor takes a maximum of ten minutes, especially to remove it from protective plastics and polystyrene. The screen is delicate because the panel is not protected by glass and therefore is not only at risk of fingerprints but also of small pieces of polystyrene that can be inserted between the minimal frame and the panel.
Warning: this monitor has a mini-jack audio output, but no internal sound box. Neither webcam, for that matter. This is perhaps the most serious flaw, because it limits the use of the monitor in the area in which those who buy a work tool today, especially in an era of pandemic, look for: the inevitable Zoom or the dreaded webinar. Here you have to resort to external speakers and a webcam to add. The monitor ports allow you to do this though: there are two HDMI ports, a USB-c port with 60 watt power output, two USB type A ports, a DisplayPort and a mini-jack headphone output. The software of the monitor for the adjustment is quite primordial, but Lg has created a software called OnScreen Control that works on both Windows and Mac (with a little less functions) and which is absolutely necessary, given the type of monitor.
How does it work
The features of this panel are simple and powerful at the same time: the monitor has a form factor that goes far beyond the cinemascope, with a curved 21: 9 aspect ratio. Compared to the flat version also produced by LG, there is an extra inch because the curved diagonal is actually longer than the flat one with the same overall dimensions. The resolution is remarkable: compared to 100 Hz refresh rate, it is a Quad HD 3440 × 1440 This is the most important data, together with the fact that it is compatible with HDR 10 mode. The monitor covers the equivalent of two 1720 monitors × 1440. In this sense, the idea of having a single monitor capable of functioning as two monitors side by side with a view to productivity boosted especially for areas such as programming, business management, logistics or other activities in which it is necessary to control many different screens and windows.
Although the monitor is factory calibrated and covers the sRGB color range, it is not a monitor designed to work in production: it is not the panel of an iMac 27, it does not have the color rendering that one might expect from a professional instrument for the photo editing or color correction. But it would also be very naïve to expect this because this monitor has one feature that clearly makes it a monitor not for that type of business: it's curved.
The curved screen is useful both for gaming, where it accelerates the immersion effect in the game and also helps to be faster in reflections because it allows you to “see more” on the sides, and for productive multitasking because its real estate, the important thumb drive allows you to distribute multiple windows around the screen. But it is curved, that is, it introduces a real optical distortion factor, which makes it unsuitable for video editing, photo editing, artistic drawing or architectural and engineering. If you look at a photograph on this screen, the sides tend to curve exactly as they would with a wide angle lens. Those who choose this monitor do so because they want to work very, quickly, keeping various different environments under control.
The field test
We first attached the Mac mini M1 to the monitor, and the first factor we noticed was the reaction speed. We then saw that, on the other hand, with the MacBook Pro 16, version with i9 processor and Amd Radeon Pro 5500M graphics card, the setup is more “lazy” especially when waking up. We tried both variants: both the one with Usb-c (for the MacBook) and the Hdmi one (for the Mac mini) and then we reversed the parts. In both cases, when the USB-C cable is used, the monitor indicates that it is a third-party cable and that the original one should be used (which, we repeat, is not supplied). However, there were no problems from this point of view.
The advantage of the Usb-c obviously is that, with the MacBook Pro, it allows you to connect the computer with a single cable and make the monitor act as a hub. From this point of view there is the first problem: the monitor has only one USB-c and therefore accessories of this type (external disks and so on) must be attached to the Mac. Change the subject with the Mac mini, which being due to its “stable” nature it does not require this type of approach.
The monitor has colors that change a lot depending on the configuration but also on the type of support used compared to the default setups: on Usb-C the colors tend to fade a lot and burn the whites, while on HDMI the HDR effect is very accentuated. We did the first part of the test using the Macs and the monitor without any additional drivers or software. We then installed LG's OnScreen Control software which, we can say, is a necessary requirement, because it puts the screen back under control.
In our tests we used the two computers “on par”, in the sense that even with the MacBook we used external keyboard and trackpad with the computer lid closed. The MacBook Pro 16 has an excellent thermal and does not heat up except in conditions of very strong use. Overall, the on-screen rendering is comparable to that of the MacBook Pro 16 for pixel density. The Retina screen in fact allows you to target 3072 × 1920 against the 3440 × 1440 of LG's QuadHD. In practice, the Mac has the monitor with a 16:10 aspect ratio, that is, with a greater height than the base when compared to the LG monitor which instead has a 21: 9 aspect ratio. The panel, despite this, is “soft” and certainly has a lower yield than that which can be found on an iMac 27 with a 5K screen (5120 × 2880) and is seen very well also due to the lower maximum brightness. You have to keep this in mind, if you take into consideration the purchase of this monitor, but also consider that in any case the use of the iMac 27 5K is substantially different from what you can do with this monitor from LG.
We also tried watching movies, and here the monitor is practically perfect (apart from the lack of audio, which can be solved with external speakers) because it has a 21: 9 ratio very close to the 2.39: 1 used by Hollywood. . On Netflix we watched Django Unchained in full screen, shot by Quentin Tarantino on 35mm anamorphic film with excellent performance even if the monitor is certainly not a home theater size.
The maximum brightness of the monitor is however limited (300 cd / m²) with a 5ms response time, a 99% sRGB color gamut, 16.7 million colors, a viewing angle of 178/178 degrees (theoretically yes could also mount it vertically, although it doesn't make sense with a curved panel) and 5M dynamic contrast. The screen is also compatible with AMD FreeSync, has a black stabilization mode, a reader mode, is flicker safe and has a well-developed DAS mode. Overall, it is a monitor that works very well in the Mac environment but has some (many) cartridges for those who use Windows 10-based computers. Out of curiosity, we also briefly tested it with a Raspberry Pi 4, obtaining not excellent results (the Raspberry gets very hot to handle the native resolution of the monitor).
Conclusions
A fairly light monitor (6.5 kg without bracket, 8.2 kg with the bracket and the package weighs “only” 12.2 kg), dimensions with important stands but above all horizontally (831.6x573x250.9 with stand and 831 , 6 × 372.7 × 94.1 without) has a limited consumption (on average 39 watts if the Mac is not plugged in, at which point the USB-c has to drive another 60 watts) An “elastic” monitor because you can tilt and raise (always lower with the feeling of stability of the support bracket, which however takes up a lot of space on the desk. To rotate it you have to move everything, but the bracket has a cable-holding loop useful for keeping order.
We noticed that the monitor almost necessarily requires the OnScreen Control software in order to be used properly (especially to configure color profiles and manage them from the Mac: the pistil-joypad under the frame to drive the interface on the screen is very inconvenient) and which has a not excessive brightness. Optical warping places the monitor out of range of use for color, technical drawing, image and video professionals, while it is a holy hand for multitasking because it allowed us to virtually align three virtual Mac desks in one place. and work on complex projects without problems or keeping an eye on the entire working day without having to change context.
The brightness is not its strong point, the plastic of the frame is really minimal, the device “creaks” but it seems resistant and well made. The lack of even a small speaker (which is also present in the 34-inch non-curved model) is really a huge mistake, in our opinion, which takes away part of the usefulness of the monitor, as well as the presence of a single USB port. c which limits the ability to create a laptop hub. In our ideal world, in addition to the second door and the speakers under the frame, the ideal would also be a webcam and this could turn into a “pandemic war machine” to manage from home what requires two monitors at work.
The cost and the price make it the ideal tool for those who have to set up, for example, operating stations where you have to follow multiple video feeds and data dashboards, also from a trading point of view but above all for the management of a back office work activity. It is also a relatively interesting tool for a programmer although overly horizontal development doesn't help (programmers, like writers, tend to work with vertically oriented screens).
In summary: compared to a 5K monitor you lose in definition but you gain in polliciaggio and therefore in usable surface. The screen responds well even with the Mac, there is software, and the price (with USB-c included) is very interesting.
Pro
Cons
Retail price The monitor is available at various points of sale on the peninsula, so we invite readers to visit the LG web page for all the details: at the time of writing, the display is on sale on Amazon for € 699 including VAT.
