Simon Jary
Is 4K sharp enough compared with the Studio Display’s 5K?
- Apple wins for text sharpness.
- ASUS wins for motion, contrast, HDR and creative/video work.
Apple’s biggest weapon in the fight is its 5K Retina advantage. The Studio Display packs 5120 x 2880 pixels, giving it a wonderful 218ppi pixel density, ensuring that text is exceptionally crisp and the interfaces look beautifully rendered.
The ASUS is 4K, at 3840 x 2160, and 166ppi. That’s still sharp, but put the two displays side by side and the difference is clear, particularly with text—important for writers, developers and anyone who spends eight hours staring at browser windows, documents and menus, and those with the extra cash in their pocket.
If your workload is primarily Safari/Mail/Word/Excel/coding/lots of text, the Apple Studio Display has a meaningful advantage, but then we’d recommend you look at more affordable 5K displays such as the $999/£899 BenQ MA270S or BenQ PD2730S or budget $699 KTC 5K2K Monitor. Don’t get me wrong, the text on the PA279CDV is great—just not 5K great.
Read our reviews for more of the best monitors for Mac.
The ProArt’s secret weapon is sitting behind all those pixels: its QD-OLED panel gives the ASUS a huge advantage in contrast, with deep blacks, virtually instantaneous response times and much more convincing HDR. Its 120Hz refresh rate also makes scrolling, animations and timeline scrubbing noticeably smoother than the Apple’s 60Hz panel. If you’ve become accustomed to the 120Hz ProMotion display on a MacBook Pro, the Studio Display’s 60Hz refresh rate can feel like a step backwards. The ASUS doesn’t make that compromise. For photography and especially HDR video work, the PA279CDV is the display I’d want in front of me.
Color performance is strong on both. ASUS targets professional creators with factory calibration, a Delta E (ΔE) below 1.5 and broad DCI-P3 coverage, while Apple offers a range of color and reference modes. For HDR video and visually demanding creative work, though, the ASUS’s OLED panel is the more compelling choice.
