Ultra high definition apparently isn't ultra enough for Apple. The company is bypassing the 4K trend in high-end monitors and video rigs and jumping straight to 5K with its latest iMac.
The 2014 iMac has a 5120 x 2880 pixel resolution (218ppi) display that'll be driven by the same AMD Radeon R9 M290X found in gaming machines like the Alienware 17. It's at once beautiful, with a 218 PPI pixel density, and kinda silly. Who could possibly need that many pixels packed into their display?
Turns out, there’s good reason Apple opted for greater than 4K resolution in the iMac, and it’s not just that more Ks are better. Ok, fine, more Ks are usually better, but only for specific use cases. With that in mind, we’ve gone ahead and answered some questions you may have about 5K, and Apple's latest desktop offering.
A 5K display has a 5120 x 2880 pixel resolution at a 16:9 aspect ratio.
It has 14.7 million pixels and a total of 44.2 million sub-pixels.
A 4K display has around 4,000 pixels horizontally, so it ends up being 3840 x 2160 (for a 16:9 aspect ratio) or 4096 x 2160 resolution (for a 19:10 aspect ratio).
Nope. Dell announced a 5K desktop monitor, the UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K, in early September. It's supposed to ship in December for $2,500, the same price as the base version of Apple's new 27-inch Retina iMac. However, Apple's 5K offering is already available for consumers.
For most of us, a 5K display is just an extravagance, a high-end computing machine with specs that make our friends' jaws drop. But for professionals in some industries, such a high pixel density is quite important.
For example, 5K resolution is great for those working on 4K content. “You can view all of the images at their true native 4K resolution, which is very important, and then have a fair amount of leftover screen space all around it for controls, icons, and even a generous 3.2-inch high text area at the bottom for commands and text input,” Displaymate’s Ray Soneira told WIRED. This actually ends up being better and more efficient than using a second monitor because you can keep your eyes on the images while working on them, instead of having to glance off to the side.
IHS Technology’s Rhoda Alexander points out that in addition to those in graphics-related fields like CAD and CG, healthcare imaging (like radiology) also has need for displays with a very high resolution.
When Apple first introduced Retina on the iPad, it happened on the larger full size iPad before happening on the mini. And when Apple added Retina on the MacBook Pro, it happened on the 15-inch version before landing on the 13-inch. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, this is due to the challenge involved with developing two separate, differently-sized high resolution panels at the same time. Apple perfects the process on one size first, then applies it to the next size.
For 218 PPI, Soneira says the viewing distance where the pixels would be resolved with 20/20 vision is 16.1 inches, so as long as you’re 16.1 inches or further from your display, it will look Retina. This is actually quite less than the typical viewing distance for this size display, which is around 24 inches.
Your iPhone may have a 326 PPI display or higher, but that’s not the definition of a Retina display. Such high resolution is necessary for Apple to consider it “Retina” because you hold a 3.5 to 4.7 inch display much closer to your face than a desktop monitor would be. With a bigger display, it can have a lower pixel count per inch and your eyes still won’t be able to distinguish individual pixels. While the iPhone 6 Plus has a 401 PPI pixel density, the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro, by comparison, has only a mere 220 PPI.
“The displays should be defect free for consumers regardless of the resolution, [but] yields might be slightly lower,” Charles Annis, vice president of manufacturing research at NPD DisplaySearch, told WIRED. Lower yields mean that if demand is high, shipping dates could slip.
If anything, there is a possibility that a dead pixel or two could slip by, which you may or may not notice. Different people have different degrees of acumen in noticing such tiny visual anomalies. If a display did have a dead pixel, it would be more noticeable if it happens in the center of the screen than if it’s toward the edges.
It is. Apple did a couple things differently from its previous iMac displays with its 5k version. Apple used an oxide semiconductor rather than amorphous Silicon in the display’s TFT array so that pixels charge faster, and hold a charge longer. Apple mixes and matches these two methods on some iPads (consumers and pros alike can't tell the difference until one undergoes a teardown). The iMac display also uses a technology called organic passivation to reduce pixel crosstalk and save energy. The LED backlight is thinner, brighter, and consumes less energy than in the previous iMac's display. Apple also created a unique timing controller chip to direct all its millions of pixels.
This is a good question. Soneira explains: "The iMac is a system for working on 4K content and needs 5K, but the Cinema display is for viewing content and should not be operated at 5K but rather 4K." You don't want to rescale a 4K image up to 5K---scaling artifacts would degrade the image quality, or the image wouldn't take up the full screen. In fact, a 4K image (at 8.3-megapixels) would take up only 56 percent of a 5K screen (which can show a 14.7-megapixel image). So, there actually is no advantage to having a 5K Cinema display.
But as to why we don't have a 4K Cinema display alongside today's 5K iMac, it's probably the same reason we didn't see a 21.5-inch iMac: One Retina display development at a time.
Do you work in a graphics-intensive industry where having a higher resolution display would give you a competitive advantage? Is your current desktop machine on its last legs? Do you have super-human eyesight and the pixels in HD displays are just, ugh, so dotty that it burns your retinas? Do you have $2,500 lying around? Then go for it. If not, you’re probably fine holding out on upgrading until your Mac is on its deathbed.
Updated 11:30 AM ET for better clarity and spec corrections.
