according to macrumors, now might not be the best time to buy either unless you have an urgent need. waiting a few months for the m2 versions may be advisable…
although… if you,re leaning towards the imac you might have a longer wait. one rumour suggests they,ll skip the m2 version and go straight to the m3 after a longer refresh cycle…
here,s macrumors round up of what they think is next for both devices…
Hi. I’m not at all hooked on “all-in-one” so wouldn’t go to the trouble of mounting it on the back of the monitor. It’s just that for the last 20+ years, our desktops have all been iMacs.
I follow MacRumours, though take it as being rumours, however well founded, and wait for any announcements coming out of Apple… so I will be waiting until October at least before moving on this.
On the other hand, I have often seen people buy new kit and then feel hard done by because a new upgrade is launched a few months later. So you wait for the iMac M3 to be launched, but then there are rumours that an M3 Max version, or whatever, is in the pipeline… You can only buy what is available when you need to buy, otherwise you’ll wait forever before finally making up your mind.
Mark
Now another wrinkle to keep an eye on…
I’ve just discovered that I can get an iMac with the spec I want at Costco for £150 less than buying from Apple; that’s nearly £300 less than the same spec mini with the LG monitor. Mind you, Costco’s offer is only valid until the end of this month—trying to catch the beginning of the academic year, I suppose—so I’ll need to see if it’s still good later. They don’t do up-specced minis, sadly.
Mhh, Are you really sure you want to buy a 23.7" monitor?
of course. apple is reasonably predictable with its schedules though.
i have a 27, , monitor and would recommend that size highly if you have the desk footprint for it.
Larger monitors tend to have worse pixel density (i.e. a 24" vs. 32" monitor both @ 4K results in worse pixel density for the 32"). Some people prefer the larger physical size, but at least I value higher pixel density (improved font rendering etc.) and so larger monitors are not necessarily better… There is a reason Apple goes up to 5K for their larger iMacs after all…
Yes, there is a reason. But maybe not the reason you assume. Apple sells the most expensive computers in the world. Those prices can only be justified, if at all, by the best specs in the world. Whether or not that benefits the user doesn’t really matter.
The LG Ultrafine 4K monitor has a pixel density of 185 ppi on just under 24". That’s more than your eye can resolve at a distance of 1 meter. My LG has a pixel density of 137 ppi on 32".
I claim that you don’t perceive the difference at a distance of 1 meter. What you will definitely perceive is the difference in size between 24" and 32".
I don’t want to persuade anyone to do anything here. It’s just… not wise … to buy a monitor today whose size was standard 10 years ago. 
I sit a lot closer than 1 meter away from my monitor. YMMV.
I also know how big my desk is, and that a 32" monitor would be an ergonomic disaster in a variety of ways. Again, YMMV.
Yes, the smaller the monitor, the closer you sit. But that is not an advantage. It may be a necessity if you’re short on space.
Our foveal acuity is classically measured around 80cycles per visual degree (°), and 1° is 1cm of physical screen at 0.573 meters, thus for classical foveal acuity we need about 160pixels (1 cycle requires 2 pixels at minimum) for each cm of screen. That is ~400ppi — and we are not even considering hyper-acuity (where relative differences can resolve to much greater than the physical resolution). Current desktop displays are not yet pushing our foveal resolution. Displays still have a looong way to go to match our visual limits (including chromatic resolution, adaptive luminance control, temporal resolution, visuo-spatial integration among others; note: I work as a visual neuroscientist so nerd out about the visual system, it totally and utterly rocks). It isn’t just Apple being greedy.
Given how flexibly adaptive our visual system is, our visual system can compensate for low resolutions and many other imperfections. Cinema is a classic example where the standard 24 frames-per-second is way below out temporal integration limit, yet when Peter Jackson first tried to push up to 48fps for The Hobbit everyone complained! We had adapted to the aesthetic imperfections and limitations of 24fps, and a clearly objective improvement was perceived as a subjective step backward…
My point is that the human brain / perception still far outstrips technology objectively, and subjectively there can be reasons why we each choose different interfaces. I am patiently waiting for a 240Hz 400ppi 32" display, and will trade off size for resolution until we get there… 
@nontroppo Congratulations, then your eyes are much better than mine … old, tired ones.
I should have written: This is more than my eyes can resolve.
But you know, it’s like with hifi amplifiers. Some produce sounds up to 30’000 Hz. Maybe you can still hear that. Unfortunately, I can’t.
Indeed I didn’t factor age into those equations 
. I used to be an audiophile when younger, but indeed nowadays I am quite content to stream my music to cheapish headphones.
Audiophiles are a strange bunch, they depend on the financial fluidity of old age, but the perceptual fluidity of extreme youth 
@nontroppo You were audiophile? 
In the past I would have claimed to hear everything. Until I was subjected to a professional test. I was played music in two qualities, mp3, 128k and 320k. And what can I say, crap, I didn’t hear the difference. Since that day, I do it like you. I just kind of listen.
But seriously, are you convinced (at your young age 
) you can tell the difference between 185 ppi and 137 ppi at 1 meter distance? I can tell the difference at less than 110.
Well, I’m pushing 50, but one benefit of my severe myopia means that I have no Presbyopia [yet], so my corrected near vision is still good. I tend to view monitors closer than 1m (my desk puts them around 0.5m) but pixel density remains the biggest visual differentiator when I am previewing a new monitor. I am very nerdy about fonts, and I find that I notice the serif detail differences, I can’t unsee them as PPI drops But, to each their own…
If I was @xiamenese I would also get a Mac Mini and a good 24" 4K display. I have a 21" retina iMac, and the 219ppi display is still excellent and I enjoy working on it[1].
[1] the rest of the iMac, especially Apple’s absurd cheapness to use a main HDD on the iMac way beyond the time they should have switched to SSD makes it a pain. I use an external SSD to boot from but it is still flakey…
This is an interesting discussion. As I have said—I think!—I currently have a 2015 27" 5K iMac. I love the screen… my desktop photos look absolutely wonderful on it. But truth be told, about the only apps I use in roughly full screen are Final Cut Pro and Amadeus Pro, as it gives me more timeline. Every other app only uses up to ⅔ of the screen. I have several virtual screens set up and run apps on on them; it only needs a quick three-finger swipe to access them, so the only things that I sometimes have sharing a screen with the main app are a finder window, or a small TextEdit window if I need to quickly copy and paste some text to have access to it for some purpose … a URL for instance.
I also am most comfortable sitting ca 50 cm from the screen, and my “computer specs” are set up for that distance. So, all in all, I think I would find a 32" screen to be of little benefit to me, and so would align myself with @nontroppo and @kewms. But everyone has their own preferences, ways of working and requirements.
Mark
Hi Floss,
Thank you for the excellent link to MacRumors:
I almost upgraded my 2012 MPB to an M1 MPB, but recent rumors indicated there may be an upgrade coming. Your link confirmed what I had found. I need to be patient, even though (at 700+ pages) the compile time for my Scrivener+LaTeX project has reached 30+ minutes … I’ve had to create a shadow mini-project just to test out sections of the full project. As this will likely be the last Mac I’ll purchase, it will have to last me through all future software upgrades. There are a few critical apps that I cannot run on my 2012 MBP, and the lack of functionality is wearing thin.
So thank you for the link … MacRumors did a nice job in their assessment … I’m looking forward to seeing the M2 chip in action … just hope I don’t have to wait too long!
According to this article, anything over 140 ppi is unlikely to be useful.
https://www.coolblue.be/en/advice/what-does-the-pixel-density-of-your-monitor-indicate.html
Seems I missed that part. But according to this article, “a PPI higher than 140 makes text and icons smaller to such a degree that they’re not clearly visible anymore”. Yeah, but no.
That’s my experience. I have trouble using the default resolution on my LG 27” UltraFine. It’s great for everything else, but annoying for menus.
Of course. Most people would struggle with that. Unless you have eagle eyes, the “normal” way of using it is with scaled resolutions, e.g. Apple’s out of the box (fake) 1440p setting. Big enough (or almost), but twice as sharp.