I'm minutes away from buying one, someone talk me out of it...
Some of you may know that I spend a lot more time taking and editing photos these days. Over the years, my concept of value has changed from "best price" to "best/easiest implementation" for the money.
I need something that will churn through big lightroom libraries and sync up with the client software on the back end, and manage ordering self fulfillment, and churn out the occasional video, and whose screen is comfortable enough to look at for hours at a time. Theoretically, the iMac has three limitations. Color space, glossiness, and resolution (It's not 4K). But I'm forced to admit that these aren't real limitations. Good 4K (from IPS/IGZO panels, to 4K content, to capture equipment) is still some way from wide adoption, and I don't do video. The new reduced glare screen actually produces a nice approximation of a semi-gloss print, and the restricted colour space is something of a blessing, since I'm dealing with print houses and clients, and online proofing galleries etc...
While I'm enamoured of bigger spaces, the management is still just problematic enough to keep me off aRGB until the whole world steps forward together.
So, here's my thing. I don't have a huge workspace. 48"x24". Two 27" panels will "just" fit. I have this old Dell 5:4" panel hooked up to my Macbook Pro, now 8 years old! Both displays are garbage, but at least I can plug in the Dell as a desktop overflow/palettes monitor/lightroom browser. It's just really crap, rotated 90" to vertical it has a weird color ghosting that looks like metamerism in a bad print. It also takes up a fair bit of space for a relatively small 19" display and otherwise ruins my mojo. I need to throw it out the window.
I could buy a good 27" external with aRGB, but it's more money than I want to spend at the moment, and it will take up my whole workspace combined with an equal size iMac. Then I thought. OK, I wonder if there's a nice 1440x900 or 1440x1080 display that matches the pixel density of the iMac. It would be small, and turned to portrait orientation look kinda like a 1.5 display set-up, but just enough for those uses I just described. And it would avoid any UI scaling issues when moving from one screen to the other.
Displayswars.com tells me I'm looking for something about 15.6" in 16:10 (1440x900), or 17" 5:4 (1440x1080), or 15.2" (16:9, and I'm too lazy to figure out the resolution at 1440 wide) or whatever it would work out to in a 4:3 screen (again too lazy and such displays probably don't exist.)
Maybe one of those USB3 powered monitors if these was some way to just clip it to the side of the iMac, keeping it off the desk... Do these thing exist? Or have I successfully invented a reason to differ purchase for a few more months?
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