The Best Monitors for the Mac

Just about any monitor can work with a Mac. It doesn’t need to be made by Apple or have any official certification. There’s a case to be made for using a cheap 1080p monitor, but most Mac users will want something a bit more premium. As you can see from options like the Dell 27 Plus 4K, that doesn’t have to mean overly expensive. Either way, here are the four elements to consider when shopping for a good monitor to go with your Mac.

Size and resolution: 27- and 32-inch monitors are the most common sizes these days, but there are larger options. I would also consider a 34-inch ultrawide monitor if you like the wider 21:9 aspect ratio with the curved shape. With Apple, resolution is king. There's a reason it invests so much in high pixel density for every screen it sells, even in midrange options like the MacBook Air. Pixel density is what gives a screen its sharpness, and you need a lot more pixels when they're stretched across a large external monitor. If you want to keep fidelity up, I wouldn’t buy anything less than 4K, and bumping up to 5K or 6K on a 32-inch monitor can be helpful. Read more to learn the details on the funky way macOS handles resolutions and scaling. You should also consider the refresh rate: a 120-Hz refresh rate is what the MacBook Pro supports, offering smoother animation, especially in games.

Adjustability: Apple monitors and iMacs aren’t exactly known for adjustability. They often have none at all, and cost more when they do. That isn’t the best for your posture and ergonomics. Famously, the discontinued Pro Display XDR charged an extra $1,000 for a Pro Stand with proper adjustability (now a $400 add-on for the newer Studio Display XDR). For ergonomics, the top of the screen you're working on should be as close to eye level as possible, and that ranges depending on someone’s height. If a monitor doesn’t have height adjustability, you’ll need a separate monitor stand or arm. Beyond height adjustment, many monitors also have stands that can swivel, tilt, and rotate, all of which matter when using multiple monitors. This is also needed if you want to use a second monitor vertically, which has become increasingly popular.

Ports: Even the cheapest monitors will always have HDMI, which is all you need to connect directly to a Mac Mini, Mac Studio, Mac Pro, or MacBook Pro. Some monitors have USB-C that supports video, which will let you connect to one of a Mac’s Thunderbolt ports. The Mac Mini comes with three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, and an Ethernet jack. The Mac Mini Pro model has the same ports, except three of them support faster Thunderbolt 5 instead of 4. You’ll need to use at least one of these Thunderbolt ports to connect more than one external monitor. These monitors also tend to have other ports, such as USB-A. These can be useful, as the Mac Mini doesn't have any on its own.

Image quality: Apple prides itself on the image quality of its Macs, so in the case of the Mac Mini, you’ll likely want to get something worthy of your Mac. This is especially important for content creators, photographers, and designers. So, consider a monitor’s brightness, color accuracy, color coverage, and contrast. While some IPS displays offer decent color and contrast, mini-LED or OLED displays will guarantee better image quality. These also have significantly higher peak brightness in HDR content, which really brings games and movies to life.

The latest Mac Mini with the M6 chip can support up to three external displays, using the three Thunderbolt ports or one HDMI port on the back. Regardless of the resolution (up to 8K) or refresh rate (up to 240 Hz), if you're just plugging in a single monitor, any one of these ports will do. Use whichever your monitor has or whichever is the most convenient. But when you need multiple displays, that's where things get complicated. Here's a table explaining the differences.

When you plug in an external 4K monitor to a Mac of any kind, it will look good. The icons, text, and UI elements look sharp and not overly small. But open up the Display menu in System Settings, and you'll find that it’s not actually rendering at the full resolution of 3840 x 2160. Instead, it'll default to a much lower resolution to achieve that scaling. In fact, this happens even on the integrated display of a MacBook Air, which defaults to 1470 x 956 instead of the native 2560 x 1664. No doubt, this is one reason macOS defaults to hiding the list of resolutions and instead just asks the user how large they want the text to appear.

I won’t get into the rather complex reasoning behind this, but know this: the resolution you see in the macOS display settings doesn't appear to be that resolution. That's what Apple's Retina Display branding is all about: preserving clarity. And when you plug in an external monitor, macOS will maintain that priority of clarity at the expense of native resolution.

That said, there are a few resolutions and screen sizes that are best optimized for macOS’ proclivities. Namely, it's 27-inch monitors with a 5K resolution (5120 x 2880), which gives you exactly twice the resolution of 1440p and produces an extremely sharp image without messing up the scaling. That doesn't mean 4K monitors won't work or aren't worth the money; just don't expect things to work exactly how they do when connected to Windows.

If you haven’t already bought your Mac Mini, you might be wondering if it's a better deal than the iMac. After all, both are desktop Macs with similar specs and performance. The M6 Mac Mini starts at $899, which gets you 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. The M4 iMac, on the other hand, costs $1,499. It has an older processor, but comes with the same memory and storage, a built-in 24-inch display with 4480 x 2520 (4.5K) resolution, a 12-megapixel webcam, a mouse, a keyboard, and some decent speakers. For the $600 difference, you either get a computer with a newer processor but no display or accessories, or an all-in-one that's ready out of the box.

It's hard to quantify, though, as there aren't any 4.5K monitors out there. The 24-inch monitor size has largely disappeared, except for ultra-budget displays or professional esports gaming monitors. However, you can certainly buy a quality 27-inch 4K monitor for less than $500 (and a 5K variant for not much more), with money left over to add on peripherals such as a webcam or computer speakers. So, in terms of cost savings, grabbing the Mac Mini is a smart move. You're paying extra for the iMac’s convenience of it being an all-in-one system.