Dough sent me their new Spectrum One 4k with an updated Gorilla Glass display with DXC,
and I have been using it for the last couple of weeks with my MacBook Pro. This display
has lots of ports, variable refresh rate and is very similar to previous
versions of the Spectrum with one VERY important change to how you can get it.
So, I want to cover the features and what’s new with the Spectrum One,
which will revolve around my experience using it with a Mac, and tell you how you can get it.
If you have ever seen or heard of the Spectrum One display this update is going to be very
familiar to you. This is a 27” 4k display that is bright and beautiful in an attractive package.
The newest feature of the Spectrum One is the optional Gorilla Glass with DXC. This gives
you all the benefits of a glossy screen, like increased sharpness and contrast,
while cutting way back on the glare you normally get from a glossy display.
Are there still reflections when you or something behind you is lit up? Yes, but when the display
is on and you are actually using it, you really don’t see much. **********************
Though the body itself is made entirely of plastic like its predecessors, this is one
of the best looking displays out there. The design is sleek and modern with slim bezels all around.
There are a slew of ports on the back, along with a power button and on screen display joystick.
The stand, which is sold separately, is made of 2 pieces of metal and is pretty solid. It
allows the display to move up and down or rotate 90º if you need a vertical display.
I actually like the design of this display a lot because of its very minimal design. There
are no logos or crazy lights that distract me from whatever I am doing with the display. With
my usage, the display and stand are very stable with basically no display wobbling.
The 4k display is pretty great. At 27”, a 4k display is 163 pixels per inch which
when native 4k or scaled to 1080p, the image is sharp. Because I use a Mac,
I prefer to use a scaled resolution, but i'll talk more about that in just a minute.
The display is also bright. It gets up to 450 nits of peak brightness with SDR content
making it plenty bright for anywhere I would actually use a desktop display,
but it is also HDR600 compatible which means it can get up to 750 nits of peak brightness.
This made HDR videos look really good on this display. There are 16 individual dimming zones
which do turn on and off depending on what is on the screen to try and give
you greater contrast. I found it enjoyable to watch HDR content but as you can see,
the 16 dimming zones don’t really offer a whole lot of benefit because there is
always going to be something laterally on pretty much all of the display.
The display also shows 98% of P3 color and looks very close to Apple’s own displays,
right out of the box, which is good for me and it looks good.
Next, I’m going to tell you more about the features like 100w power delivery
and promotion-like variable refresh rate but I do want to thank today's sponsor…
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The Spectrum One has a variable refresh rate, similar to ProMotion on Pro Mac Laptops and iPads.
You can configure the variable refresh rate inside system preferences or system settings on your Mac.
You can enable the on-screen display of the frames per second and when playing games
that support high refresh rates you can see the rate fluctuate along with the actual game play.
There are also other features for real gamers like 1ms response time,
gsync and freesync support, and backlight strobing.
Beyond games, this high refresh rate is just nice for everyday scrolling on web pages,
or OS animations. Motion just looks smoother.
If you are someone who needs to connect multiple devices to this display,
you will be happy with all the ports on this thing. There are 4 display inputs. You can pick
between 2 hdmi 2.1 ports, a displayport connection, and displayport over USB-C.
For my MacBook, I use a single USB-C cable to connect and with that I get data,
displayport, and up to 100w of power delivery.
There are also additional USB 3.1 ports for
connecting accessories like mice and keyboards or an external ssd.
If you connect one device via USB-C, you can connect another device with
hdmi or displayport along with the USB-B connection, you now have a full KVM.
That means that the accessories you have connected can switch when you switch the
display. This allows you to have one keyboard and mouse but use it on 2 devices.
For me, the biggest issue using this display with a Mac is the display scaling. And this
isn't a Dough specific issue, it is all 4k displays, and there are actually 2 issues.
Apple likes to have elements on the display be a certain
size that stays the same no matter what size display you are using.
So if you have a 15” MacBook Air and a 5k studio display,
an icon or piece of text is the same size when you drag it from one display to another.
With a 4k display at 27”, the native resolution makes everything too small. The pixel doubling
to make it retina makes everything a little too big. What I want is something that matches what
macOS preferes at 27”. You can select that option and at first glance it looks good.
But soon you may notice that text isn't as crisp as it was, or edges of things
are fuzzy. That's because you have to scale from one resolution to another that isnt 1:1.
If we zoom in on the 4k display with the pixel doubling for retina, you can see this text
is nice and sharp. If I change the scaling to the size I prefer, the text is fuzzier.
I know that not everyone cares about this and if
you are happy with the size of things on the display with macOS and a 4k display,
then great. This is my own personal preference but figured I would mention it.
Other than that the display has performed really well in my testing and I like it,
now…the other big change this year is how you can now buy the Spectrum One.
You should now be able to actually order this from a reputable store, B&H photo,
which you can find in the description down below. This is a massive change and much
needed because Dough, or formally Eve, has a not so great reputation.
I don’t want to spend much time on this because there is plenty of information out there,
but Dough has had issues actually shipping orders for years. The fact that you can go
to B&H to place an order and use them for returns or canceling an order if it ends up backordered,
is huge for us consumers. And this is where I edit this document.
Support wise, I’m still on the fence because a couple years ago I bought an
Eve Spectrum off ebay, because they kept delaying my order. The joystick thing on
the back just kind of fell apart and I was unable to get anyone from Eve, now Dough,
to help me. I reached out Via email and Twitter and they never got back to me.
When doing my testing with this display I noticed that when using HDR,
there was a slight issue with the zone dimming, causing a horizontal dark area.
I reached out to Dough and they are promising a replacement. I think that the company is
working hard to ship and support better, so I will let you know how that works out for me.
So there is not a lot different, with this display technically, from the other versions but if you
like a glossy display and want reduced glare, this should help. And if you are wondering how the
Spectrum displays compare against the Apple Studio Display, you should check out this video right
here. Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it, subscribe if you want and I'll see you next time.