Okay, so this might sound a little crazy,
but just hear me out.
I use a gaming monitor with my Mac.
And you might think it's almost as dumb as buying
this 160 US dollar cable from apple,
video on that coming soon,
but I wanted to talk about my experience
and why you might also want to do the same thing.
Even if you've just got a base model MacBook Air.
Okay, so getting straight into it,
there are two main reasons.
And number one is of course, the high refresh rate, right?
So, everything you do on your Mac
just feels really snappy, really smooth,
and that's everything from productivity tasks like,
scrolling through websites or flicking between desktops,
to even things such as gaming.
And secondly, speaking of gaming
if you're someone who has maybe a PlayStation,
or an Xbox, or a gaming PC on your desk as well,
you can use this monitor, with not only your Mac
but also your PC or gaming console as well.
And that's it, that's the whole video.
So you don't need to watch it to the end.
But seriously do stick around to the end
because I never see this topic discussed like at all.
So, let's just dive straight into it.
Also, quick thanks to Setapp for sponsoring this video,
but more on that later.
Now about that high refresh rate.
Screens these days are typically 60 Hertz.
Which means that the image you see on the screen
is refreshed 60 times every single second.
Traditionally MacBook screens are 60 Hertz as well.
With the exception of course of the most recent MacBook Pro,
which features ProMotion, allowing the screen
to intelligently switch between refresh rates
up to 120 Hertz.
And before you ask, no,
the studio display does not have ProMotion.
So, it's locked to 60 Hertz.
Now there are, of course, a lot of monitors out there
that can do more than 60 Hertz,
but, the problem is they're mostly marketed towards gamers
and that's something that most Mac users
don't really do a lot of, at least on their Mac,
and certainly not at 144 FPS.
Now, these gamer oriented monitors
are more similar to traditional monitors than you think.
With features like USB-C connectivity,
good color accuracy, HDR,
a lot of them these days don't even look gamery,
it's just a minimal looking monitor
that wouldn't look out of place in an office.
And the price of these monitors
has actually decreased quite a lot in recent years.
But for some reason,
most Mac users don't really consider these monitors
as an option.
They tend to stick mostly
with the traditional 60 Hertz monitors.
There's nothing wrong with that of course,
especially, you know, depending on your budget.
There's only so much you can afford
and don't forget a lot of people tend to prioritize
things like, resolution over refresh rates.
They'll go for the 5K studio display, for example,
nothing wrong with that either,
really just depends on your personal preference.
Now you're probably wondering,
what's so good about having a high refresh rate monitor.
Well, if you want to get an idea of what it feels like.
If you're currently using a 60 Hertz monitor
switch your refresh rate down to 30 Hertz
in system preferences and compare the two.
You'll notice that everything seems really laggy
and also way less responsive,
especially when just moving windows around.
This is because the time between each image
on the monitor updating is now 32 milliseconds,
instead of 16 milliseconds at 60 Hertz.
Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to,
just experience it if you haven't yet already.
So go to a store, test it out at a friend's house, whatever.
Cause literally everything you do on a high refresh monitor
just feels so much snappier and smoother.
And all this is especially noticeable
if you have a 14 or 16 inch MacBook Pro
with a ProMotion screen.
So if you've got that 120 Hertz ProMotion screen on one side
and then a 60 Hertz monitor on the other side,
you can really tell that difference.
So, bringing that monitor refresh rate up a little bit
to match the MacBook,
it's just a much more enjoyable experience.
Also, if you do any gaming on the MacBook
and yes, Macs aren't exactly super optimized
for games neither are games for Macs,
sure, you probably won't be able
to get anywhere near enough FPS
to saturate the refresh rate of the monitor,
but there is still a noticeable difference between,
even 60 and 90 FPS, for example,
that you will definitely feel.
And this brings me to my next point.
Many of you might have a gaming console
or a gaming PC at your desk and you don't have room
or you simply don't want a dual monitor set up.
But just before we get into that
and talk about that a little bit more,
a quick word from our sponsor.
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Now having your Mac and also a gaming PC or gaming console,
whatever you've got, attached to the same monitor
is a really slick setup,
because all it takes is a few clicks of the input button
and you can switch between the two really easily.
My home setup consists of a MacBook Pro
and my custom gaming PC,
all running on the same 4K high refresh rate monitor.
When doing productivity tasks on my MacBook,
I get a really nice 144 Hertz 4K image.
Which is about as close as you can get
to the ProMotion screen of the MacBook.
And when switching to my PC for gaming,
I can keep that same high refresh rate
and adjust the in-game resolution up and down
to maximize my FPS if necessary.
Now, speaking of monitors, let me just quickly introduce
the two gaming monitors that I've featured in this video.
This first one is the BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710Q.
It's a 27 inch 16 by nine aspect ratio IPS panel,
with a 1440p resolution and 165 Hertz refresh rate.
At just under 400 US dollars,
it's a relatively affordable gaming monitor.
About the same cost as the super popular LG 4K ultra sharp,
that featured on this channel previously.
The BenQ is a really bang for back monitor.
It's got a ton of cool features
that I will go into more detail in, in a separate review.
And although a 1440p screen is not as pixel dense
and as much less PPI or pixels per inch,
compared to a MacBook retina screen 4K monitor
or the 5k studio display,
I find that it's a nice balance between cost image quality
and raw GPU power required to push games at a decent FPS.
And you can also use apps like SwitchResX or BetterDummy,
if you have an Apple Silicon Mac,
to improve scaling with 1440p monitors.
The second monitor is more premium.
It's the EVE Spectrum 4K
and it's also a 27 inch 16 by nine IPS panel.
However, like the name suggests,
it has a 4K resolution with a 144 Hertz refresh rate,
which is pretty insane.
But it's also twice the price of the BenQ,
coming in at around 900 US dollars,
if you include the stand.
Although there is also a cheaper 1440p model,
if you don't need the 4K resolution.
Now, the EVE comes with full USB-C data
and 100 Watts of charging capability.
So it's just one USB-C cable.
You can charge your MacBook
and output an image to the monitor,
but there is a limitation here with the 4K version,
which leads me to my next point.
How do you output all of these crazy frame rates
from your Mac to your monitor?
Well, if you're using a 144 Hertz 1440p monitor for example,
it's actually fairly easy.
You just need an inexpensive USB-C
to display port 1.4 cable that can handle all that data.
This is one I've been using for a while.
It's pretty cheap from Amazon
and I'll also link it down below.
And yes, this cable will work with any Mac
that has Thunderbolt three or above,
which is basically any Mac since 2016.
And that includes the M1 MacBook Air.
Now the EVE Spectrum, for example, being 4K,
is a little bit more complicated.
To get the full 4K 144 Hertz image,
you need to be able to transmit
40 gigabits per second of data.
You also can't use the HDMI port
on any of the new Macs either,
because they're only HDMI 2.0 ports.
Meaning it can only transmit up to 18 gigabits per second,
compared with 48 gigabits per second,
if apple had made it HDMI 2.1.
Luckily though, the EVE Spectrum features a USB-C port
with display port 1.4 video input.
So, as long as you're using a high quality USB-C cable,
you can just plug your MacBook directly into the monitor.
There's no need for any kind of adapters or special cables.
Or if you want a bit of extra connectivity,
you can do it through a dock instead.
Like the CalDigit TS4 I have on my desk.
But no matter what method I use,
I'll get a 4K 144 Hertz image to my monitor,
while, also charging my MacBook at the same time.
And I can just switch between that
and my gaming PC whenever I want.
And if you do want a full video on my one monitor setup,
let me know in the comments.
So yeah, there's really a lot of trade offs
when it comes to monitors.
Do you want a high refresh rate?
Do you want a high resolution?
What's your budget? Do you need color accuracy?
It's a ton of different factors.
And hopefully this video shed some lights
on some of the benefits of going
with a high refresh capable monitor.
And seriously guys I really do urge you to go out
and just try it yourselves,
because, once you sit down and you use it,
maybe you play a few games on it,
I guarantee you, you will never want to go back.
But apart from that, thanks for watching this video
and I'll catch you in the next one.