- This little red pill contains everything
You need to take an old or slow computer; in this case
a Macbook Air, and breathe fresh life into it.
And get this,
it doesn't even have to plug into the Macbook Air.
Neat right?
And that's not all; it can also be used
with an iPad, with proper support for multitouch.
(surprised what?)
Look at this.
I'm dragging icons around on a Macbook with my finger.
None of this is new, strictly speaking,
but it showed up on my radar
because there's actually a PC compatible one coming.
So, we'll be using the Mac version to show you guys
how it works, and see if it's all it's cracked up to be.
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(upbeat music)
At $130, the Luna display isn't exactly cheap.
At least, not if you only intend to use it with an iPad.
Sidecar comes with Mac os as with Catalina
and just like Luna display,
can use either WiFi or USB connection to turn your iPad
into a secondary display.
In fact, Sidecar even offers things that Luna display
doesn't, like the command sidebar and
context sensitive media control bar.
So then, why spend that kind of money?
Well, for starters, with Luna, you can actually
use the touchscreen to interact with the desktop.
Apple makes me so angry sometimes,
because Sidecar does allow you to use touch,
which would indicate to us that there's
no technical reason why you couldn't do it
but it's just locked to only work with an Apple Pencil.
Luna meanwhile does away with Apple's arbitrary restrictions
and even enables the use of multi-touch gestures.
So that means that you can much more easily
take a connected session and roam around with it.
Now, of course, Apple's ecosystem has answers to this too,
with features like handoff, letting you pick
up where you left off in apps that support it.
But the thing is, not every app does support it,
and not every desktop app is available on the iPad anyway.
But wait, there's more; while both Luna display
and sidecar support the Apple Pencil,
Luna display tends to have smoother input
with quick strokes, resolving smoothly more often.
rather than snapping to angles
like they tend to with Sidecar.
This kind of makes sense, given that their other product,
Astropad adds more art focused features,
like, custom pressure curves, stroke smoothing,
and external keyboard shortcuts at the cost
of being mirror only. Now in testing performance
between the two of them seems quite similar.
And for good reason; both of them are powered
by the same engine called LIQUID, which promises
lower latency and higher frame rates
than competing software.
They're so focused on it in fact, that they even
included a handy vitals graph that lets you see
the current bit rate and latency.
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Now, unfortunately, while their low-latency claims might've
been accurate before Apple sherlocked them with Sidecar,
when we fired up our LDAT latency tester, we found
that Apple's implementation actually provided lower click
to photon latency, and better variants, both in wired and
wireless modes.
oof
An interesting side note though,
both implementations have similar delays
between wired and wireless, but
while Sidecar reliably flashed the secondary screen
every time we clicked, Luna displays sometimes dropped it
with checker boarding showing up in some frames.
So, while Luna displays seems to handle input better
than Sidecar does, Sidecar offers a more consistent
experience overall.
One thing we couldn't measure, was the latency that's added
by inputs on the iPad side due
to the way that both Luna display and Sidecar handle touch.
But subjectively, input lag
on the secondary display seemed similar
between the two, perhaps owing
to the way the dongle works.
Internally,
this little puppy shows up as a USB billboards device,
which contains the serial number, which is basically a way
of saying that it's got functionality that is only
exposed when it's connected to a compatible device.
In this case,
it seems to specifically want USB alternative mode
before it'll open up any further. And on Mac os,
the dongle exposes an input device,
and a client device that presumably acts as
the secondary display.
So altogether it seems like for the iPad.
Sidecar is the more responsive, and certainly less
costly experience; while its implementation of touch leaves
something to be desired.
Now as for using Macs as displays,
this was actually my main interest in this product.
Since there's about to be a lot
of Intel-based IMacs that will eventually be discarded
for shiny Apple silicon models.
And well, I don't know, it could be better.
It can use WiFi, ethernet or Thunderbolt.
And guys I've seen Thunderbolt latencies go as low
as two milliseconds,
but the thing is, whichever option you choose,
it's gonna rely
on CPU resources on the secondary machine.
So depending on your Mac, it could work great
or it could be only useful for productivity
in web browsing like our Macbook Air here.
Maybe we'll try it on the new
IMacs when they get here though.
Get subscribed so you don't miss that. Also,
while it will give an older machine, a second lease on life
allowing it to be used as a secondary display,
it won't do anything to resurrect a Borkin machine.
Since it's gonna have to be fully booted to Mac os.
To be clear however, this is not a jab at Luna display.
And I actually appreciate that their product exists
because their imperfect solution, as imperfect
as it might be, is the only way to do this at all right now.
And the most frustrating thing about that, is
that Apple used to have this functionality built in.
I've been complaining ever since the day
they first removed target display mode.
And guys, I am going to keep complaining
till it's back, because it was great.
You just plugged your old Mac into your new Mac and,
bippity boppity, off you go.
A full quality connection for the cost of a cable,
with no encode or decode nonsense or anything like that.
And it kept old Macs out of the trash. This decision,
which Apple justified by upgrading to a 5k display
for which, no interface existed yet was part of a slow slide
into user unfriendly, and environmentally unfriendly
practices that actually culminated in Apple launching real
lawsuits against private repair companies who wanted to
prevent old, but otherwise usable gadgets from effectively
being loaded up in the proverbial wood chipper.
Apple's official stance is that Airplay,
and now Sidecar, I guess,
has taken the place of target display mode.
But the truth is that you can't officially use Airplay to
use another Mac's display.
That is reserved solely for apple TV,
or Airplay compatible devices because,
no, there actually is no because.
We have interfaces that can do 5k 60 now.
So it's because (bleep) you.
Go buy a monitor.
Whoa, hang on guys.
This video was literally already uploaded
on Floatplane in early access,
when Apple announced a feature that basically
sherlocked Luna display even harder called Airplay to Mac.
Yeah, that thing we just said didn't exist.
But there's still something to our argument.
Airplay to Mac requires Mac os Monterey.
While Luna display will officially run
on any Mac that can run El Capitan.
So that includes IMacs as old as 2007 for secondary displays
or 2011 for the primary Mac.
Monterey, meanwhile requires a 2016 MacBook pro,
or 2015 iMac at minimum.
And according to Apple, Macs older than 2018
may run at a lower resolution.
That's a lot of old computers that are missing
out on Airplay to Mac, or that will end
up getting a worse experience. As for Luna display,
they are soon launching the version for Windows
that's actually up for pre-order now.
And while Windows does have a similar feature built in,
it's an optional line if you guys weren't aware,
it is far laggier than Luna display is, at least on the Mac.
So if all goes, well, maybe we can
at least keep some PC all in ones,
most of which also don't have a way to continue to use
their monitors after the computer's usable life has expired,
away from the electronics recyclers
for at least a little while,
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Thanks for watching guys. For more subjective
but not subjective graphic stuff,
maybe go check out our video on RTX.
Is it a total waste of money?
I'll see you over there.