With no new Apple monitors, here are the best high-res screens for your Mac

Apple held its fall event was today, and the stars of the show were the M1 Pro and M1 Max announced for the new MacBook Pros. We even got new AirPods and word on macOS Monterey. But all was quiet on the displays front. Hope for a larger iMac with Apple Silicon to accompany the 24-inch model announced in April was not rewarded, and the Apple Pro Display XDR is still Apple’s only standalone monitor. If you were waiting for today’s event to help you select the next screen to run macOS on, we feel your pain. We can’t force Apple to release new displays, but we can round up some non-Apple PC monitors worth considering if you need something now.

But let’s get something out of the way first. Nothing can really compete with the iMac right now in terms of display resolution and computing power. Every display listed below is a monitor only; there are no all-in-one PCs here.

5K alternatives

One of the greatest advantages the iMac and Pro Display XDR have is their ridiculous pixel count. The iMac has what Apple calls a 4.5K resolution (4480 x 2520). And the Pro Display XDR claims 6K, or 6016 x 3384. Neither resolution is common, and 5K (5120 x 2880) options have more pixels than the iMac (14,745,600 versus 11,289,600 pixels). But pixel density, which affects how sharp the image looks, is determined by each monitor’s size.