Asus' new ProArt 5K desktop monitor costs just half of what you'll pay for Apple's Studio Display but offers many of the same features. The Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV boasts the same 27-inch screen, Retina resolution, standard framerate and P3 wide color gamut as Apple's midrange monitor. It also comes with a built-in USB hub and KVM, which proves great if you still use a few USB-A accessories or flash drives.
Admittedly, Asus' 5K desktop monitor misses some of the Studio Display's premium features. The stand wobbles and the body is made of creaky plastic. Plus, the panel isn't quite as bright as Apple's display, and it doesn't come with a webcam.
Still, with very similar specs -- and a budget-friendly $799 list price, compared to the Studio Display's $1,599 (or $1,999 if you dare to desire an adjustable stand) -- Asus is making an offer that's hard to refuse. Keep reading or watch our video review.
Since the early 2010s, Apple has gone all-in on Retina displays -- screens with double (or even triple) the pixel density. This means text looks super crisp and your eyes can't discern each individual pixel unless you get really close. Apple builds Retina displays in all their products, from the iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, MacBook and iMac.
But the rest of the industry hasn't followed in Cupertino's footsteps. So if you have a Mac mini or Mac Studio, or if you want a desktop dock for your MacBook, options for a good Retina display are limited. You want at least 4K resolution at a 24-inch size, 5K resolution at 27 inches, and 6K above 30 inches.
Apple's own Studio Display and Pro Display XDR are priced way above what most people are willing to spend -- making any third-party Retina displays on the market a hot commodity among Mac enthusiasts.
Table of contents: Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV review: A cheaper 5K desktop monitor for Macs
The design of the Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV is mostly pretty handsome. It's sleek and black with silver accents.
The 5K desktop monitor's slim black bezel nicely frames and emphasizes the gorgeous 27-inch screen. 4K screens at this size are a dime a dozen, but a 5K panel makes it a Retina display with 2560 × 1440 pixels of screen space. Compared to a standard 1080p display, that's a third more space horizontally and vertically.
Like the later Intel iMacs, it's thin around the edges but bulges in the back. On the front, it has a subtle chin.
There's no aluminum or glass, though -- this display is all plastic. If you grab it with both hands on opposite sides and flex, it creaks. At half the price of the Studio Display, the savings have to come from somewhere.
Along the bottom-right of the display, you'll see a row of buttons. The display is almost entirely controlled with the one button on the far right, which clicks and acts like a four-way D-pad for navigating the menu. When you first summon this menu, the other five buttons can be used as shortcuts to other features, but they aren't labeled -- you have to match their function to the list shown above the button. Click the menu button a second time to actually bring up the full menu.
It's needlessly complicated. Asus tells me their customers like it, but they didn't ask me. They could do away with the spare buttons entirely, in my opinion.
The arm is solid and incredibly sturdy. It smoothly slides up and down. Adjustable height comes at no extra cost -- imagine that. I really like sliding it up to hide the camera mount that sits behind it, and sliding it down when it's time to record a video or livestream. It also tilts forward and backward much more than other monitors I've used, and even swivels left and right.
The raising, lowering, tilting and swiveling all feels really solid. It's nice and smooth, but the display stays in place once you move it.
The weak point is the rotation. You can put the monitor in portrait orientation, which might prove convenient if you use it in a large, multidisplay setup. But because it freely rotates anywhere between 0 and 90 degrees, it wobbles a lot. Bump your knee against the bottom of the table it's sitting on, and the monitor will jiggle. Touch the display on the corner, and it'll wobble dramatically and might settle on an angle that's slightly off-kilter.
I really wish you could lock it out of rotating. No one wants a monitor at 6 degrees; you either want 0 or you want 90. This might be possible if the connector didn't freely rotate. Instead, the display could be taken off and remounted on the square connector both ways, horizontally and vertically. Or, at the very least, rotating the display should take much more force than it does.
Every display comes with that one setting you need to change out of the box. On TVs, it's usually something related to motion smoothing. The Asus ProArt 5K, by default, has a feature called Dynamic Dimming that you'll want to turn off right away.
Dynamic Dimming tries to make bright parts of the screen extra bright. OLED displays can do this because each pixel is individually lit -- but this is not an OLED display. The display is lit in large vertical sections, which causes everything above and below the content to be overblown. (It's similar to the display bloom that affects Apple's miniLED displays.)
It's most noticeable if you have a completely black wallpaper with a single, small white window in the center of the screen. You can see the space above and below the window isn't as dark as the rest. Dynamic Dimming also washes out other white areas of the image, which you can see affecting icons in the Dock.
To turn off this unimpressive feature, open the menu by clicking the prominent button on the right. Then click it again to open the menu, click down to the Settings tab, and turn off Dynamic Dimming.
Once you turn off Dynamic Dimming, the picture quality looks fantastic. The 5K desktop monitor is very bright and its colors look great. It isn't as bright as the Studio Display, only reaching 400 nits instead of 600 -- but it's more than bright enough for me, even on a sunny day with lots of light pouring into my office. (In Ohio, that happens at least several days a year.)
It technically meets the minimum requirements for certified HDR (high dynamic range), but I would think of it as a really nice SDR (standard dynamic range) panel. If you try enabling HDR in macOS System Settings, HDR videos will be a little brighter, but the rest of the screen will look washed out.
I have the display set to the DCI-P3 preset, with brightness at 100%; I have the Mac set to the Display P3 color profile. I have been very impressed. Colors pop and blacks look super-dark.
Cheap matte displays can look really blurry and struggle with contrast. The Asus ProArt 5K is incredibly crisp, with a special LuxPixel coating that removes reflections while minimizing the side effects. If you have good eyes, you can still make out individual pixels (if you get close enough). The colors really stand out.
As mentioned, the Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV also packs a variety of extra ports. It can act as a USB hub and a KVM switch between two computers.
Setting it up is a little confusing. The two USB-C-shaped ports next to the HDMI plug enable you to use the two USB-A ports on the back and the two other ports on the bottom. But if you're only using the display with one computer, you can't use the first two USB-C ports for plugging in peripherals -- all they do is connect the device to the hub. But you can plug each into a different computer, to share the peripherals plugged into the four other ports.
I've had some spotty results with the plugs. For some reason, my keyboard doesn't like the USB-C port on the bottom, but I charged up an iPhone 12 Pro and various iPods using the USB-A ports.
I like how Apple displays place the ports facing out the back rather than at the bottom. It makes it easier to plug things in and hide the cable mess, but it is more expensive to make them that way.
Because the display supports multiple inputs, you can see multiple devices at once. It supports picture-in-picture along with tiling two or three inputs side-by-side. That can be handy if you're working with multiple computers and only have the one display, but setting it up is a little clunky because it's all buried in the on-screen menu. Plus, making some changes blacks out the screen for a few seconds.
It technically has an ambient light sensor that should match the brightness and color temperature of the room. I found that it vastly overcompensated -- making the display far too dark and yellow. I turned it off.
Compared to the Studio Display, you're missing a built-in camera, speakers and microphone -- but to be fair, these extras aren't that great on the Studio Display. And, again, this display costs half as much. The savings must come from somewhere.
When you wake up your Mac from sleep, it takes about five seconds for the image to appear on the Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV. It's just a beat slower than typing in a password from muscle memory or waiting for Unlock with Apple Watch to do its thing.
When your Mac goes idle, the monitor shows a very pleasant black screen with a subtle "USB-C No Signal" message that stays on for just a moment before it goes idle, too. Weirdly, over HDMI, the same message appears in a harsh, bright blue.
If money is no object, the Studio Display is still the best choice for a Mac because of its premium features -- the extra 10% that makes Apple products that much nicer.
But money is rarely no object. If you want the same super-high resolution, desktop screen size and similar industry-standard color accuracy without burning a hole in your pocket, we have a new second-place princess. If you want an adjustable stand and matte finish, you'd really be spending $2,299 on Apple's offering -- nearly three times as much as you'll pay for the Asus ProArt 5K PA27JCV. It also has a very generous 3-year warranty with a rapid replacement policy.
It's a great 5K desktop monitor at an unbelievable price.