5K

4K and 5K displays are relatively new, but with more and more users upgrading, there is some catching up to do with apps to support the higher resolution screens. That’s why we were pleased when Screenium, one of our favorite screen recording suites, updated earlier this month with some pretty notable new features for Retina, 4K and 5K display users, as well as everyone looking for a solid screen capture solution.

After months of trying different screen casting software and running into issues on 4K and Retina displays, Screenium 3 has finally delivered what we’ve been waiting for. The company has been hard at work on a custom video codec that makes continuous screen recording at 60fps on Retina, 4K, and 5K displays possible, which competitors have thus far failed to match. So if you’ve been asking yourself how to go about screen recording in full resolution at 60fps, here’s how to do it:
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Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Pro is the first of Apple’s notebooks to officially support single-stream 4K displays at a full resolution of 4096×2160 at 60Hz. The new MacBook Pro is also the first to support 5K displays.
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Apple has expanded support for 4K displays in its recent OS X 10.10.3 release and officially confirmed specifics for using 4K displays with its new 12-inch MacBook.

While previously Apple only officially supported certain Multi-Stream Transport (MST) displays at a refresh rate of 60Hz, it now says that “most single-stream 4K (3840×2160) displays” are officially supported at 60Hz as well following the recent OS X Yosemite v10.10.3 update. That should mean support for a lot more inexpensive 4K displays that don’t include DisplayPort’s Multi-Stream Transport feature.

A full list of Macs that will support Single-Stream (SST) displays with a 60Hz refresh rate include:
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Apple has recently added the 27-inch iMac with Retina display, originally released in October 2014, to the refurbished section of its online store. Currently, the baseline 5K iMac with a 3.5 GHz quad-core Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 1 TB Fusion Drive, and an AMD Radeon R9 graphics processor will cost you $2,119 refurbished from Apple. That’s $380 – or 15%- off the price of a new model.

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Check out our updated roundup of the best 4K and 5K displays for Mac for 2016.

So Apple didn’t release a 4K (or 5K) standalone Retina display alongside the new 5K iMac, but you can’t hold off any longer on a shiny new display for your Mac Pro. I found myself in the same predicament not too long ago and decided to put a number of displays to the test in recent months. 4K might offer 4x the resolution of your standard 1080p display, but for the short time they’ve been around, they’ve also cost about 4x as much as the alternatives. The good news: There are a few Mac Pro compatible 4K displays (and UHD alternatives) finally starting to hit more reasonable price points just as recent OS X updates fix some issues early adopters first had with the higher resolution displays.

I’ve been testing Mac Pro compatible displays from Dell, Sharp, Samsung, LG, and others that are officially supported by Apple, and put together a list of my thoughts and top picks for those planning on picking up a new Mac Pro this holiday season. Despite my tests being done mostly on a new, stock Mac Pro, these picks stand for Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook users as well.

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New orders for Apple’s recently launched 27-inch Retina iMac aren’t the only ones seeing delayed shipment times as Apple has just started informing some customers of unexpected delays for orders placed as long ago as last month.
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The early reviews are out for the iMac with Retina 5K display, and the tl;dr version is: if you can afford it, buy it.

Everyone of course agrees that the key market for the machine is video professionals (beating even the base-model Mac Pro in benchmarks), the 5K resolution offering the ability to display full-size 4K video while still leaving enough room for editing tools.

But while the new iMac may be overkill for more mundane tasks, reviewers also agreed that the display is so good that even if you don’t need one, you’ll still want one … 
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The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced today that it’s introducing the latest DisplayPort technology that brings support for upcoming 5K monitors and more. DisplayPort 1.3 for audio and video increases the standard to a maximum link bandwidth of 32.4 Gbps and as a result supports 5K displays with resolutions of 5120 x 2880 on a single cable without compression methods. In addition, users will notice enhanced performance for 4K displays in multi-monitor setups over a single DisplayPort connection:
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