Seeking new Mac Mini monitor advice

I am using a "Asus VH242H 23.6-Inch" run's about $180 USD on Amazon with a mini display (thunderbolt) to DVI cable about $9 monoprice

Be careful with the new (late 2012) Mac Mini and its HDMI output. Read this forum here carefully and you will find loads of user complaining about the bad quality of the picture on HDMI out on various monitors.

Obviously the graphic driver of the Intel Graphics Interface of the new Mac Mini is botched up. Waiting for Apple to come up with a fix, which did not hapen so far.

Therefore, decising on which monitir is difficult, because on HDMI you will find that almost every monitor shows a very bad picture. Only via VGA (using a MDP to VGA Adaptor) you can obtain a good and crisp picture. Threrfore if you need a new monitor, chose one with VGA input.

The ubiquity of the remaining HDMI picture issues was exaggerated by patitupat. Some folks are still having issues, but most folks are fine. The glitches have mostly been eliminated.

I bought my base model Mac mini (Late 2012) on 12/14, about the time the graphics fix came out, so I never had any problems, first with a Vizio 26" Razor LED 1080p TV connected via HDMI as a monitor and now with an AOC i2757FH 1920x1080 IPS LED monitor connected via the HDMI port (and a second smaller desktop monitor and the Vizio TV--back to its role as treadmill TV--connected to the Mini DisplayPort via a selector switch). And the picture quality on my primary monitor(s) connected via the HDMI port has been outstanding. The AOC monitor is particularly nice, despite the relatively modest resolution spread out over such a large screen.

John

Not with the AOC. It sleeps and wakes up appropriately and promptly. The Vizio is a TV, so it doesn't have a sleep. It just showed a blue screen when the Mac dropped the video signal. That was one reason I wanted to return it to its intended use as a treadmill TV. It gave me a few weeks, though, to decide what monitor I wanted.

John

Came across this thread searching for ways to make my 23" AOC monitor (I2353PH) play well with my newly purchased 2012 Mac Mini. The HDMI out on the mini does not work with monitor...and if you're not prepared for that--I wasn't--it's pretty shocking how bad it looks. It looks better/usable with the DVI to HDMI adapter but still not very good. Today I'm going to buy a DVI to VGA adapter and hope that will look better. HDMI out looks like crap on my 40" Samsung TV as well. I read a bunch of reviews before buying and don't remember the HDMI issue mentioned once...wish I would've looked at a few forums first as there are thousands of posts.

Unfortunately, GKaya, I don't have any advice beyond what you might find in some of those posts. I received my Mac mini on 12/14/12, and the Mac mini EFI firmware update had just come out 12/10/12. So I never had any flickering issues with a 26" 1080p Vizio TV or now a 27" 1080p AOC monitor, each in turn connected via HDMI. And I have not had the "crushed whites" issue that a few folks still have. I'm not sure what the issue there is. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to avoid it. I just plugged the TV and the monitor straight into the mini's HDMI port with an Amazon Basics HDMI cable and used the default monitor settings.

And the picture is great. I eventually calibrated the picture with the AOC, but in the end, it made a very subtle difference, a matter of preference in brightness and temperature, not quality.

There are reports that the beta off OS X 10.8.3 fixes the remaining HDMI graphics issues, so here's hoping that you'll be rescued soon.

John

John - I have been considering hooking the 27 inch AOC up to a Mac Mini but I'm concerned that the 27 inch monitor will make everything look huge as its only going to run at 1080p and not 1440 like the Thunderbird display.

Any chance you could take a photo / desktop screenshot so I could see how things look on screen? Maybe with a finder window open too or something just for perspective.

Thanks in advance :]

I'll take a picture this evening and post a link.

I think the AOC looks good, but at this point, I'd probably buy a 1440 if I could swing it. Microcenter has one for $399 now which looks pretty good. I'll probably pick one up in a few weeks and make it my primary display, with the AOC as my secondary. Right now I have a tiny 4:3 LCD as my second, which you'll see in a bit. I looked at the 1440’s in December, but I wasn't ready to spend $600+ or take a chance on a Korean import. I didn't know about the Microcenter model yet.

John

Here is a picture of the monitor with 3 different Finder windows open. I don't find the size of text or Finder objects to be too large. OS X seems to do a good job on that front. Things like icon sizes are completely adjustable according to personal taste.

If you look too closely, text is not "crisp" when you spread 1920x1080 out over 27". But that's really the only negative. And it's not terrible. It's not significantly worse than text on the 23" Acer LCD I have with the family PC down stairs. It's just nothing like you get used to on mobile displays these days.

Thanks for the photo John, that's exactly what I was hoping to see. Looks pretty good to me. Obviously 1440 would look better but that's totally useable.

Thanks again!

I had excellent luck with my Samsung SyncMaster S24B240. It is a gorgeous monitor. The matted screen reduces all glare and the 24" size is perfect for what I do. I bought it on sale for $149 at Staples.

What I was most impressed, outside of the quality, were the cables included and connectivity. It connected through the HDMI port and, unlike others posting here, there is no problem with the picture quality. My only beef with it was the lack of height adjustablity and the plastic look. The casing is far less elegant than the Mac displays.

http://reviews.us.samsung.com/7463/LS24B240KL_ZA/samsung-24-class-led-monitor-re views/reviews.htm

I actually prefer this monitor to the glare-prone glass monitors of the iMac.

Acer S275HLbmii S Series 27 inch Full HD Widescreen IPS LED Monitor (16:9, 1920 x 1080, 6 ms, HDMI)

works perfectly with my new mac mini, has a great picture quality and its pretty stylish

I bought the Micro Center Auria 27" WQHD (2560x1440) last night, and the screen is great: good color, uniform brightness, no dead pixels. The black bezel is a bit bigger than I'd like, but it's hard to beat for $399. I'm connecting it to my mini via a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable, but the monitor even includes a dual link DVI cable.

John