Monitor 2: driven by Mac Mini thunderbolt port (I used this thunderbolt-to-DVI cable).Monitor 1: driven by Mac mini HDMI port (HDMI-to-HDMI cable).3 monitors, each with 1920x1200 resolution.Late 2014 Mac Mini with 8GB RAM (purchased Oct 2015).The following 3-monitor setup worked for me: I've confirmed this by trying to plug in 3 monitors directly into the ports on the Mac Mini (two via thunderbolt, 1 via HDMI), with the same results as the OP.one of the monitors is not driven. There's so much misinformation on this topic that I almost never bought a 4k display, I'm now so glad I did.Apple's specs show that the late-2014 (which is still being sold today, October 2015) Mac Mini can support up to two displays using its HDMI and thunderbolt ports. Now, if you want your monitor to be scaled to look like a 1,440 display, then you might be better off with a 1,440 monitor rather than buying a 4k monitor, I didn't do this side by side and have now sold my Dell 1,440 monitor so can't answer that question. The final 'proof in the pudding' is the 4k dell displays are way way sharper with fonts than my previous gen Dell which is a 1,440 display when they are both scaled to my preferred physical size which is 1,080 from a scaling perspective. To confirm again, side by side, the fonts on my 4k display connected to my mac mini are as sharp as the fonts on my 27' iMac when they are scaled to look the same physical size. The scaling is 2 for 1 and so I believe no font smoothing is needed vs scaling at say 1.5 to look like a 1,440 display.įor the 5k retina display, 'Native' scaling makes it look like a 1,440 display, again the scaling is 2 for 1 going from 2,880 to 1,440 from a sizing / scaling perspective.

When 'Native' scaling is selected in the mac display settings it scales it to look like a 1920 x 1080 from a scaling perspective (not a 1,440 display).

To confirm, I'm not using my 3840 x 2160 display in 1920 x 1080 mode. At my office I therefore have bought an extra wide 3440 × 1440 screen, which has correct fonts.Īre you saying that you are running a 3840x2160 display in 1920x1080 mode? That seems like a waste in that case, but maybe I misunderstand? If you have one of those 3840x2160 displays, MacOS will scale the fonts made for a 1440 height by 1.5 without any smoothing. In my experience there is no scaling and Apple in principle has bitmapped it's fonts. I can confirm that with native scaling on these monitors text is sharp, as sharp as my iMac. I’ve read a lot of threads on this and my understanding is this becomes an issue when using non native scaling, please comment if you think I’m wrong? So if you have a 4k screen but you want your scaling to look like a 1,440 screen then this may be an issue, however “native” scaling for a 4k display when connected to a mac makes it look like 1080 and this is perfect scaling for me, 1,440 is too small for me. It may not matter much for photo's, but if you intend to do anything else with the monitor you may want to consider this. The problem is that Apple removed 'sub-pixel rendering'. The Dell that was mentioned I have used at work and text is hard to read.

I previously bought a 4K EIZO monitor for about $1000 and font rendering was ugly. An issue with Macs is that fonts are not scaled properly on random sized monitors.

Best screens for mac mini