LG WK600

The monitor costs a ton but fulfilled a couple purposes for me. First, i wanted to stop using two 27″ monitors side by side. The bezels and size of my old setup meant i felt like i was always searching to find stuff and turning my head a ton. Sounds weird, but turning my head to find something just annoyed me completely. Second, I wanted to be able to play games from my windows machine but do work with a macbook and get that single cable connection with thunderbolt 3.

The good parts here are that the monitor solved my two main issues perfectly. Games look great in ultra-wide mode and my 2018 mbp gets full power supplied with a single cable. Oh, and the TB3 connection totally supports 144hz at full resolution. It’s … fantastic.

The bad parts here are relatively minor but still annoying. First, when using TB3, my mac defaults to using the monitor speakers. I output those speakers to my desktop speaker set and that’s cool. However, i can no longer control volume with my keyboard media controls and that’s SUPER annoying. I have to change volume in specific apps (spotify, browser, whatever). My windows box sends audio through hdmi and this setup also lets it share speakers through the monitor, so that is still nice. The second annoying part is simply the amount of USB A ports. There should be at least two more and anybody like me is going to find this super annoying, too.

I don’t really care about the lack of PIP with TB3 and display port, but I could see how that would annoy people, too.

Final gripe is the height adjustment and size of the base. The base is super deep and (even with a deep desk) causes my keyboard to be right at the edge of my desk if i want to use my laptop screen at the same time. Raising the monitor all the way is still too low to not block the bottom edge of the screen. I ended up taking some scrap wood and building a monitor riser to give me some more adjustability in the height of the monitor and that makes it better. Still too deep… I need to cut a notch out of my stand to let my laptop be a little deeper on my desk.

[update 10/19/2021]
Been using this thing for 6 months or so. Still love it.

I started using a free utility called monitor control to control monitor brightness & volume with mac media keys. Big issues are fixed for me.

I use EasyRes to set resolution and refresh rate but it doesn’t maintain 144 across mac reboots. It always drops to 75hz. Annoying, but… meh.

I’ve noticed that I despise the power button. It’s not reliable at all and the menus are slow to display. You end up with a ton of double presses or misplaced selections. Not a deal breaker for me since I don’t switch inputs a ton, but you might…

I’d recommend it to anybody. I love this size for development and gaming.

[update 5/09/2023]
2+ year update. I am still enjoying this monitor immensely.

Some MacOS updates solved the problems with resolutions swapping to defaults when I plug in so I no longer use EasyRes. Same deal w/sticking @ 144hz. Now it just works.

New Complaints:
I’ve had some number < 10 instances where something goes wonky with the connection. The monitor gets a weird "screen door effect" that requires me to disconnect and run a test pattern to un-stick pixels. The button is still the worst part here. Does anybody think a button shouldn't work if there aren't any computers plugged in? Not me... It doesn't. Weird and annoying. Sometimes the OSD will auto hide even though things are plugged in. Super annoying. New Things: LG has released a new monitor that is 42" ultrawide. I think that might be the true sweet spot in ultrawide size. I'd love just a little more screen real estate. Too bad the resolution & refresh rate suck compared to this one. I've been testing out using multiple outputs from one machine w/PIP for work. It's pretty cool to have mid-panel snap zones. It can be annoying if you have a 3+ panes of code to view and can't expand past half-way... Try it out. I've also had a second machine attached via PIP & used logitech options to share mouse/keyboard. Pretty great, but not perfect. I wish this thing shared my peripherals better.

The monitor was so good that it was impossible to get it in HK, so I had to order it from this seller.
It’s beautiful and very solid. Has built it high quality speakers as well. LG doesn’t disappoint.

I got this monitor a few month back and can’t be happier. Important disclosure: I don’t play games and I know this is supposedly a gaming monitor. I use it exclusively for writing code and all related activities as well as general browsing. The monitor is connected by 15 ft fiber optic cable from RUIPRO to 3090 GPU. (Before someone ask why I need 3090, it’s for ML tasks and I actually have several of them). It runs at 144 Hz with native resolution of 3840×1600. The fiber optic cable is expensive but I tried all kinds of copper cables and they just do not work reliably at this distance/resolution. Right next to this monitor I have Acer Predator X38 Pbmiphzx, used for the same purpose. I know that Acer is quite a bit more expensive, but setting aside a fact that it supposedly comes pre-calibrated I like the LG one more, in both in picture quality and the fact that is has much smaller stand and space is at premium on my desk as I have tree 38″ monitors on it.

If you are in market for monitor that you can use for both gaming on Windows and work on Mac(looking at you software engineer folks), you are in right place.

Productivity? Best in market. The biggest difference between this and 4k is that you can use this monitor @ native scaling, whereas typical 4k @ 32″ monitor needs 125% scaling minimum. This allows you to have so many pages up which is incredible for productivity boost. Also, one cable solution for Mac with TB3 port.

Gaming, this is only second best to OLED. 144hz, gsync, decent speakers, ultrawide immersion. This has it all, except it is not OLED. Such a bummer that there is no 38″ OLED in market atm.

I got this used for $760 which was absolute steal. I’d happily buy it again even at full price.

I mounted this monitor on a HumanScale monitor arm to my 72″ standing desk, for reference. Others have commented the the construction of this monitor (the heavy use of plastics & the 4 corners of the screen bezel pulling away) is shoddy, and that the monitor wobbles. I can say with confidence that with a quality monitor arm holding the monitor securely in place, and with normal desk use (organized desk space, not slamming or shuffling things around), the monitor stays in place quite well. The construction and materials are perfectly sufficient for a screen that you look straight at. Other monitors have sturdier builds with perhaps higher quality/heavier materials, but I actually appreciate the plastic approach as it keeps this monitor light, and able to be easily mounted with ease. The aesthetic is perfect for my build, and gaming is a luxurious experience. It seems LG identified every important aspect of technology that all monitors on the market currently have, important to both gamers and productivity/content creators, and combined them into one package. If you want to purchase a monitor and just not worry about every little techie detail that marketers cling to, that you could easily get hung up on, just buy this thing and connect it to your PC. It’s a solid buy, packed with performance, and I think a very good value despite it’s high price tag.