I’m still waiting to see what Apple does with desktop Macs this year, but I knew I also wanted a 5k display, so I ordered the new Ultrafine 5k without a Mac to go with it. I wanted to get the display under the promotional pricing, but ordered it before I noticed Apple extended the promotional pricing until March.
The reason I kept the order instead of cancelling it is this support document, which states that the 5k Ultrafine Display will work on older, Thunderbolt 2 machines with an adapter, but at a resolution of 4k. I have a 2013 Retina MacBook Pro, but Apple states that a 2014 MacBook Pro or higher is required for the display to work at all. My hunch was that Apple was being conservative. The 2013 MacBook Pro I use is identical to a 2014, which was just a minor CPU speed bump. So for this review, I’ll be doing something a little unusual, and using the display with something outside the support range. (more…)