What is the best configuration for a Samsung G9 with an M4?

[ScottPierce]

I recently bought a Samsung G9 57" monitor. I almost returned the thing after trying it out with my mac until I found out about BetterDisplay. I've seen a lot of conflicting information on here concerning G9s, so I'll ask simply:

What is the best configuration for a Samsung G9 with an M4 so that text is sharp and readable, and windows are reasonably sized?

[waydabber]

Honestly I am not entirely sure. Due to the max HiDPI limit of M4 the only reasonable option is to drive the display at 3840x1080 HiDPI, but that will probably produce a too large UI, unless you put the display far back. You can get around this using virtual screen mirroring (and enabling 8K+ resolutions), but that won't result in an ideal experience due to various macOS bugs that might happen when mirroring a virtual screen.

[ScottPierce]

Thanks for your response!

Yes, I just tried it at 3840x1080 HiDPI. Not a fan.

I guess that means I should return these 57" G9's. I'm curious, what would you recommend as a replacement that would provide a good experience and would be similar?

[ScottPierce]

Does enabling PIP mode do anything for me / allow me to do this better?

[ScottPierce]

It looks like I can run my machines in PIP, and then use a variety of resolutions.

[ScottPierce]

@waydabber There are other problems that come from using a monitor in PIP mode. Any idea if this is a hardware problem, or is this something that could be potentially fixed by apple after the fact?

[waydabber]

I am not sure what these problems are. Display hardware PIP is highly a display specific thing, many depends on what kind of EDID the display serves for a connection in PIP mode. I don't think I have a generic answer. Sorry about that.

[tslaton]

I have been using the Samsung 57" G9 with my M3 Max MacBook Pro in PIP mode for the most part since I got it. I was running HiDPI 2560x1440 or 3008x1692 on each half at 120Hz using custom firmware on two Cable Matters USB-C to HDMI adapters. Since I found it awkward to have one half holding the menu bar and the other half not lining up (or allowing an aligned, full-height centered window), I had my Mac as the "main" display with the menu bar out in front, using it as a centered screen below the monitor (plus keyboard, trackpad, and Touch ID).

This setup still has some annoyances. I use Moom for quickly managing window arrangements, and it doesn't allow tiling across the center line since with PIP the monitor behaves as two separate displays. While you can manually resize a window across the center line, and it looks pretty good while static, if you scroll you can see tearing across the two displays. Finally, no dock can provide 120Hz dual 4K to the Mac as far as I know, so you need to hook up two displays + a charging cable directly to the Mac every time you want to dock it.

Just this morning I finally discovered the virtual 8K+ mode in Better Display¹. I enabled a HiDPI 6016x1692 virtual display that mirrors the whole monitor and runs at 60Hz² over just one cable. It also works via my thunderbolt dock, so I can get away with only plugging in the thunderbolt cable that charges my Mac and hooks in all the peripherals at once. It has been behaving flawlessly so far as just one display, despite the caveats in the docs³.

Footnotes

1. Actually, I might have tried it before and ruled it out due to issues that macOS 15.2 appears to have fixed. ↩

2. Although 120Hz with PIP is kinda nice, I was especially interested in it to reduce the tearing effect between the screens, which is a non-issue when the display works as one whole ↩

3. (later) After having used it most of the day, I did end up noticing a flickering/color issue (with reds in particular), as well as occasional brief freezes in the cursor. I think these are consistent with the warnings in the BetterDisplay docs. Not sure why it took me a while to notice; even with these issues I prefer the virtual display to PIP, but having both options gives a choice of pros and cons. ↩