Snippet: Keep Your LG 5K Display Away from Routers ☇

Sebastian Anthony for Ars Technica:

The spiritual successor to Apple’s Thunderbolt Display, the LG UltraFine 5K monitor, which only started shipping out from the Apple online store this week, appears to suffer from a major fault: when placed within two metres (6.5ft) of a wireless router, the display starts to flicker; move it really close, and the monitor goes black and becomes unusable. An LG Electronics support person confirmed the issue, saying it “only happens for the 5K monitors we have, not other LG monitors.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, 9to5Mac’s Zac Hall reports that his LG 5K monitor, under the duress of a nearby Wi-Fi router, can freeze the MacBook Pro that it’s plugged into, forcing a reboot to bring it back. When he moved the router (an Apple AirPort Extreme) from beside the monitor to another room, everything went back to normal.

I’ve been a fan of LG’s panels in general (iMacs use them, as do the ViewSonic displays I have at work and home) and their TVs, but this seems like a rather sloppy mess. Although in many cases my router wouldn’t be near my computer anyway, I’ve seen plenty of workspace/office pictures where a router is at the corner of a desk.

If only there was a company out there who made displays, routers, and non-Windows-based computers that all played nicely together…