I'm not sure why scaling is such a big deal or point of contention...you just pick the one that looks right to you. I think that the levels that Apple provides from the default menu aren't granular enough for me...I wanted to be in-between with my 27" 4K (which is the same monitor I used on my PC).
Fortunately, there are others available, just not shown by default:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-your-displays-resolution-mchl86d72b76/mac
In this case, if you change the resolution the way you are, the scaling is no longer what it is outside the box. The Studio Display only has 2X scaling when using the default resolution.
This is one of those things where either you see it or you don’t. I notice it and it drives me crazy when it’s not a 2x or 3x DPI screen. My wife isn’t bothered by it on desktop monitors, but prefers 2x scaling on laptops. It’s just a personal preference. But you can’t know what you like until you understand what the options are and why they’re that way.
Studio Displays don't make any sense to me. They're LG panels. They're good LG panels, the controller/firmware is optimized for vibrant colors and some features, and they're using slightly brighter backlights. But, they're not particularly special to me.
Compared to the two LG Ultrafines I went through before the Studio Display, the SD’s build quality is noticeably improved. Colours are noticeably better on my SD too; I suspect that Apple has a lower tolerance for colour inaccuracy. And those were the only other 5k monitors at the time, so it’s not like there were a lot of options in the market.
You really buy a SD for 3 reasons (instead of something else):
1. Ease of use with a Mac
2. “Retina” resolution and colour accuracy. While the colours are saturated and vibrant, they’re not vibrant the way a TV is at Best Buy. They’re accurate enough that when a client sends me a Pantone book and a couple print samples, they’re very close to what I see on the monitor — without calibration. Every Dell, HP, Acer (etc) monitor I’ve ever used has been washed out and low contrast by comparison, with a lot of variability from one panel to the next. Is the SD’s panel special? Nope. Is it excellent and consistent from one to the next? Yes. *
3. Build quality
* footnote to add: I have a lot of friends in media production, and at a certain level, that’s a different ball game. Film colorists are using way more expensive, calibrated monitors in a dark box (literally) on their desk. Like the monitor has horse blinders. In the photography world, you can spend more money on very fancy displays. They look great when you print photos, but photos you make with them tend to look weird on digital media, like Instagram. The beauty of the SD is that it strikes a nice balance: I know how it’s going to look on Instagram and I’m confident this is a mostly accurate representation of what I’ll see in print. Ben-Q has a couple monitors that match this, but I haven’t seen anybody else strike the right balance. Those Ben-Q monitors are only 4k, though.
Sorry, everybody. I have thoughts on screens, and I think we accept garbage for screens these days. I would also never use a TV as a monitor, because rhe DPI is too low, and at monitor distances I would see pixels.
Call me picky, snobby, or obnoxious all you like. I know what I like and I know why I like it!
Edit: sorry, one last thing that strikes me as important: one detail about the way macOS does scaling that’s very nice is the sub pixel antialiasing. There was a debate a few years ago about whether Apple even uses it anymore. My understanding (although I may be wrong these days) is that, with a high-DPI display, Apple doesn’t even need it anymore. That’s because the Studio Display, when rendered at its default resolution of 2560 points wide, actually has four sub pixels for each of those points. That allows the details of lettering to be rendered much more accurately, rendering sun pixel antialiasing moot. This is not the case in other scaling systems, which is part of the reason that running a non-default resolution on a Studio Display or XDR is somewhat odd. (I think they enable antialiasing for lower resolution monitors, but I really don’t know anymore off the top of my head. This was a big topic in the Mac community around 2016 or 2017.)