How to turn the iPad’s Retina display into a PC monitor

How to turn the iPad’s Retina display into a PC monitor

• By Grant Brunner on April 24, 2013 at 10:14 am
• 5 Comments

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The Retina display in the iPad is beautiful. Since super-high-res screens have done so well on smartphones and tablets, the demand for increasing pixel density on PC displays is growing as well. Unfortunately, they’re still quite pricey and relatively rare, so a Polishengineering student has taken it upon himself to turn an iPad screen into a fully functional PC monitor.

Andrzej, a student at the Warsaw University of Technology, ordered the 9.7-inch panel that is used in the iPad for $55 on eBay. The LG-made display (model LP097QX1-SPA1) sports a 2048×1536 resolution, and features an interface for eDisplayPort (eDP). He took a $14 connector (model Molex 502250-5191), then went to town with a soldering gun, and was able to connect it to a standard DisplayPort cable. From there, it can connect to pretty much any modern PC. After a bit more fiddling to get power to the backlight, he was able to get it working perfectly in exchange for a little elbow grease and $70 worth of parts.

Okay, now that we know how to turn an iPad’s display into a high-res computer monitor, what can we do with it? As soon as I first read about this project, I thought back to a clever little hardware hack I saw back in 2010. Someone took the casing of an old Macintosh Classic, and made it into the raddest iPad stand I’ve ever seen. Instead of slapping in an iPad, mounting the iPad screen and running a Mac Mini or Chromebox inside the casing could make for a glorious case mod. Alternatively, the HoverBar from TwelveSouth would be an outstanding jumping-off point for mounting the display.

Of course, you don’t have to do all of this work if you want a Retina display. Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro sports a native resolution of 2560×1600 (227 PPI), and the 15-inch MacBook Pro sits at 2880×1800 (220 PPI). They also start at $1499 and $2199, respectively, so that might not be the best option for the price sensitive among us. However, a simple $10 app called Air Display can turn your Retina iPad into a high-resolution secondary monitor. It connects to your computer over your WiFi connection, and works with both Windows and OS X. It works relatively well for static elements, but the lag introduced over WiFi makes it less suitable for watching movies or playing video games.

While tablet screens are improving by leaps and bounds, most monitor manufacturers are taking much longer to jump on the Retina-caliber bandwagon. If you don’t mind breaking out the soldering gun and splitting open some cables, this seems like the perfect way to spend a weekend or two. Let’s just hope the Samsungs of the world take the hint, and start selling more high-res monitors.