LG Ultrafine 5k appears to be the only is a 27“ monitor with retina-quality display matching that of Macbooks.
For brightness configuration in NixOS Linux using ddcutil, see here.
LG Ultrafine 5k
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Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 7 review
Linux kernel 5.9 or later has the best hardware support. Everything including Thunderbolt and fingerprint reader works on Linux. I was surprised in particular to see that 5k resolution worked in LG Ultrafine 5k, which is a retina-quality Thunderbolt monitor designed specifically for Macbooks. Compared to previous Thinkpads (such as P71), the trackpad is as good as that of a Macbook.
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M1 Macbook Pro 16
16“ in particular is sufficient to do real work without an external monitor (like LG Ultrafine 5k)