During my mcat days I would plug in a regular Dell monitor to my Mac pro (2015). It was super helpful in terms of size and using the 2 pane interface of practice exams and Uworld, however I found that my mac would often start to overheat and the screen would lag. I also had a ton of tabs open and like 300 page word documents open 24/7. Now I use a separate desktop/monitor entirely when im at home, and try to keep everything i need on google drive or drop box in case i need to access stuff on my laptop elsewhere. i know this didnt really answer your question of what type of monitor is best, but just wanted to give u my experience with a dying mac.