5 ms·

the problem with the apple xdr display isn't just the price though. it's not a good monitor for a lot of users. it's limited to 60hz, it's response time is real

the problem with the apple xdr display isn't just the price though. it's not a good monitor for a lot of users. it's limited to 60hz, it's response time is really poor, it suffers from really obvious blooming and bleed at high brightness and it has bad off axis color accuracy and brightness. sure, if you care deeply about color accuracy and 6k resolution it's pretty good. these aren't the only metrics on which monitors are judged though apple does a really poor job of supporting external displays. there's virtually no good options if you want something with high refresh, good latency and reasonable pixel density and color reproduction

urthor 5y ago
Fair enough, I wrote the above knowing absolutely nothing about the Apple's specs. I'm just speaking in generalities.
kbenson 5y ago
Yes, the issue is not that it's expensive, it's that it doesn't justify that cost (serious question, what's that stand made out of to cost $1000?) If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less), then it's not really about spending an extremely generous salary to have better tools, it's about spending it to have a substandard tool that happens to have an Apple name attached to it. If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.
- wmf 5y ago
  If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less) You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.
- fleddr 5y ago
  It's not an issue that the screen is expensive, but we should take issue that the way Apple positioned the screen is beyond misleading. It's a hard lie. During the launch, Apple generously rewarded it with the title "best Pro display on the market" and directly compared it to a 35k Sony reference monitor. The problem is, Apple's screen is unusable as a reference monitor. The screen is not uniform, has a strong "vignette". The backlight zones create blooming artifacts. Color accuracy is fairly good, but not better than something found in a low-end BenQ. Not only is it not the best pro monitor, it's not a pro monitor at all. It literally cannot be used as a reference monitor. It's basically a 6K LCD screen with all the problems that come with LCD.
ksec 5y ago
Their marketing compared it with Reference Monitor. And if it was anywhere close to Reference Monitor, Pros would actually queue up and buy it. But it wasn't even close. ( And I am still somewhat pissed off about it)
neither_color 5y ago
I didnt realize it's only 60hz, that's pretty bad. You can get 4K gaming monitors that do 120hz for under $1000, even if the monitor itself looks dorky it's a very comfortable viewing experience scaled to 2560x1440 high density.
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  I just got a 32”, 4K, 120hz monitor for $1000.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    4K isn't dense enough for proper 2x scaling at that size though. You have to go fractional, which is okay, but not great.
    - wswope 5y ago
      Yeah, who could ever imagine using a 1080p 32” monitor…
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        It's pretty awful. I got Dell's "5k" ultrawide before the XDR, and at the time M1 Macbooks couldn't do fractional scaling at that high of a resolution. The result was essentially a wider 32" 1080p screen. And while the text was crisp, the space efficiency was absolutely awful. I can't even imagine the 16:9 version of that...
        wswope 5y ago
        I was originally making a snide joke (sorry) since it’s a popular form factor, and I can’t think of a better common option for 2x scaling than 4k 32”… but on review, I actually take your point on space efficiency, if we’re talking about it as a primary display.
        5y ago
BoorishBears 5y ago
I go into more detail below but I completely disagree with your take. If anything for most users this thing is amazing (but expensive), and for the few users who were "tricked" into thinking this is a $5000 reference monitor it's not good... - Bleed is non-existent, right off the bat. In fact it doesn't make sense it'd have bloom and backlight bleeding, aggressive HDR produces bloom... so the same aggressive HDR would hide BLB. Bloom is also a complete non-issue for most users. I use this monitor primarily to consume text and casual media... I got weeks at a time before remembering this monitor had HDR enabled full-time when some super thin loading spinner or something appears on a completely black background while the brightness is cranked to max but the room is kind of dark... it essentially takes a torture test to get the FALD to be problematic Off-axis color accuracy, again, complete non-issue for most users. If I was producing Avatar 2 it might be an issue, but compared to any "normal" monitor it's a complete non-issue, especially when the trade off is exactly 0 backlight bleed, which is 100 times more annoying. For "most users" there's no better productivity monitor. Even a $20,000 reference monitor would be useless for us since we're not going to be able to drive or configure it...

urthor 5y ago

Fair enough, I wrote the above knowing absolutely nothing about the Apple's specs. I'm just speaking in generalities.

kbenson 5y ago

Yes, the issue is not that it's expensive, it's that it doesn't justify that cost (serious question, what's that stand made out of to cost $1000?) If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less), then it's not really about spending an extremely generous salary to have better tools, it's about spending it to have a substandard tool that happens to have an Apple name attached to it. If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.

wmf 5y ago
If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less) You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.
fleddr 5y ago
It's not an issue that the screen is expensive, but we should take issue that the way Apple positioned the screen is beyond misleading. It's a hard lie. During the launch, Apple generously rewarded it with the title "best Pro display on the market" and directly compared it to a 35k Sony reference monitor. The problem is, Apple's screen is unusable as a reference monitor. The screen is not uniform, has a strong "vignette". The backlight zones create blooming artifacts. Color accuracy is fairly good, but not better than something found in a low-end BenQ. Not only is it not the best pro monitor, it's not a pro monitor at all. It literally cannot be used as a reference monitor. It's basically a 6K LCD screen with all the problems that come with LCD.

ksec 5y ago

Their marketing compared it with Reference Monitor. And if it was anywhere close to Reference Monitor, Pros would actually queue up and buy it. But it wasn't even close. ( And I am still somewhat pissed off about it)

neither_color 5y ago

I didnt realize it's only 60hz, that's pretty bad. You can get 4K gaming monitors that do 120hz for under $1000, even if the monitor itself looks dorky it's a very comfortable viewing experience scaled to 2560x1440 high density.

jasonladuke0311 5y ago
I just got a 32”, 4K, 120hz monitor for $1000.
- jagger27 5y ago
  4K isn't dense enough for proper 2x scaling at that size though. You have to go fractional, which is okay, but not great.
  - wswope 5y ago
    Yeah, who could ever imagine using a 1080p 32” monitor…
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      It's pretty awful. I got Dell's "5k" ultrawide before the XDR, and at the time M1 Macbooks couldn't do fractional scaling at that high of a resolution. The result was essentially a wider 32" 1080p screen. And while the text was crisp, the space efficiency was absolutely awful. I can't even imagine the 16:9 version of that...
      - wswope 5y ago
        I was originally making a snide joke (sorry) since it’s a popular form factor, and I can’t think of a better common option for 2x scaling than 4k 32”… but on review, I actually take your point on space efficiency, if we’re talking about it as a primary display.
        5y ago

BoorishBears 5y ago

I go into more detail below but I completely disagree with your take. If anything for most users this thing is amazing (but expensive), and for the few users who were "tricked" into thinking this is a $5000 reference monitor it's not good... - Bleed is non-existent, right off the bat. In fact it doesn't make sense it'd have bloom and backlight bleeding, aggressive HDR produces bloom... so the same aggressive HDR would hide BLB. Bloom is also a complete non-issue for most users. I use this monitor primarily to consume text and casual media... I got weeks at a time before remembering this monitor had HDR enabled full-time when some super thin loading spinner or something appears on a completely black background while the brightness is cranked to max but the room is kind of dark... it essentially takes a torture test to get the FALD to be problematic Off-axis color accuracy, again, complete non-issue for most users. If I was producing Avatar 2 it might be an issue, but compared to any "normal" monitor it's a complete non-issue, especially when the trade off is exactly 0 backlight bleed, which is 100 times more annoying. For "most users" there's no better productivity monitor. Even a $20,000 reference monitor would be useless for us since we're not going to be able to drive or configure it...