16 ms·

I didn't return my Apple Studio Display

113 points by carlesfe 5y ago

gambiting 5y ago
For me it's inconceivable to go back to a 60hz monitor in 2022 - using one feels like something is broken, just scrolling code or website is wrong. The fact that apple ships a 60hz monitor for the amount of money they ask for is.....silly.
mikl 5y ago
“Man doesn’t bite dog” isn’t much of a headline. The Studio Display is great. Not cheap, but if you sit in front of a screen all day, and you enjoy a good 5K display, definitely worth it. The great loudspeakers and microphone system is an added bonus, and the camera is good, if not great.
yakkityyak 5y ago
I prefer running two 144hz 27” 4k monitors instead. Yeah the 5k to 4k scaling isn’t as crisp as native 2x, but god the high refresh rate really makes up for it.
- goosedragons 5y ago
  Yeah I was wondering this. Would they be ok with 4K scaled to look like 1440p? In my experience it's not too noticeable and still looks better than native 1440p even on Mac. The other big gotcha this monitor has is that like every monitor Apple has made for the past 20 years it only has a single input. It's really tough to find another monitor these days that doesn't have multiple and just can't see any real upside to not having at least an HDMI port (for your Apple TV of course) available.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Is 144hz useful for anything other than gaming?
  - goosedragons 5y ago
    Yes, scrolling, mousing, etc. just feels nicer. I wouldn't say it's necessary but neither is 5K.
  - dandellion 5y ago
    It's also better for watching videos at 2x speed.
  - poyu 5y ago
    All the new M1 MBPs (and the iPad Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro) have 120hz refresh rate. Not exactly 144hz but it matters enough that they put that on the whole product line.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I really wish I'd never seen a screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate, I've not been able to un-see the difference from my 60 Hz setup ever since! I've done the same with audio, having bought a decent-ish set of speakers makes everything else sound like arse as much as it makes your music sound good.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I hear this all the time but across the room from my 60hz XDR is one of the fastest IPS panels ever, a 360hz e-Sports oriented monitor and a 144hz 4k monitor... It takes no appreciable time to adjust when switching between any of the three. Maybe for a split second I notice the mouse cursor and then... nothing. If I were gaming on the XDR it'd be one thing, but it's a productivity monitor. I don't need 144hz (or more) to watch text scroll, and the improved pixel density is 100x more satisfying for productivity usage. In fact if anything I'd say going from 6k to 4k is what's more jarring than going from high refresh to low...
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      I feel the same. I have a 240hz AW2721D, 120hz M1 Pro MBP, and a 60hz iMac and adjusting between them is entirely unnoticeable, even though the difference is smoothness is easily visible. Similarly, I see a lot of upset over mouse acceleration curves but I adjust to differences within 5-10 seconds of switching at most and forget about it.
      - Jcowell 5y ago
        Samish set up, same thing. I never notice.
  - kinghtown 5y ago
    I recently got a 32 inch LG monitor with 144hz refresh rate for about $375. It’s qhd/2k, and VA panel.. honestly I’m in love with it. At the store I had a really difficult time seeing a big difference from my display or a 4k 27 inch. I feel like tons of people can be very happy and save a bit money if they would just trust their own eyes. Like I don’t doubt the apple display is better but $1000 better?? doubt it.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I'm surprised about this. I ran a high refresh rate monitor for a while, but I didn't really notice or care in day to day usage compared to picture quality. It was a big meh from me. Nice to have, but wouldn't trade even minor picture quality improvements. I have a 30" 2560x1600 display atm, and definitely wouldn't trade either the quality or the real estate for refresh rate. I'd also take auto KVM over refresh rate, or usb-c single cable docking over refresh rate, but it would still be nice to have
ignacioaal 5y ago
I’ve been researching good monitors to upgrade from my Acer UM.CX2AA.P01 34” When the studio display got released I started to get excited. After all the reviews I’ve read I will definitely NOT buy it. Thanks for writing this! Planning on saving up until the Pro Display XDR gets updated and getting that instead.
- awiesenhofer 5y ago
  Rumors say there could be a ProMotion capable display in the works, to be released in the fall. Might be the successor to the Pro XDR (at a lower price hopefully).
  - i386 5y ago
    I highly doubt that you’ll be seeing a 120hz apple monitor in this price range this year. It’s a bit cute that most reviewers panned this display because it wasn’t the Pro XDR display at this price,
    - bredren 5y ago
      A sibling to the XDR offering pro motion would be 10k without the stand. I think tech reviews of anything monitor and graphics related on the Apple side of things have generally been bad takes for a while. (panning of Blackmagic eGPUs, XDR) I think people got confused by the availability of retina displays on iPhone/iPad and laptops.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  34" 1440p is a great form factor but the PPI is pretty bad. I'm considering 5k2k (2160p) ultrawides, but holding out to see if anything new comes out (both available 5k2k monitors are several years old now).
ysleepy 5y ago
They sort of imply that only the Studio display would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that. Then he concludes that 600nits is unnecessary and that he doesn't need or want the USB-C ports. I have no idea why he went with the apple display instead of any good 4k screen for 400$, or two of them.
- JofArnold 5y ago
  5k. Not 4k. It's a huge difference; 2x 1080 versus 2x 1440.
- shadowfacts 5y ago
  I can't speak for the author, but I find 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of screen real estate (and physical size for UI elements). Unless it's a small 21" display, 4k at high-DPI would result in less screen space. Going up to 5k is the best way to get that combination of real estate and pixel density.
  - ysleepy 5y ago
    1000$ worth of difference? - Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper?
    - mistersquid 5y ago
      > Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper? The LG Ultrafine 5K is notorious for its high unreliability (WiFi interference), low build quality (creaky plastic), and low durability (flaky ports). The target market for Apple Studio Display does not look to trade price for lower quality. Rather, Apple's target market are premium buyers, people looking to pay a bit more for higher quality.
      - kitsunesoba 5y ago
        Not only is the UltraFine 5k’s chassis creaky, it can’t handle the heat the display produces and has an extremely high rate of cracking with pieces flaking off. The whole product is abysmal in terms of quality, I don’t know how LG thought it was ok to release.
wodenokoto 5y ago
It does sound like there are alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei_2sWzzar0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei_2sWzzar0 It's super disappointing that the pro colorist chooses LG over the Mac (and someone at dell must be super sad to see their $4k screen lose to a "cheap" apple monitor!) as you'd expect Apple to fuss over such details and go all in on calibrating monitors before shipping. But it looks like they didn't calibrate anything. Monitor, sound or camera.
- jmull 5y ago
  In that video, doesn’t the pro colorist basically call it a tie between the 5K LG and 5K ASD after turning off the “true tone” feature? (Not surprising since they use very similar, if not identical LG panels.)
marcellus23 5y ago
My understanding is that the webcam issue has been essentially (not officially) confirmed as being a software bug. Which makes this kind of vitriol pretty unnecessary: > There is a product manager at Apple who, for some reason, hates webcam users with a burning passion. It also makes perfect sense, since the actual specs of the camera should be giving a much better picture.
- Tepix 5y ago
  The author has a point though, it's highly mysterious how this slipped past QA
- ibero 5y ago
  I think the "vitriol" is perfectly valid. Vague statements of "it will get better in the future" are non-binding and leave lots of wiggle room. Let's be honest, the monitor does like two things that Apple claims justify the inclusion of the A13 (and the whopping 64 internal memory): the camera and sound. Everyone who has used the product turns on the camera and instantly knows its garbage. Either Apple somehow got caught unaware or they thought it was good enough.
- chrisshroba 5y ago
  I took that more as poking fun than as true vitriol against a real-life product manager.
- sharms 5y ago
  On a technical level the webcam resolution is low, and center stage adds additional cropping. This problem may not have a software fix unfortunately
- coder543 5y ago
  Since it supports Center Stage, the camera is actually seeing an extremely wide field of view, and then cropping in to show a more normal view. This naturally means the resolution is going to suffer, and gone are any hopes of the optics being good enough to provide even the tiniest background separation. Even if they fix some ISP issue, the webcam quality seems unlikely to ever be good, but it might become acceptable. It's trivial to find people complaining about the quality of center stage online[0], although it seems like reviewers were mostly wowed by the novelty of the feature, and not how it looks in day to day usage. Apple doesn't want to talk about the resolution of Center Stage, but when zoomed all the way out... you're limited to 1080p30. It crops significantly into that 1080p image during normal use, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at an effective resolution of 480p or worse. Given how much space they have on the monitor, and how much they're charging for the monitor, I wish they would have done something cool like having the Center Stage camera and a better quality normal camera. Center Stage is only useful when there are multiple people, or you can't stay still for some reason... and neither of those apply to 99% of Zoom calls I've seen in the past several years. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_front_camera_is_grainy_and_pixelated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_f...
Gualdrapo 5y ago
Imho the Apple Thunderbolt Display is still a great (and way much cheaper) alternative for those of us who can't care less about refresh rate or pixel density. If this one had a bigger size (say, 32 inches) and a more 'squared' ratio, I'd consider it an upgrade.
- tksb 5y ago
  Couldn't agree more if I wanted to. I've long used the 30" Cinema displays as they were trivial to find used for pennies. I spent a week mulling over the Studio display as it's nearly what I'd been hoping for. Found a Thunderbolt display (+ 2018 Mac mini) for a couple hundred dollars locally. My only annoyance is that I can't use the MagSafe connector built into the display cable…
- Tepix 5y ago
  The pixel density of a 4K+ monitor makes all the difference, however. Text is much nicer to read.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  The thing is, a lot of people care about pixel density. That said, I'm not willing to pay $1600. Hopefully other manufacturers see the demand for 5k and produce cheaper (quality) alternatives.
asciimov 5y ago
It seems like those writing about this monitor are like "look it's got all these problems, but at least it doesn't have a notch so I'm keeping it."
- jmull 5y ago
  This reviewer has three "cons". (1) stand too low; (2) screen is glossy; (3) speakers have too much bass for video conferences. (1) and (2) are addressed by the options Apple provides, so they are really complaints about the price (and those options are pricy!). (3) seems pretty minor (notice the author also has the speakers in the "pros" column) and can maybe be addressed with a basic equalizer of some some. In other words, all three cons are actually tradeoffs, which exist for all options (these are an individual call we all need to make).
  - sp332 5y ago
    Also the camera is bad.
    - jmull 5y ago
      That looks like a temporary software issue.
      - coder543 5y ago
        Disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30880057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30880057
        jmull 5y ago
        Sure, but it should be perfectly possible to improve it to the level of the front-facing camera on the iPad Pro, which has an "ultra-wide" camera for "center stage" as well.
        coder543 5y ago
egypturnash 5y ago
Shoulda gotten the version with the VESA mount adaptor and just hooked it to whatever nice monitor arm he has. I wonder if you can buy it separately and attach it. Looks like not, there's several big screwheads visible in the photo of the back on Apple's page that don't have corresponding holes in the backs of the other versions. Damn that sure is an Apple move; the Dell monitor I spent $500 on a decade ago came with a crappy low stand that hooks into the VESA mount on the back, which is now hooked to a nice Ergotron arm. It looks like the version with the VESA mount costs as much as the base model, plus a few hundred for a nice desk arm/wall mount/etc if you don't have one already holding up your current screen.
- ArmandGrillet 5y ago
  Where do you find VESA mounts that look the same as what you get with e.g. an LG 27UP850? All the ones I find online are ugly and badly-reviewed VESA mounts made of glossy plastic or arms which are not what I'm looking for (I want a classic mount).
- turtlebits 5y ago
  They probably couldn't/wouldn't wait. I looked at the VESA version when the display was announced and it was backordered until mid-May.
Tepix 5y ago
I bought a very slightly used Iiyama 5K monitor (XB2779QQS-S1 with Displayport 1.4) for 450€. While it does have some stuck pixels, they are so tiny that you only notice them when you are looking for them. 1800€ is insane. I also use a 27" 4K monitor. The difference between the two isn't that great. 5K is mostly useful for 4K video editing. PS: It sounds as if the author would have had a great experience with a 350€ 4K monitor, too.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  Considering the number of people out there making enormous salaries doing jobs on computers, spending 10+ hours a day looking at their screen, 1800€ does not sound insane at all. Same thing applies to any tool of any trade. I work with surgeons, and you would be amazed how unfathomably expensive all their instruments are. (Though to be fair I do all my work on a pair of 100€ monitors.)
  - VectorLock 5y ago
    Do the surgeons buy their own instruments? I figure they'd belong to the hospital.
    - voltaireodactyl 5y ago
      In my experience it is a fractional minority of surgeons who work from home.
  - Tepix 5y ago
    I agree that spending a lot of money on something you use a lot makes sense. Heck, i'm waiting for my Keyboardio model 100 to ship. My point was that Apple's monitor is not 4x better than this monitor, so the relative price seems very high and not justified, even by Apple's standards.
- ysleepy 5y ago
  Does that one work with one DP 1.4 port or do you need two to drive it at 60Hz?
radley 5y ago
The LG 5K has all the benefits of Retina 5K and most likely is the exact same panel. The biggest downside is the slower USB-C ports (5GB vs 10GB). The camera isn't technically as good as Apple's, but it also doesn't rely on Apple software. It can raise/lower and tilt without paying $400 extra. It has a black plastic frame which doesn't look as nice, but the glass won't chip if you bump your laptop into the side. If I didn't already have an LG 5K, I'd buy the Apple Studio monitor. I used my previous Thunderbolt Display for over a decade. That should be sufficient time for someone at Apple to fix the camera bug.
- miohtama 5y ago
  Why is the camera so bad in Apple Studio Display, as the article claims? iPhone and iPad cameras are quite good. Edit: Found in the comments a claim it’s a software bug.
  - bgentry 5y ago
    In addition to the software bug, they also used a dated camera module from the front-facing camera on the iPhone 11. They could have used the higher quality rear-facing camera from the iPhone 13, or the front-facing camera part from the iPhone 13, or even (god forbid) a single rear-facing camera part from the iPhone 13 / Pro for the best quality. The iPhone 13 Pro contains 3 of these rear-facing cameras with far better quality, and 1 front-facing camera that also has far better quality. Absolute best case scenario, they are able to fix software issues and bring the camera quality to be equivalent to the front-facing iPhone 11 camera. But why stuff an outdated camera part into a brand new $1600 display 2 years after COVID made us all spend so much of our days on video calls? It seems not just short-sighted but downright hostile toward customers as this one points out.
    - sp332 5y ago
      I think they went with the front-facing part for the field of view.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  LG owners complain about uneven light levels, edge bleeding, failing ports, and a wobbly stand. The Apple Studio display at $300 more gives you a monitor with higher built standards.
go_prodev 5y ago
You need to upgrade that book to "PHP Brilliance" which has a lovely diamond on the cover. It will complete the look! /s
convolvatron 5y ago
curious about the keyboard in the last image. extra keys under space?
- 0xCMP 5y ago
  I found what I think it is: https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090 https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090
- E39M5S62 5y ago
  They are right/left/middle buttons for the mouse. The keyboard is a 'Tex Shinobi' https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=6169 https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_det...
lastofthemojito 5y ago
I'm still weirded out by the fact that it has an entire computer in it. I mean, I'm sure other monitors have CPUs to drive their menus and all, but this has an entire A13 SoC - the same thing as an iPhone 11 or 9th gen iPad. I'm curious to see what hacks emerge - like, can you turn this expensive monitor into a budget iMac, or a giant iPad (without touch input)?
- cudgy 5y ago
  Would love to turn my 2014 5k iMac into a smart display as well, but Apple has prevented use of it as a display only. Any solutions out there?
jasonpbecker 5y ago
My only quibble with this review is the USB-A port thing. 6 devices is a lot, but even if that were the real number, if the problem is the type-C connector, you can buy very inexpensive cables or even "caps" (like $5 maybe each) to get your USB-A device into a type C port. This is a thing on your desk, so there's no reason not to have it just plugged in all the time with a new, inexpensive cable, or have the cap on the end of your existing cable.
VectorLock 5y ago
The piece of paper on the MacBook with the cut out fo the TouchID is interesting. Is it because the keys are as ugly and scuffed as they are on my MBP and you can't stand to look at them?
- terr-dav 5y ago
  Or a dust cover?
hadjian 5y ago
This might be a bit off-topic, but since we’re talking big screens: I also have a 27“ display. I mostly work with emacs and a couple of shells, both in the kitty terminal. For emacs, this is great, but for a terminal, it really feels dumb, if you have a 3x2 terminal window and write something into the lower left one. It’s so far at the bottom and you have this huge real estate… I started to use a 1x3 terminal window. The bottom row is where I can glance at and the top one is where I swap out the terminal windows. Anyone know of a new paradime for text based computing one huge screens? Sounds too niche, right? ;-)
dainiusse 5y ago
Honestly I just dont understand why would one buy a 27" display these days. 32" makes much more sense
- treesknees 5y ago
  How about desk space? The author says he's replacing his existing 27-inch monitor. If you look at the final photo in the article, I don't believe he could fit a 32-inch monitor in the same place and keep his existing desk layout the same.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  A lot of us don’t like such massive screens. For me 27” is ideal.
- Syzygies 5y ago
  Yes. I ordered a $5K Mac Studio for parallel Haskell computing, but not the monitor. My favorite monitor is: EIZO FlexScan EV3285 31.5" 16:9 IPS Monitor (Black) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1450642-REG/eizo_ev3285fx_bk_31_5_4k_ultra_slim_frame.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1450642-REG/eizo_ev32... $1,839
- Tagbert 5y ago
  I would not want a low resolution (4K) 32" screen. Text would be less sharp. If you could find a 32" 6K for a reasonable price that would be sweet. If you are watching videos or playing games, resolution is not significant, but if you are working with text, resolution is more important than absolute size or refresh rate.
- hyakosm 5y ago
  The only 32 inch monitor at >200 dpi in the market is the Pro Display XDR. All other are 4K (138 dpi).
- nickm12 5y ago
  HiDPI. If you want HiDPI in a 32" display, Apple has the Pro Display XDR for $5000, but that is quite an expensive display.
D13Fd 5y ago
I don't particularly like the Apple Studio Display, but this post is wrong on the ergonomics. Generally the top of your monitor should sit at or just below eye level.
- sp332 5y ago
  Doesn't that mean you have your head slouched forward most of the time? I think that's just painful.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Indeed, I’ve had my desk set up to have the middle of my screen line up with my eyes to keep my neck straight. When I have to use a more traditional setup that has my face tilting down a bit, my neck quickly tells me to stop.
    - Joeri 5y ago
      What works for you is what works for you, but I don’t think putting the middle of the screen at eye level is good advice for most people. Moving the head is indeed a bad thing, but you’re not supposed to tilt the head down, only the eyes. All ergonomic advice says to put the top of the screen 5 to 10 cm above eye level so that the eyes can move to any spot on the screen comfortably without having to tilt the head. It is straining on the eyes to look up, so having the top of the screen too far above eye level causes people to tilt their head backwards to look at the top of the screen. I used to raise my screens and had exactly this problem, with lots of shoulder and neck aches. Now that my screen is at the ergonomic height I can work entire days without having neck or shoulder discomfort.
  - tehnub 5y ago
    It means your head/neck is straight, but your eyes glance slightly downwards. I believe I read in some ergonomics article that the natural, most comfortable gaze position of the eye is not straight ahead, but slightly down.
    - 5y ago
NAR8789 5y ago
> for video conferences it makes every person sound like James Earl Jones. I think there's a typo here. This should go in the "Pros" section
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  Morgan Freeman would like a word with you.
yoz-y 5y ago
I wish they made the screen 120hz and support hdmi or display port. 5K@27” has the sweet advantage of integer downscaling to 1440p, which is quite ideal for games unless you have a really top of the line graphics card.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  the bandwidth of 120Hz/5K is too high for current Thunderbolt connections. It does support 120Hz/4K but the higher resolution puts it over the edge. It is the same reason that the Apple XDR display is 60Hz/6K. Bandwidth limits. If you are interested in games, you likely don't want a high resolution monitor anyway. Those of us who do need the higher res of 5K value that above refresh rate and are likely not going to play any games on what is more of a work screen. Different use cases.
  - xoa 5y ago
    Yes, it's very unfortunate that silicon photonics never hit critical mass. It's intensely painful to constantly see these bandwidth limitations run into and have to deal with ludicrously expensive active cables with extremely short lengths because of the stubborn sticking to copper, when plain old cheap OM3 will cheerfully do 100 Gbps at hundreds of feet. Someday I hope to see the last of copper for data. That said, if Apple really wanted to they could definitely do a multistream system like some of the bleeding edge High DPI screens did way back when. Require two Thunderbolt connections to drive it. But whether these 5K panels actually even can be driven at 120 Hz is another question and always a balancing act in this stuff particularly since presumably companies of Apple's scale have a bit of a clearer picture of what's in the pipe.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      If optical material is as cheap as you say it is, then why are optical cables so expensive? A few meters can run for hundreds of dollars.
      - xoa 5y ago
r00fus 5y ago
I don't have any USB-A requirements on my desk now that I got a new USB-C enclosure for my local backup disk - however, USB-A ports are still useful for most of the userbase... did this monitor team not get the memo about ports being back in vogue for Apple?
- conk 5y ago
  At this point I see no reason to continue putting USB A ports in products. Continuing to include them is only going to prolong the transition to USB C. The great thing about USB is the protocol is the same for different connector types so you can use a $5 adapter to easily plug an older USB A device into a USB C port.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Including a USB-A port on a monitor is easy: there's loads of space. It allows the user to continue using their existing devices without needing adaptors. Offering only USB-C forces additional purchases and the resulting e-waste, so it's no surprise at all that Apple does this.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      Either way mass adoption of USB-C will end in e-waste.
    - conk 5y ago
      If they include a USB A port then it forces users who have USB C cables to purchase adapters and results in more e-waste. Is there loads of space in the display? Looks like apple is packing quite a bit into a slim display profile. Not to mention, ports with different dimensions/heights require additional fixturing and likely additional PCBs or connectors to work. It’s not as easy as slapping a few more ports in the display. Sure a company the size of apple can add more ports. But it’s far easier to line up 4x usb C connectors. And likely makes for less ewaste. Personally I’d rather have an RJ45/Ethernet port built in over USB A ports. The monitor is going to sit on a desk it might as well be hardwired to the local network.
auto 5y ago
> Therefore, this beautiful piece of hardware now stands on top of an ugly PHP reference manual. This is the way.
ilovecaching 5y ago
We're living in the past, and it's terrible you have to choose between high DPI and high refresh rates. Buy a high DPI monitor and edit text for an hour and you can never go back. Play a game at 144hz and you can never go back. But you can't have both at the same time, and that's not even mentioning the beauty of doing all of this on an Ultrawide. Either way you're going to be shelling out a fortune and waiting or top of the line graphics cards which will only be getting more expensive. I thought I was young enough to be living past the era of dial up, but now I realize my own dial up is the display.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  DisplayPort needs lossy compression to run 4k at 144Hz. Not even talking about gpus being able to run that. The display is just not the bottleneck here.
dbg31415 5y ago
Guy was on a non-4k Monitor saying the Apple Studio 5k was more crisp. Oof. For me... I like 2 monitors. Just one is a huge loss to productivity. I like 4k Monitors. Anything less is unusable. I like 144hz monitors. I like matching monitors. I find that if I mix 4k and 1080p I am prone to headaches. I like monitors where the top is roughly eye level, or even a little bit higher, when I'm sitting down. I feel this helps my posture. I hate monitors with any sort of light on them that's not coming from the screen. Power lights on the front that are on when I use the monitor make them unusable for me. I just go with whatever 2 monitors I can afford that match the above criteria. I expect to pay $750 to $1,000 per monitor. So $1500 to $2000 when I buy new monitors. I expect the monitors will last around 3 years... likely they can be re-homed after, but like most things I don't think they hold up for me personally after that time. I couldn't ever afford 2x Apple Studio Displays... I mean... even if I could, I would have more sense. At one point in the past, about 5-7 years back, the job bought me 2x Apple Thunderbolt Display... and frankly it was nice, but the monitors were so low to the desk they had to be stacked on reams of printer paper to make them usable. I thought it was funny the company spent like $3k on monitors and I still had stacks of printer paper on my desk.
- criddell 5y ago
  > I expect the monitors will last around 3 years... That's it? What is it that fails for you? My current monitor (a cheap Dell) is more than ten years old and it gets used every day. I was thinking paying close to $2000 for a monitor isn't that bad because it's an important piece of equipment and they last a long time. It's the same logic I use to buy office furniture.
  - moduspol 5y ago
    The value tends to hold a lot better, too. I just sold my old 27" Thunderbolt Display on Facebook Marketplace for $200 earlier today. Apple stopped selling it in 2016. I think I bought mine in 2014, but recovering $200 on an eight year-old discontinued monitor isn't bad.
  - dbg31415 5y ago
    I find that the brightness either fades, or I perceive it to have faded due to new tech coming out and looking better. Dunno, just in my head I've got a "computer shit lasts about 3 years before it becomes unreliable" concept. I could be wrong. And I do re-home almost all my shit to my parents, and they tend to get use out of it. I know my 4k Samsung monitors that I got off Woot last time around (for like $375 each) were probably on the low-end of things. They only had 60hz refresh rates. But like, to me, I felt the contrast and colors started to go. Since they were matching and had identical color settings, once the colors no longer matched between them it felt like they failed to me. But... split them up, give one to Mom, one to Dad... nobody has complained. I'm probably too fussy.
taylodl 5y ago
Wow. Just checked the Apple site and this guy is right, Apple wants $400 for a height-adjustable monitor stand! Why? Also the web cam is crap? Really? Okay, maybe it's not as bad as $699 for wheels for the Mac Pro, but that isn't right either! Consider that Apple is selling the iPhone SE for the same price that they're selling an height-adjustable monitor stand and less than for what they're charging for wheels! Can anyone explain this pricing?
- hn_version_0023 5y ago
  > Can anyone explain this pricing? Greed?
  - cudgy 5y ago
    Manufacturing consent in manufacturing
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  The basic explanation is that they sell it for what the target market will pay. You will not pay the price they sell it for but you are not the target market. And you can bet they looked at what the result would be if they sold it for less. They’d probably sell more, but ultimately profit less.
tzs 5y ago
> Apple, if you ship a monitor with a non-adjustable stand in 2022, please make sure that the default height is at an ergonomic level. It should be at least 5-8 centimeters higher. That's terrible advice. For a non-adjustable stand it needs to be at or near the lowest that people would want, because it is way easier to raise a fixed stand that is too low by putting something under it than it is to lower a fixed stand that is too high. (At least when the stand base is a simple rectangle--it might be harder on monitors that have narrow crescent bases). Bricks are cheap [1] and would be great for raising such a monitor. According to the specs at Apple the top of the monitor when on the non-adjustable stand is 47.8 cm above your desk. They don't give the bezel size but I've seen reviews say it is about 1/2", and that looks reasonable from the photos, so call it 1.3 cm. That would put the top of the screen at 46.5 cm. I just measured my 27" iMac, which has the same size screen and a non-adjustable stand. The iMac top of screen is 49.5 cm about the desk. I found the iMac a little too high. I ended up getting larger wheels [2] for my chair to effectively lower the iMac and putting a pillow on my chair to get a little more height for myself to make the iMac relatively lower. (Those are great wheels BTW. Unlike regular chair wheels these do not seem to end up clogged with hair wrapped around the axles). [1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/8-in-x-2-1-4-in-x-4-in-Clay-Brick-RED0126MCO/100323015 https://www.homedepot.com/p/8-in-x-2-1-4-in-x-4-in-Clay-Bric... [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGZPOK2/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGZPOK2/
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Why use brakes when you can use books? :) adjustable height, differing thickness, ETC
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    In our office when we had the earlier Thunderbolt displays, which had the same tendency to be too low, everyone used reams of copier paper to raise them a couple of inches.
- Joeri 5y ago
  I’ve never really understood how so many people could come to the conclusion that the 5K iMac was too low. An ideal ergonomic screen height is the top of the screen 5 to 10 cm above eye level, and I’ve always wondered what kind of desk setups people have where it ends up way below that to the point that it needs raising. If anything the 5K iMac was a few cm too tall, and it is a good thing the studio display is lower.
hyakosm 5y ago
I remember when bigger monitors had higher resolution. 15 inch monitors were 1024x768, 17 inch were typically 1280x1024 and some 20 inch monitors 1600x1200. Now nearly every panel from 13 inch to 32 inch are "4K" UHD with the exception of 24 inch monitors stuck at 1920x1080, it's sad because true HiDPI options (> 200 dpi) are extremely limited: two Apple screens, two LG screens and one Dell 8K 32 inch screen for PCs.
- jefftk 5y ago
  > nearly every panel from 13 inch to 32 inch are "4K" UHD with the exception of 24 inch monitors stuck at 1920x1080 I use a Dell Ultrasharp 27" [1] which is 2560x1440. I think this is pretty common for 27" monitors? I find that this is great at 1x resolution. [1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-monitor-u2722d/apd/210-ayze/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-moni...
- colechristensen 5y ago
  This isn't really the case. Monitors tend to have three categories, 1080 rows, 1440 rows, and 4k columns (which is actually 3840 x 2160) Shopping for monitors will find a fair balance of each and a few outliers. Vertical lines reported for 1080 and 1440 because there are quite a few aspect ratio options which will have varying numbers of pixel columns.
bredren 5y ago
> Its only competitor is the LG UltraFine, which is not much cheaper and lacks other features. If you want a 5K retina display the Studio Display is the best choice. At this price range. The XDR is a credible competitor to the Studio Display and if you read reviews from people who have adopted it for their primary development workstations, they are holding on to those as well. The XDR Pro Display, like the Blackmagic eGPUs of yore is wildly underrated in describing its value to developers. The display, it's fantastic $1000 stand, and the Blackmagic products (that greatly enhance performance of Intel-based macs) are completely buried under hair pulling around sticker price.
brailsafe 5y ago
I prefer the 30" dimension of the OG cinema display nobody cuttin panels like that at 5k
joeman1000 5y ago
To the author: get some glasses and stop being stubborn! The screen will look even nicer if you do. I held out for years and I curse myself for it. I don’t get headaches from squinting and craning my neck now. Also, out of curiosity, why is your laptop keyboard covered with paper? Bonus: why this display over a cheaper M1 iMac?
- jwalton 5y ago
  Or, buy a different 5K monitor? Apple is not the only game in town here.
  - throwaway684936 5y ago
    You mean that one LG panel that's basically the same thing but with build quality issues?
  - joeman1000 5y ago
    Because Apple stuff is basically guaranteed to be excellent. I’m over playing the lotto with whatever washed out garbage Acer/HP/Lenovo/BenQ/whatever want to put out for a monitor these days. Whatever Apple has been doing in the last ten years with their panels is great and I’ll stick with it. The panel on my ‘21 MBP (M1 Pro) is the best screen I’ve ever laid eyes on.
- shadowfacts 5y ago
  The glasses thing is a simile. As for why not an iMac? Presumably because he doesn't want an iMac. He could prefer a laptop, or still need Intel, or want a bigger screen, or some other reason.
- brirec 5y ago
  > Also, out of curiosity, why is your laptop keyboard covered with paper? I came here to ask the important question, but you asked for me. Seconded.
radley 5y ago
The Bjango team posted a chart for best monitors based on resolution: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/
zydex 5y ago
Note since I haven’t seen it mentioned; the power cable is in fact detachable, it just requires an unnaturally high level of force to remove.
veidr 5y ago
> As soon as I started using the Studio Monitor it felt like I had put glasses on. Every other screen looks blurry now. This is literally how I felt about moving from these 27" 5K screens (I had Apple's iMac Pro and also a couple LG UltraFine external monitors), when I moved to a 31.5" 8K screen (Dell UP3218K). The difference is every bit as dramatic as going 4K → 5K. I had literally just gotten my first prescription glasses a month before getting the 8K. I don't need them at all on the 8K; I put them back on when I use these horrid, blurry 5K panels — panels that I used to love, mind you, and proclaimed "I think these are good enough; with my middle-aged eyesight I don't need anything better." I was dead wrong.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- veidr 5y ago
  It's more like 220ppi vs 280ppi (thanks https://www.sven.de/dpi https://www.sven.de/dpi !) and the difference is way, way bigger than I thought. In fact it is the biggest improvment in text-reading ergonomics I have ever experienced from a monitor upgrade, and that includes 4K → 5K. I can't even see the pixels at 220ppi on a 5K, so I thought I didn't need any higher. But in fact, what I see is fuzz. Just a bit, and it's very small and I could live with it... until I saw the 8K at 280ppi. For a few weeks I had them side by side so I asked serveral non-nerds (no other nerds were available, due to the ongoing pandemic). Every person agreed the 8K monitor "looks clearer". (Oops looks like the comment I am replying to was deleted, but anyway I will leave this additional info anyway.)
  - ksec 5y ago
    I thought Apple was moving towards 250PPI when they released their M1 MacBook Pro, and ditching 220PPI standards they have been using on Mac for 10+ years. And the differences are much more dramatic in complex character languages like Chinese and Japanese.
- awiesenhofer 5y ago
  I still dream about getting one of those - do you use it at 2x scaling? And how do you drive that thing?

113 points by carlesfe 5y ago

For me it's inconceivable to go back to a 60hz monitor in 2022 - using one feels like something is broken, just scrolling code or website is wrong. The fact that apple ships a 60hz monitor for the amount of money they ask for is.....silly.

mikl 5y ago

“Man doesn’t bite dog” isn’t much of a headline. The Studio Display is great. Not cheap, but if you sit in front of a screen all day, and you enjoy a good 5K display, definitely worth it. The great loudspeakers and microphone system is an added bonus, and the camera is good, if not great.

yakkityyak 5y ago

I prefer running two 144hz 27” 4k monitors instead. Yeah the 5k to 4k scaling isn’t as crisp as native 2x, but god the high refresh rate really makes up for it.

goosedragons 5y ago
Yeah I was wondering this. Would they be ok with 4K scaled to look like 1440p? In my experience it's not too noticeable and still looks better than native 1440p even on Mac. The other big gotcha this monitor has is that like every monitor Apple has made for the past 20 years it only has a single input. It's really tough to find another monitor these days that doesn't have multiple and just can't see any real upside to not having at least an HDMI port (for your Apple TV of course) available.
wodenokoto 5y ago
Is 144hz useful for anything other than gaming?
- goosedragons 5y ago
  Yes, scrolling, mousing, etc. just feels nicer. I wouldn't say it's necessary but neither is 5K.
- dandellion 5y ago
  It's also better for watching videos at 2x speed.
- poyu 5y ago
  All the new M1 MBPs (and the iPad Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro) have 120hz refresh rate. Not exactly 144hz but it matters enough that they put that on the whole product line.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
I really wish I'd never seen a screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate, I've not been able to un-see the difference from my 60 Hz setup ever since! I've done the same with audio, having bought a decent-ish set of speakers makes everything else sound like arse as much as it makes your music sound good.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I hear this all the time but across the room from my 60hz XDR is one of the fastest IPS panels ever, a 360hz e-Sports oriented monitor and a 144hz 4k monitor... It takes no appreciable time to adjust when switching between any of the three. Maybe for a split second I notice the mouse cursor and then... nothing. If I were gaming on the XDR it'd be one thing, but it's a productivity monitor. I don't need 144hz (or more) to watch text scroll, and the improved pixel density is 100x more satisfying for productivity usage. In fact if anything I'd say going from 6k to 4k is what's more jarring than going from high refresh to low...
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    I feel the same. I have a 240hz AW2721D, 120hz M1 Pro MBP, and a 60hz iMac and adjusting between them is entirely unnoticeable, even though the difference is smoothness is easily visible. Similarly, I see a lot of upset over mouse acceleration curves but I adjust to differences within 5-10 seconds of switching at most and forget about it.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      Samish set up, same thing. I never notice.
- kinghtown 5y ago
  I recently got a 32 inch LG monitor with 144hz refresh rate for about $375. It’s qhd/2k, and VA panel.. honestly I’m in love with it. At the store I had a really difficult time seeing a big difference from my display or a 4k 27 inch. I feel like tons of people can be very happy and save a bit money if they would just trust their own eyes. Like I don’t doubt the apple display is better but $1000 better?? doubt it.
brailsafe 5y ago
I'm surprised about this. I ran a high refresh rate monitor for a while, but I didn't really notice or care in day to day usage compared to picture quality. It was a big meh from me. Nice to have, but wouldn't trade even minor picture quality improvements. I have a 30" 2560x1600 display atm, and definitely wouldn't trade either the quality or the real estate for refresh rate. I'd also take auto KVM over refresh rate, or usb-c single cable docking over refresh rate, but it would still be nice to have

ignacioaal 5y ago

I’ve been researching good monitors to upgrade from my Acer UM.CX2AA.P01 34” When the studio display got released I started to get excited. After all the reviews I’ve read I will definitely NOT buy it. Thanks for writing this! Planning on saving up until the Pro Display XDR gets updated and getting that instead.

awiesenhofer 5y ago
Rumors say there could be a ProMotion capable display in the works, to be released in the fall. Might be the successor to the Pro XDR (at a lower price hopefully).
- i386 5y ago
  I highly doubt that you’ll be seeing a 120hz apple monitor in this price range this year. It’s a bit cute that most reviewers panned this display because it wasn’t the Pro XDR display at this price,
  - bredren 5y ago
    A sibling to the XDR offering pro motion would be 10k without the stand. I think tech reviews of anything monitor and graphics related on the Apple side of things have generally been bad takes for a while. (panning of Blackmagic eGPUs, XDR) I think people got confused by the availability of retina displays on iPhone/iPad and laptops.
turtlebits 5y ago
34" 1440p is a great form factor but the PPI is pretty bad. I'm considering 5k2k (2160p) ultrawides, but holding out to see if anything new comes out (both available 5k2k monitors are several years old now).

ysleepy 5y ago

They sort of imply that only the Studio display would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that. Then he concludes that 600nits is unnecessary and that he doesn't need or want the USB-C ports. I have no idea why he went with the apple display instead of any good 4k screen for 400$, or two of them.

JofArnold 5y ago
5k. Not 4k. It's a huge difference; 2x 1080 versus 2x 1440.
shadowfacts 5y ago
I can't speak for the author, but I find 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of screen real estate (and physical size for UI elements). Unless it's a small 21" display, 4k at high-DPI would result in less screen space. Going up to 5k is the best way to get that combination of real estate and pixel density.
- ysleepy 5y ago
  1000$ worth of difference? - Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper?
  - mistersquid 5y ago
    > Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper? The LG Ultrafine 5K is notorious for its high unreliability (WiFi interference), low build quality (creaky plastic), and low durability (flaky ports). The target market for Apple Studio Display does not look to trade price for lower quality. Rather, Apple's target market are premium buyers, people looking to pay a bit more for higher quality.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Not only is the UltraFine 5k’s chassis creaky, it can’t handle the heat the display produces and has an extremely high rate of cracking with pieces flaking off. The whole product is abysmal in terms of quality, I don’t know how LG thought it was ok to release.

wodenokoto 5y ago

It does sound like there are alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei_2sWzzar0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei_2sWzzar0 It's super disappointing that the pro colorist chooses LG over the Mac (and someone at dell must be super sad to see their $4k screen lose to a "cheap" apple monitor!) as you'd expect Apple to fuss over such details and go all in on calibrating monitors before shipping. But it looks like they didn't calibrate anything. Monitor, sound or camera.

jmull 5y ago
In that video, doesn’t the pro colorist basically call it a tie between the 5K LG and 5K ASD after turning off the “true tone” feature? (Not surprising since they use very similar, if not identical LG panels.)

marcellus23 5y ago

My understanding is that the webcam issue has been essentially (not officially) confirmed as being a software bug. Which makes this kind of vitriol pretty unnecessary: > There is a product manager at Apple who, for some reason, hates webcam users with a burning passion. It also makes perfect sense, since the actual specs of the camera should be giving a much better picture.

Tepix 5y ago
The author has a point though, it's highly mysterious how this slipped past QA
ibero 5y ago
I think the "vitriol" is perfectly valid. Vague statements of "it will get better in the future" are non-binding and leave lots of wiggle room. Let's be honest, the monitor does like two things that Apple claims justify the inclusion of the A13 (and the whopping 64 internal memory): the camera and sound. Everyone who has used the product turns on the camera and instantly knows its garbage. Either Apple somehow got caught unaware or they thought it was good enough.
chrisshroba 5y ago
I took that more as poking fun than as true vitriol against a real-life product manager.
sharms 5y ago
On a technical level the webcam resolution is low, and center stage adds additional cropping. This problem may not have a software fix unfortunately
coder543 5y ago
Since it supports Center Stage, the camera is actually seeing an extremely wide field of view, and then cropping in to show a more normal view. This naturally means the resolution is going to suffer, and gone are any hopes of the optics being good enough to provide even the tiniest background separation. Even if they fix some ISP issue, the webcam quality seems unlikely to ever be good, but it might become acceptable. It's trivial to find people complaining about the quality of center stage online[0], although it seems like reviewers were mostly wowed by the novelty of the feature, and not how it looks in day to day usage. Apple doesn't want to talk about the resolution of Center Stage, but when zoomed all the way out... you're limited to 1080p30. It crops significantly into that 1080p image during normal use, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at an effective resolution of 480p or worse. Given how much space they have on the monitor, and how much they're charging for the monitor, I wish they would have done something cool like having the Center Stage camera and a better quality normal camera. Center Stage is only useful when there are multiple people, or you can't stay still for some reason... and neither of those apply to 99% of Zoom calls I've seen in the past several years. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_front_camera_is_grainy_and_pixelated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/nypvug/m1_ipad_pros_f...

Gualdrapo 5y ago

Imho the Apple Thunderbolt Display is still a great (and way much cheaper) alternative for those of us who can't care less about refresh rate or pixel density. If this one had a bigger size (say, 32 inches) and a more 'squared' ratio, I'd consider it an upgrade.

tksb 5y ago
Couldn't agree more if I wanted to. I've long used the 30" Cinema displays as they were trivial to find used for pennies. I spent a week mulling over the Studio display as it's nearly what I'd been hoping for. Found a Thunderbolt display (+ 2018 Mac mini) for a couple hundred dollars locally. My only annoyance is that I can't use the MagSafe connector built into the display cable…
Tepix 5y ago
The pixel density of a 4K+ monitor makes all the difference, however. Text is much nicer to read.
turtlebits 5y ago
The thing is, a lot of people care about pixel density. That said, I'm not willing to pay $1600. Hopefully other manufacturers see the demand for 5k and produce cheaper (quality) alternatives.

asciimov 5y ago

It seems like those writing about this monitor are like "look it's got all these problems, but at least it doesn't have a notch so I'm keeping it."

jmull 5y ago
This reviewer has three "cons". (1) stand too low; (2) screen is glossy; (3) speakers have too much bass for video conferences. (1) and (2) are addressed by the options Apple provides, so they are really complaints about the price (and those options are pricy!). (3) seems pretty minor (notice the author also has the speakers in the "pros" column) and can maybe be addressed with a basic equalizer of some some. In other words, all three cons are actually tradeoffs, which exist for all options (these are an individual call we all need to make).
- sp332 5y ago
  Also the camera is bad.
  - jmull 5y ago
    That looks like a temporary software issue.
    - coder543 5y ago
      Disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30880057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30880057
      - jmull 5y ago
        Sure, but it should be perfectly possible to improve it to the level of the front-facing camera on the iPad Pro, which has an "ultra-wide" camera for "center stage" as well.
        coder543 5y ago

egypturnash 5y ago

Shoulda gotten the version with the VESA mount adaptor and just hooked it to whatever nice monitor arm he has. I wonder if you can buy it separately and attach it. Looks like not, there's several big screwheads visible in the photo of the back on Apple's page that don't have corresponding holes in the backs of the other versions. Damn that sure is an Apple move; the Dell monitor I spent $500 on a decade ago came with a crappy low stand that hooks into the VESA mount on the back, which is now hooked to a nice Ergotron arm. It looks like the version with the VESA mount costs as much as the base model, plus a few hundred for a nice desk arm/wall mount/etc if you don't have one already holding up your current screen.

ArmandGrillet 5y ago
Where do you find VESA mounts that look the same as what you get with e.g. an LG 27UP850? All the ones I find online are ugly and badly-reviewed VESA mounts made of glossy plastic or arms which are not what I'm looking for (I want a classic mount).
turtlebits 5y ago
They probably couldn't/wouldn't wait. I looked at the VESA version when the display was announced and it was backordered until mid-May.

Tepix 5y ago

I bought a very slightly used Iiyama 5K monitor (XB2779QQS-S1 with Displayport 1.4) for 450€. While it does have some stuck pixels, they are so tiny that you only notice them when you are looking for them. 1800€ is insane. I also use a 27" 4K monitor. The difference between the two isn't that great. 5K is mostly useful for 4K video editing. PS: It sounds as if the author would have had a great experience with a 350€ 4K monitor, too.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Considering the number of people out there making enormous salaries doing jobs on computers, spending 10+ hours a day looking at their screen, 1800€ does not sound insane at all. Same thing applies to any tool of any trade. I work with surgeons, and you would be amazed how unfathomably expensive all their instruments are. (Though to be fair I do all my work on a pair of 100€ monitors.)
- VectorLock 5y ago
  Do the surgeons buy their own instruments? I figure they'd belong to the hospital.
  - voltaireodactyl 5y ago
    In my experience it is a fractional minority of surgeons who work from home.
- Tepix 5y ago
  I agree that spending a lot of money on something you use a lot makes sense. Heck, i'm waiting for my Keyboardio model 100 to ship. My point was that Apple's monitor is not 4x better than this monitor, so the relative price seems very high and not justified, even by Apple's standards.
ysleepy 5y ago
Does that one work with one DP 1.4 port or do you need two to drive it at 60Hz?

radley 5y ago

The LG 5K has all the benefits of Retina 5K and most likely is the exact same panel. The biggest downside is the slower USB-C ports (5GB vs 10GB). The camera isn't technically as good as Apple's, but it also doesn't rely on Apple software. It can raise/lower and tilt without paying $400 extra. It has a black plastic frame which doesn't look as nice, but the glass won't chip if you bump your laptop into the side. If I didn't already have an LG 5K, I'd buy the Apple Studio monitor. I used my previous Thunderbolt Display for over a decade. That should be sufficient time for someone at Apple to fix the camera bug.

miohtama 5y ago
Why is the camera so bad in Apple Studio Display, as the article claims? iPhone and iPad cameras are quite good. Edit: Found in the comments a claim it’s a software bug.
- bgentry 5y ago
  In addition to the software bug, they also used a dated camera module from the front-facing camera on the iPhone 11. They could have used the higher quality rear-facing camera from the iPhone 13, or the front-facing camera part from the iPhone 13, or even (god forbid) a single rear-facing camera part from the iPhone 13 / Pro for the best quality. The iPhone 13 Pro contains 3 of these rear-facing cameras with far better quality, and 1 front-facing camera that also has far better quality. Absolute best case scenario, they are able to fix software issues and bring the camera quality to be equivalent to the front-facing iPhone 11 camera. But why stuff an outdated camera part into a brand new $1600 display 2 years after COVID made us all spend so much of our days on video calls? It seems not just short-sighted but downright hostile toward customers as this one points out.
  - sp332 5y ago
    I think they went with the front-facing part for the field of view.
Tagbert 5y ago
LG owners complain about uneven light levels, edge bleeding, failing ports, and a wobbly stand. The Apple Studio display at $300 more gives you a monitor with higher built standards.

go_prodev 5y ago

You need to upgrade that book to "PHP Brilliance" which has a lovely diamond on the cover. It will complete the look! /s

convolvatron 5y ago

curious about the keyboard in the last image. extra keys under space?

0xCMP 5y ago
I found what I think it is: https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090 https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090
E39M5S62 5y ago
They are right/left/middle buttons for the mouse. The keyboard is a 'Tex Shinobi' https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=6169 https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_det...

lastofthemojito 5y ago

I'm still weirded out by the fact that it has an entire computer in it. I mean, I'm sure other monitors have CPUs to drive their menus and all, but this has an entire A13 SoC - the same thing as an iPhone 11 or 9th gen iPad. I'm curious to see what hacks emerge - like, can you turn this expensive monitor into a budget iMac, or a giant iPad (without touch input)?

cudgy 5y ago
Would love to turn my 2014 5k iMac into a smart display as well, but Apple has prevented use of it as a display only. Any solutions out there?

jasonpbecker 5y ago

My only quibble with this review is the USB-A port thing. 6 devices is a lot, but even if that were the real number, if the problem is the type-C connector, you can buy very inexpensive cables or even "caps" (like $5 maybe each) to get your USB-A device into a type C port. This is a thing on your desk, so there's no reason not to have it just plugged in all the time with a new, inexpensive cable, or have the cap on the end of your existing cable.

VectorLock 5y ago

The piece of paper on the MacBook with the cut out fo the TouchID is interesting. Is it because the keys are as ugly and scuffed as they are on my MBP and you can't stand to look at them?

terr-dav 5y ago
Or a dust cover?

hadjian 5y ago

This might be a bit off-topic, but since we’re talking big screens: I also have a 27“ display. I mostly work with emacs and a couple of shells, both in the kitty terminal. For emacs, this is great, but for a terminal, it really feels dumb, if you have a 3x2 terminal window and write something into the lower left one. It’s so far at the bottom and you have this huge real estate… I started to use a 1x3 terminal window. The bottom row is where I can glance at and the top one is where I swap out the terminal windows. Anyone know of a new paradime for text based computing one huge screens? Sounds too niche, right? ;-)

dainiusse 5y ago

Honestly I just dont understand why would one buy a 27" display these days. 32" makes much more sense

treesknees 5y ago
How about desk space? The author says he's replacing his existing 27-inch monitor. If you look at the final photo in the article, I don't believe he could fit a 32-inch monitor in the same place and keep his existing desk layout the same.
yoz-y 5y ago
A lot of us don’t like such massive screens. For me 27” is ideal.
Syzygies 5y ago
Yes. I ordered a $5K Mac Studio for parallel Haskell computing, but not the monitor. My favorite monitor is: EIZO FlexScan EV3285 31.5" 16:9 IPS Monitor (Black) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1450642-REG/eizo_ev3285fx_bk_31_5_4k_ultra_slim_frame.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1450642-REG/eizo_ev32... $1,839
Tagbert 5y ago
I would not want a low resolution (4K) 32" screen. Text would be less sharp. If you could find a 32" 6K for a reasonable price that would be sweet. If you are watching videos or playing games, resolution is not significant, but if you are working with text, resolution is more important than absolute size or refresh rate.
hyakosm 5y ago
The only 32 inch monitor at >200 dpi in the market is the Pro Display XDR. All other are 4K (138 dpi).
nickm12 5y ago
HiDPI. If you want HiDPI in a 32" display, Apple has the Pro Display XDR for $5000, but that is quite an expensive display.

D13Fd 5y ago

I don't particularly like the Apple Studio Display, but this post is wrong on the ergonomics. Generally the top of your monitor should sit at or just below eye level.

sp332 5y ago
Doesn't that mean you have your head slouched forward most of the time? I think that's just painful.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Indeed, I’ve had my desk set up to have the middle of my screen line up with my eyes to keep my neck straight. When I have to use a more traditional setup that has my face tilting down a bit, my neck quickly tells me to stop.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    What works for you is what works for you, but I don’t think putting the middle of the screen at eye level is good advice for most people. Moving the head is indeed a bad thing, but you’re not supposed to tilt the head down, only the eyes. All ergonomic advice says to put the top of the screen 5 to 10 cm above eye level so that the eyes can move to any spot on the screen comfortably without having to tilt the head. It is straining on the eyes to look up, so having the top of the screen too far above eye level causes people to tilt their head backwards to look at the top of the screen. I used to raise my screens and had exactly this problem, with lots of shoulder and neck aches. Now that my screen is at the ergonomic height I can work entire days without having neck or shoulder discomfort.
- tehnub 5y ago
  It means your head/neck is straight, but your eyes glance slightly downwards. I believe I read in some ergonomics article that the natural, most comfortable gaze position of the eye is not straight ahead, but slightly down.
  - 5y ago

NAR8789 5y ago

> for video conferences it makes every person sound like James Earl Jones. I think there's a typo here. This should go in the "Pros" section

CoastalCoder 5y ago
Morgan Freeman would like a word with you.

yoz-y 5y ago

I wish they made the screen 120hz and support hdmi or display port. 5K@27” has the sweet advantage of integer downscaling to 1440p, which is quite ideal for games unless you have a really top of the line graphics card.

Tagbert 5y ago
the bandwidth of 120Hz/5K is too high for current Thunderbolt connections. It does support 120Hz/4K but the higher resolution puts it over the edge. It is the same reason that the Apple XDR display is 60Hz/6K. Bandwidth limits. If you are interested in games, you likely don't want a high resolution monitor anyway. Those of us who do need the higher res of 5K value that above refresh rate and are likely not going to play any games on what is more of a work screen. Different use cases.
- xoa 5y ago
  Yes, it's very unfortunate that silicon photonics never hit critical mass. It's intensely painful to constantly see these bandwidth limitations run into and have to deal with ludicrously expensive active cables with extremely short lengths because of the stubborn sticking to copper, when plain old cheap OM3 will cheerfully do 100 Gbps at hundreds of feet. Someday I hope to see the last of copper for data. That said, if Apple really wanted to they could definitely do a multistream system like some of the bleeding edge High DPI screens did way back when. Require two Thunderbolt connections to drive it. But whether these 5K panels actually even can be driven at 120 Hz is another question and always a balancing act in this stuff particularly since presumably companies of Apple's scale have a bit of a clearer picture of what's in the pipe.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    If optical material is as cheap as you say it is, then why are optical cables so expensive? A few meters can run for hundreds of dollars.
    - xoa 5y ago

r00fus 5y ago

I don't have any USB-A requirements on my desk now that I got a new USB-C enclosure for my local backup disk - however, USB-A ports are still useful for most of the userbase... did this monitor team not get the memo about ports being back in vogue for Apple?

conk 5y ago
At this point I see no reason to continue putting USB A ports in products. Continuing to include them is only going to prolong the transition to USB C. The great thing about USB is the protocol is the same for different connector types so you can use a $5 adapter to easily plug an older USB A device into a USB C port.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Including a USB-A port on a monitor is easy: there's loads of space. It allows the user to continue using their existing devices without needing adaptors. Offering only USB-C forces additional purchases and the resulting e-waste, so it's no surprise at all that Apple does this.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    Either way mass adoption of USB-C will end in e-waste.
  - conk 5y ago
    If they include a USB A port then it forces users who have USB C cables to purchase adapters and results in more e-waste. Is there loads of space in the display? Looks like apple is packing quite a bit into a slim display profile. Not to mention, ports with different dimensions/heights require additional fixturing and likely additional PCBs or connectors to work. It’s not as easy as slapping a few more ports in the display. Sure a company the size of apple can add more ports. But it’s far easier to line up 4x usb C connectors. And likely makes for less ewaste. Personally I’d rather have an RJ45/Ethernet port built in over USB A ports. The monitor is going to sit on a desk it might as well be hardwired to the local network.

auto 5y ago

> Therefore, this beautiful piece of hardware now stands on top of an ugly PHP reference manual. This is the way.

ilovecaching 5y ago

We're living in the past, and it's terrible you have to choose between high DPI and high refresh rates. Buy a high DPI monitor and edit text for an hour and you can never go back. Play a game at 144hz and you can never go back. But you can't have both at the same time, and that's not even mentioning the beauty of doing all of this on an Ultrawide. Either way you're going to be shelling out a fortune and waiting or top of the line graphics cards which will only be getting more expensive. I thought I was young enough to be living past the era of dial up, but now I realize my own dial up is the display.

maximus-decimus 5y ago
DisplayPort needs lossy compression to run 4k at 144Hz. Not even talking about gpus being able to run that. The display is just not the bottleneck here.

dbg31415 5y ago

Guy was on a non-4k Monitor saying the Apple Studio 5k was more crisp. Oof. For me... I like 2 monitors. Just one is a huge loss to productivity. I like 4k Monitors. Anything less is unusable. I like 144hz monitors. I like matching monitors. I find that if I mix 4k and 1080p I am prone to headaches. I like monitors where the top is roughly eye level, or even a little bit higher, when I'm sitting down. I feel this helps my posture. I hate monitors with any sort of light on them that's not coming from the screen. Power lights on the front that are on when I use the monitor make them unusable for me. I just go with whatever 2 monitors I can afford that match the above criteria. I expect to pay $750 to $1,000 per monitor. So $1500 to $2000 when I buy new monitors. I expect the monitors will last around 3 years... likely they can be re-homed after, but like most things I don't think they hold up for me personally after that time. I couldn't ever afford 2x Apple Studio Displays... I mean... even if I could, I would have more sense. At one point in the past, about 5-7 years back, the job bought me 2x Apple Thunderbolt Display... and frankly it was nice, but the monitors were so low to the desk they had to be stacked on reams of printer paper to make them usable. I thought it was funny the company spent like $3k on monitors and I still had stacks of printer paper on my desk.

criddell 5y ago
> I expect the monitors will last around 3 years... That's it? What is it that fails for you? My current monitor (a cheap Dell) is more than ten years old and it gets used every day. I was thinking paying close to $2000 for a monitor isn't that bad because it's an important piece of equipment and they last a long time. It's the same logic I use to buy office furniture.
- moduspol 5y ago
  The value tends to hold a lot better, too. I just sold my old 27" Thunderbolt Display on Facebook Marketplace for $200 earlier today. Apple stopped selling it in 2016. I think I bought mine in 2014, but recovering $200 on an eight year-old discontinued monitor isn't bad.
- dbg31415 5y ago
  I find that the brightness either fades, or I perceive it to have faded due to new tech coming out and looking better. Dunno, just in my head I've got a "computer shit lasts about 3 years before it becomes unreliable" concept. I could be wrong. And I do re-home almost all my shit to my parents, and they tend to get use out of it. I know my 4k Samsung monitors that I got off Woot last time around (for like $375 each) were probably on the low-end of things. They only had 60hz refresh rates. But like, to me, I felt the contrast and colors started to go. Since they were matching and had identical color settings, once the colors no longer matched between them it felt like they failed to me. But... split them up, give one to Mom, one to Dad... nobody has complained. I'm probably too fussy.

taylodl 5y ago

Wow. Just checked the Apple site and this guy is right, Apple wants $400 for a height-adjustable monitor stand! Why? Also the web cam is crap? Really? Okay, maybe it's not as bad as $699 for wheels for the Mac Pro, but that isn't right either! Consider that Apple is selling the iPhone SE for the same price that they're selling an height-adjustable monitor stand and less than for what they're charging for wheels! Can anyone explain this pricing?

hn_version_0023 5y ago
> Can anyone explain this pricing? Greed?
- cudgy 5y ago
  Manufacturing consent in manufacturing
tinus_hn 5y ago
The basic explanation is that they sell it for what the target market will pay. You will not pay the price they sell it for but you are not the target market. And you can bet they looked at what the result would be if they sold it for less. They’d probably sell more, but ultimately profit less.

tzs 5y ago

> Apple, if you ship a monitor with a non-adjustable stand in 2022, please make sure that the default height is at an ergonomic level. It should be at least 5-8 centimeters higher. That's terrible advice. For a non-adjustable stand it needs to be at or near the lowest that people would want, because it is way easier to raise a fixed stand that is too low by putting something under it than it is to lower a fixed stand that is too high. (At least when the stand base is a simple rectangle--it might be harder on monitors that have narrow crescent bases). Bricks are cheap [1] and would be great for raising such a monitor. According to the specs at Apple the top of the monitor when on the non-adjustable stand is 47.8 cm above your desk. They don't give the bezel size but I've seen reviews say it is about 1/2", and that looks reasonable from the photos, so call it 1.3 cm. That would put the top of the screen at 46.5 cm. I just measured my 27" iMac, which has the same size screen and a non-adjustable stand. The iMac top of screen is 49.5 cm about the desk. I found the iMac a little too high. I ended up getting larger wheels [2] for my chair to effectively lower the iMac and putting a pillow on my chair to get a little more height for myself to make the iMac relatively lower. (Those are great wheels BTW. Unlike regular chair wheels these do not seem to end up clogged with hair wrapped around the axles). [1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/8-in-x-2-1-4-in-x-4-in-Clay-Brick-RED0126MCO/100323015 https://www.homedepot.com/p/8-in-x-2-1-4-in-x-4-in-Clay-Bric... [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGZPOK2/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGZPOK2/

hackernewds 5y ago
Why use brakes when you can use books? :) adjustable height, differing thickness, ETC
- Tagbert 5y ago
  In our office when we had the earlier Thunderbolt displays, which had the same tendency to be too low, everyone used reams of copier paper to raise them a couple of inches.
Joeri 5y ago
I’ve never really understood how so many people could come to the conclusion that the 5K iMac was too low. An ideal ergonomic screen height is the top of the screen 5 to 10 cm above eye level, and I’ve always wondered what kind of desk setups people have where it ends up way below that to the point that it needs raising. If anything the 5K iMac was a few cm too tall, and it is a good thing the studio display is lower.

hyakosm 5y ago

I remember when bigger monitors had higher resolution. 15 inch monitors were 1024x768, 17 inch were typically 1280x1024 and some 20 inch monitors 1600x1200. Now nearly every panel from 13 inch to 32 inch are "4K" UHD with the exception of 24 inch monitors stuck at 1920x1080, it's sad because true HiDPI options (> 200 dpi) are extremely limited: two Apple screens, two LG screens and one Dell 8K 32 inch screen for PCs.

jefftk 5y ago
> nearly every panel from 13 inch to 32 inch are "4K" UHD with the exception of 24 inch monitors stuck at 1920x1080 I use a Dell Ultrasharp 27" [1] which is 2560x1440. I think this is pretty common for 27" monitors? I find that this is great at 1x resolution. [1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-monitor-u2722d/apd/210-ayze/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-moni...
colechristensen 5y ago
This isn't really the case. Monitors tend to have three categories, 1080 rows, 1440 rows, and 4k columns (which is actually 3840 x 2160) Shopping for monitors will find a fair balance of each and a few outliers. Vertical lines reported for 1080 and 1440 because there are quite a few aspect ratio options which will have varying numbers of pixel columns.

bredren 5y ago

> Its only competitor is the LG UltraFine, which is not much cheaper and lacks other features. If you want a 5K retina display the Studio Display is the best choice. At this price range. The XDR is a credible competitor to the Studio Display and if you read reviews from people who have adopted it for their primary development workstations, they are holding on to those as well. The XDR Pro Display, like the Blackmagic eGPUs of yore is wildly underrated in describing its value to developers. The display, it's fantastic $1000 stand, and the Blackmagic products (that greatly enhance performance of Intel-based macs) are completely buried under hair pulling around sticker price.

brailsafe 5y ago

I prefer the 30" dimension of the OG cinema display nobody cuttin panels like that at 5k

joeman1000 5y ago

To the author: get some glasses and stop being stubborn! The screen will look even nicer if you do. I held out for years and I curse myself for it. I don’t get headaches from squinting and craning my neck now. Also, out of curiosity, why is your laptop keyboard covered with paper? Bonus: why this display over a cheaper M1 iMac?

jwalton 5y ago
Or, buy a different 5K monitor? Apple is not the only game in town here.
- throwaway684936 5y ago
  You mean that one LG panel that's basically the same thing but with build quality issues?
- joeman1000 5y ago
  Because Apple stuff is basically guaranteed to be excellent. I’m over playing the lotto with whatever washed out garbage Acer/HP/Lenovo/BenQ/whatever want to put out for a monitor these days. Whatever Apple has been doing in the last ten years with their panels is great and I’ll stick with it. The panel on my ‘21 MBP (M1 Pro) is the best screen I’ve ever laid eyes on.
shadowfacts 5y ago
The glasses thing is a simile. As for why not an iMac? Presumably because he doesn't want an iMac. He could prefer a laptop, or still need Intel, or want a bigger screen, or some other reason.
brirec 5y ago
> Also, out of curiosity, why is your laptop keyboard covered with paper? I came here to ask the important question, but you asked for me. Seconded.

radley 5y ago

The Bjango team posted a chart for best monitors based on resolution: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/ https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/

zydex 5y ago

Note since I haven’t seen it mentioned; the power cable is in fact detachable, it just requires an unnaturally high level of force to remove.

veidr 5y ago

> As soon as I started using the Studio Monitor it felt like I had put glasses on. Every other screen looks blurry now. This is literally how I felt about moving from these 27" 5K screens (I had Apple's iMac Pro and also a couple LG UltraFine external monitors), when I moved to a 31.5" 8K screen (Dell UP3218K). The difference is every bit as dramatic as going 4K → 5K. I had literally just gotten my first prescription glasses a month before getting the 8K. I don't need them at all on the 8K; I put them back on when I use these horrid, blurry 5K panels — panels that I used to love, mind you, and proclaimed "I think these are good enough; with my middle-aged eyesight I don't need anything better." I was dead wrong.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
veidr 5y ago
It's more like 220ppi vs 280ppi (thanks https://www.sven.de/dpi https://www.sven.de/dpi !) and the difference is way, way bigger than I thought. In fact it is the biggest improvment in text-reading ergonomics I have ever experienced from a monitor upgrade, and that includes 4K → 5K. I can't even see the pixels at 220ppi on a 5K, so I thought I didn't need any higher. But in fact, what I see is fuzz. Just a bit, and it's very small and I could live with it... until I saw the 8K at 280ppi. For a few weeks I had them side by side so I asked serveral non-nerds (no other nerds were available, due to the ongoing pandemic). Every person agreed the 8K monitor "looks clearer". (Oops looks like the comment I am replying to was deleted, but anyway I will leave this additional info anyway.)
- ksec 5y ago
  I thought Apple was moving towards 250PPI when they released their M1 MacBook Pro, and ditching 220PPI standards they have been using on Mac for 10+ years. And the differences are much more dramatic in complex character languages like Chinese and Japanese.
awiesenhofer 5y ago
I still dream about getting one of those - do you use it at 2x scaling? And how do you drive that thing?