> 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).
Best advice. Those things are totally worth it. My work setup is an iMac with a VESA arm, adjustable to any height, distance and angle that I prefer on any given day. I can even improvise a standing-desk setup simply by getting out of the chair, adjusting the monitor arm, and placing the keyboard/mouse on a laptop stand on the desk.
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.
Because it depends on torso height too and that varies from person to person? What's a few cm too tall for you could easily be 5 cm too short for me. This combined with different chairs and different table heights results in different eye level points.
I don't understand why Apple is just so cheap here. On a $200 monitor you can maybe make the case it shouldn't be height adjustable to save a few bucks, on a $1600 one it's just inexcusable.
Interesting, you and the poster you are replying to are the only people I’ve ever heard saying the 27” iMac is too high. Perhaps the difference is where your keyboard and mouse are located? If they are under the desktop on a keyboard tray, then your desktop height is effectively a few inches higher than it otherwise would be, and so is the iMac. But if the iMac is sitting on the same surface as the mouse and keyboard, then you must just have an odd preference for looking at a downward angle or a very short torso?
I've been using a laptop as my primary computer for ~8 years now. Now I find it difficult (unergonomic) to go back to a normal monitor; I'm more comfortable with my head tilted down 20º. I wonder if laptop use leads to this preference for lower monitors.
In our office when we had the earlier Thunderbolt displays, which had the same tendency to be too low, everyone used reams of copier paper to raise them a couple of inches.
They sort of imply that only the Studio display would have given him a DPI increase over his previous 27" 1440p display. Any 4k screen would have also done that.
Then he concludes that 600nits is unnecessary and that he doesn't need or want the USB-C ports.
I have no idea why he went with the apple display instead of any good 4k screen for 400$, or two of them.
Maybe because he wanted a 27" display and not a 24" one? You wanna stick to integer DPI scaling for the most part, and at 2x scale, a 4k 27" display has way too big GUI elements.
There aren't many good options in the HiDPI 27" market, just half-measures like the 4k 27" screens you mention which require fractional scaling.
>at 2x scale, a 4k 27" display has way too big GUI elements
I've seen this said a lot. This is my setup, and I do not think the GUI elements are way too big. I find it to be a very comfortable computing experience, with very little eyestrain.
Wayland (as in the protocol) doesn't support it either, FWIW. Fractional scaling on compositors which support it (e.g Sway) renders everything at the nearest integer scale and then downscales when compositing, so everything becomes a bit blurry -- just like how macOS does it.
Using all vector graphics for the GUI so that you can freely change the scale is all well and good, but lots of GUI applications need raster graphics too. With integer scaling, you just have different image assets for the different scales. With fractional scaling, there isn't really a good solution; you could automatically downscale a higher resolution image, but then you get the blurriness problem.
GUIs also use lines a lot. If an application asks for 1pt wide lines, and you're at 1.5x scale, what do you do? Do you draw it at 1px wide, and end up with a line that's too light? Do you draw it at 2px line, and end up with one that's too heavy? Or do you make one line of pixels that's solid and one line of pixels that's at 50% opacity, which gives the right visual weight but makes it look blurry and messes up the positioning slightly? This probably isn't a huge problem, but it's the kind of problem that it makes sense if Apple wants to avoid.
X11 supports fractional DPI just fine, and Android, Windows, and even the web handle it fine.
If I zoom to 150% on a website, how wide will a 1px line be?
PDF handles that fine, the web handles it fine, Android handles it fine.
It's only in recent years that suddenly this has become an issue that "can't" be solved.
I honestly don't care if regular desktop apps waste performance, as long as Qt, Android, Electron, games etc are just rendered at the fractional resolution properly.
You can enable DPI scaling under GNOME and it works fine for the DE itself and most GNOME programs, but it’s extremely hit or miss for anything not GNOME. Same deal with KDE.
Really irritating because it makes my Thinkpad X1 Nano unusable under Linux. This is probably why macOS does things the way it does: no room for third party developer error.
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.
> 2560x1440 /logical/ pixels (what apple calls points) at 27" to be the ideal amount of [MacOS] screen real estate (and physical size for [MacOS] UI elements)
ftfy. Apple is double dealing you here. Apple developed MacOS to look best at that size/density, and forced the development of the few expensive displays are that size/density... After a decade waiting for third party displays to meet up their standard, to no avail, perhaps Apple should just modify the OS to better support other HiDPI displays available
Nah, that's not true. Linux also looks best at roughly that scale. Everything is way too big at 1080p@1x/4k@2x at 27" -- in both macOS and Linux. I'm not too sure about Windows, but given the fact that cross-platform apps like web browsers render everything at the same logical size across the systems, and the fact that browsers don't look hilariously out of place in Windows. I'm gonna assume that it applies to Windows as well.
I used to have a 27" 1080p monitor for my Linux box, now I have a 27" 1440p monitor and a 24" 1080p monitor. Everything looks less oversized now.
I don't know about 4k@27, but 1080@27 is indeed too big. The only thing I want to be big is the text - and icons maybe -, But I can't stomach big UI elements.
FWIW, 4k is 3840x2160, which is (19202)x(10802). So 4k@27 running at a 2x scale is exactly the same physical area per logical pixel as 1080p@27 running at a 1x scale.
I have a 1440p@27 monitor. That gives me enough real estate to actually use editors and IDE and have some real estate. I could probably do 4k, but maybe @32 inches and native resolution.
Yes, I made the reasonable assumption that anyone interested in an Apple display is using a Mac.
> Apple should just modify the OS to better support other HiDPI displays available
For a number of years[1][2], OS X did partially support fractional scaling. They ultimately decided the tradeoffs, as mentioned in other comments, weren't worth it and went integer-only[3]. Even if it were still supported, it wouldn't be a complete substitute for displays of appropriate pixel density for integer scaling.
I don't like the idea of my Mac OS being tainted by concessions to the hardware reality of the products the rest of the industry produces. Then there's no one at all to embarrass the state of the industry.
Windows supports non-integer DPI scaling. The typical riposte is many (most?) third party Windows programs don't support it* BUT many third party MacOS didn't support 'Retina' scaling for some time after launch either (I have more faith in MacOS developer system to jump on board if Apple added support)
True, though “no supporting” mainly meant that icons and images looked a little blurry because they were scaled up from 1x. The text and app layouts were fine.
> 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.
As a counterpoint, I absolutely love my LG Ultrafine 5k. I bought a second one even. Never had any issues at all, and I love taking video calls, doing design work, etc. on them.
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.
What's weird to me is it doesn't take a genius to guess at what an Apple monitor would have looked like.
Why can zero other companies execute on something like this? Sure Apple has advantages with scale, but it's not like they're squeezing tight margins. There was a lot of room under the cost of the Pro Display XDR.
I'm not sure why none of these other companies can really execute on high quality hardware.
Hell, just take the same LG panel that's used by both the LG UltraFine and the Apple Studio Display, put it in a well-built metal case, don't waste money on things like the A13 CPU, 64GB of flash, 13 megapixel camera, high-quality speaker system, etc, don't spend as many engineering resources on making the monitor as thin-and-light as possible. You could've made the standard monitor for anyone who wants a 5k 27" screen.
I don't understand why the only manufacturer in the 5k 27" screen market was LG for half a decade and now only LG and Apple. There should be so much room here.
IIRC there was a Dell monitor that used this panel too, but its availability was extremely brief and Dell EOL’d it not too long after release. I believe it had issues with waking from sleep and its picture blinking out sometimes, I guess they had QC issues with their driver board.
Maybe the demand isn’t there? There might not be a big intersect between those who are willing to spend > $1000 on a monitor and those who wouldn’t want to buy non-Apple hardware.
People say it is blurry but I think I have pretty good eyes and do a lot of pixel peeping and don’t really see the issue. I don’t think I’ve ever run macOS at the native resolution because things are just too big, with the exception of my 1080p monitor.
Where are you getting this? I was looking at monitors recently and it's impossible to find ANY 24" 4K monitors. Most of them are 27", which at that screen size you really need scaling. My LG 27" 4K recently went out so I downgraded to my older 1440p 27" monitor. I'm not using scaling anymore, but the text doesn't have that buttery smooth look...
I have a Dell 24" 4k, which I got about two years ago, and back then, only Dell and Asus had a 24" option. I have no idea why manufacturers are so insistent on selling 27" 4k monitors; 2x scaling looks too big, and non-integer scaling looks blurry because the resolution is too low for 27".
My theory is that most people, for all practical purposes, are blind.
Absolutely. That was my intention when I purchased the monitor, and it definitely delivered. I bought mine for $279. However, I had to return two of them because of a pronounced moire-like pattern created by the anti-reflective coating. The third one, the one I kept, still has a slightly visible pattern.
I spend most of my day watching a screen, and I want it to be perfect. Because of this, I would be tempted to buy the new Apple display. However, buying an iMac makes much more economic sense. I have no idea why display manufacturers can't get the details right.
Windows and Gnome look gorgeous at 2x rendering. macOS does too, but that's expected.
Well to compare devices used at similar distances... my XDR blows away my previous 27" 4k monitors and various 5k ultrawides.
I don't even use HDR, the density is just that good for looking at text all day. It takes on this milky quality that I haven't seen on any other monitor before this.
The complete lack of appreciable IPS glow or uniformity issues is also better than you might expect for text. Especially with dark backgrounds which will now present one impressively uniform block of color, improving contrast.
Same. I gave up Apple ever releasing an affordable standalone display last year and bought a 4k 27". I can't tell the difference between it and the 5k 27" panel on the iMac. It also has multiple inputs, and USB-A outputs.
Obviously there are people who need the higher PPI, but if you look at text all day I'd recommend giving 4k a try before spending 3-4x as much on a 5k. You can run the 4k display at 5k, the same way that you can run a MacBook Air at 2880x1800 even though it's really 2560x1600. Modern scaling algorithms are very good.
I use a 30" 4K monitor, and I still don't notice the DPI difference between it and my MacBook Pro or iPad.
Personally I would much rather that they made the display 4K and 120hz instead of 5k and 60hz. At that size, I don't see a big difference between 4K and 5k, but the 60hz vs. 120hz jump is very noticeable.
I'm of a different opinion. 120 Hz is nice to have, but it is not a quality of life improvement. The DPI increase of a 220+ DPI monitor is a game changer. Text on a screen becomes readable at 220+ DPI, and that's when I don't feel the need to print PDFs in order to read them at a high resolution (the cheapest $50 laser printer can achieve 600 DPI without a sweat).
Indistinguishable? The difference between 160 DPI and 220 is MASSIVE. 160 DPI makes me nauseous from the blur. I say this with all due respect, but have you checked your vision lately?
Not to mention this is the only glossy display he's used, which is visually going to be much more pleasing than a matte display until you can't stand the glare.
A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen. So a 4K screen will natively provide a smaller desktop layout regardless of screen size, particularly on macOS.
> A 24" 4K screen has the same DPI as a 27" 5K screen
Not quite. 24" 4K (3840 x 2160) is 184 DPI. A 27" 5K (5120 x 2880) is 218 DPI.
I'm pretty sure that 24" 4K would be high enough that I would not be able to notice the lower DPI compared to my current 27" 5K iMac.
I base this on the fact that I normally view the iMac from about 19" away, occasionally leaning in to as close as 13". At 218 DPI, viewing from those distances gives 72 PPD (pixels per degree) and 49 PPD. I don't see any difference, and so conclude that I'm fine with anything about 49 PPD.
At 19" distance a 24" 4K would give me 60 PPD. Somewhere around 15" it would drop below the 49 PPD I know for sure is good enough for me. At 13" it would be down to 42 PPD.
I'm pretty sure that would still be fine, because if I get close enough to my iMac for it to be 42 PPD (just a little under 10 inches) it is still fine for me.
The main issue I have with 24" 4K is that there doesn't seem to be many models and they cost a lot. Newegg for instance only has 3: LG 24MD4KL for $690, LG 24MD4KLB for $900, and a refurbished LG for $649. B & H has those first two for $697 and $882, and an LG 24UD58 for $297. I'm not sure why that last is so much cheaper than the others--it has a pretty low maximum brightness but I didn't notice anything else too bad in the specs.
Fortunately, similar calculations for 4K 27" and tests at various distances from the iMac to match the PPD of 4K 27" at my distances suggest that 4K 27" would work for me and there are a gazillion of them in the $300-600 range.
I've been recently looking into this because my 2017 27" 5K iMac has developed a vertical line of bad pixels [1]. (And wow...I need to clean that screen. Those photos show a lot of dust and dirt that I do not see with the naked eye). That line is in the middle of the right half of the screen and the way I sit has me centered in front of the left half of the screen, so it is pretty much ignorable most of the time but it has prompted me to start thinking of upgrading to a new Mac system, with a Mac Studio being the most likely candidate.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Same here, after I've seen my first Retina screen I can't go back to less than 2x scaling. Coding at 1080p is such a poor experience, my desktop is dual 4K 27 inch screens, and I'm on purpose avoiding high refresh rate screens until decent 4K 144Hz monitors exist and I can buy them.
There's some out right now but they're either crappy gamer panels, very large and low density, or extremely expensive.
I notice it when interacting with my computer at all. Mouse movements, alt tabbing, system animations, (some) keyboard inputs. The content being viewed is irrelevant to me; 144 Hz improves my experience across the board.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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."
It's more like 220ppi vs 280ppi (thanks 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.)
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.
Yeah it is perfect at 2x scaling. I drive it from Linux though (a regular Intel workstation build with an RTX 3060 video card driving it via 2 DisplayPort cables).
AFAIK (and I've looked into it), there is no way to drive this monitor from a Mac unless you have an Intel Mac with a Blackmagic eGPU using the Titan Ridge chipset.
(Haven't confirmed that works, though, since I don't have an Intel Mac.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
> 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.
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? ;-)
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.
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.
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.
>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.
This a day old but I just noticed and have to say: WAT!? Go to fs.com or monoprice or wherever else, look at even the super well armored ultra durable direct burial OM4 like:
That's as nice as it gets, fully customized to exactly the length and connectors you and, and 7' is $11.54. 100' is $60.26. And again that's about as fancy and durable as it gets. Plain old OM3, still perfectly suitable indoors for 100 gigabit at hundreds of feet, is $19 for 100'.
So I'm honestly utterly perplexed at what you're even talking about. Even ultra-low loss very dense 400G rated fiber isn't "a few meters for hundreds of dollars". If you see this I'd be kind of curious what you're thinking. Some sort of cutting edge terabit stuff? Were you looking at something with dozens of strands in a cable and thinking it was single strand?
>that's the only example of a working and commercially available data-carrying optical cable that I know of
????? What exactly do you think every single optical fiber on the planet is carrying if not data? What do you think is special about the bits and bytes going over TCP/IP or FibreChannel or whatever vs Thunderbolt? Data is data. The cables I linked will do 2-10x the bandwidth of that Thunderbolt 3 one.
Second, the whole problem with that TB3 cable is that it has to go back to copper at each end, so it carries an active chipset and low volume transceiver in there to translate. It's not the optical part that is causing trouble, quite the contrary it's massively cheaper than copper. It's the legacy copper part that's hurting plus just plain Thunderbolt still being relatively niche, high end and until fairly recently still very restricted and proprietary, which resulted in an effective monopoly for Corning and ludicrous profit margin in turn. What I was lamenting in my original post is that the native connectors on boards didn't move to optical for data long ago. A 40 gigabit standalone transceiver like this [0] is $39 right now. It could be even cheaper if it was integrated on standard motherboards like USB or whatever else, both because of sheer economies of scale there is a lot of supporting material and such there going into that which could be done away with if modularity didn't matter. And after that you get to go up to 450' (or further with single mode at more cost). 100' costs another $39. 100 gigabit transceivers currently start at ~$100 for 100 meters, or thousands of meters for $190.
Obviously none of these carry power (though that can be an advantage in some cases where power fluctuations might be a concern), but it'd be trivial to make a cable with a couple of plain conductors along with it. If all they need to do is carry power and no data it'd still be very cheap. Data transfer is also much more efficient over optical vs copper, saving power and in turn heat.
And optical easily scales not just in cost but in bandwidth as technology evolves without needing to buy new cables. OM3 was standardized in ISO-11801:2002, so twenty years ago. If you got an OM3 fiber cable back when they first came out, that exact same cable would still be perfectly functional and useful to carry 100 gigabits for hundreds of feet right now, which wasn't even defined in 802.3 for nearly another decade afterwards. Can't exactly say the same thing about 20 year old copper cables.
Of course that isn't the way the world went for a variety of reasons. But it's a real shame.
My problem is that I only want 1 monitor for everything. For work I want a high res screen because I really don't like blurry text. For games I would like a high frequency one because it's well... better. 5K has the advantage of downscaling to 1440p gracefully. If it only did 1440p@120hz and 5K@60hz I'd be happy.
Thunderbolt/DisplayPort 1.4 has enough bandwidth for 120Hz and 5k using Display Stream Compression. There might not be enough bandwidth left over for the USB hub, but frankly, I'd take that tradeoff. If I were going to buy such an expensive monitor, I'd want to be able to do whatever I damn well please on it, including gaming (even if the resolution of the game needs to be dialed down to 1440p).
It basically fits into the same niche as the LG 5K; it is profoundly meh, and far too expensive, but if you want a 5K screen you don't have many options.
I have, and am basically happy with, an LG 5K. If I didn't, though, I'd buy this. Not because it's amazing; it's not, by any means. But because it is the only game on town (except for the LG, and it is at least better than _that_).
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.
Yes, but the quality of the iPad Pro front camera is exactly what the Reddit post I linked to was complaining about... and I saw a lot of other similarly negative discussions online when I was googling it.
At best, the Studio Display’s camera can reach that level of quality. I personally have one of the new iPad minis with Center Stage, and I don't consider the front camera quality to be anything better than "acceptable".
Depends on who you talk to. If it is barely clearing the bar of acceptability for some people, it will likely be considered bad by a lot of people. I don’t really think Apple should be striving for “acceptable” on a $1600 monitor where the webcam is a significant part of the marketing. Apple literally calls it a “sensational camera”.
The display itself doesn’t even have any kind of local dimming zones or HDR at all, which seems like a huge miss for a monitor released at that price point in 2022.
I played with one at an Apple Store a few days ago. I loved the build quality of the height adjustable model, and the screen was pleasant to use in that well lit environment (a relatively low bar to clear), but Apple seems to have worked overtime to make it hard to justify spending $1600+ on that monitor, in my opinion.
There have been rumors of a Studio Display Pro, and I’m curious to see what happens there.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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-Bric...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGZPOK2/