The Apple Studio Display brings out lots of emotions for people.
It's either the screen we've all been waiting for, or the biggest disappointment in technology
in the past decade.
But like many devices we've seen come from Apple over the past many years, the story
is a little deeper and more annoying.
Those buggers in the glass circle are masters of getting you to pay more than you otherwise
would want to. And damn it, you're going to like it because it's the best monitor there is.
Right. So the expectation is that this monitor is perfect, but it's not.
And that's the tension. So I'm going to show you my nitpicks about the Studio Display, and a very suitable alternative,
not from Apple. Looks like the cable is already attached.
Oh right. And there's that.
Allow me to at least briefly explain why everyone is so mad.
Apple has a pretty long and storied history of making very nice, quite expensive monitors
for their desktops. There's the Portrait Macintosh display from the late 80s, and then the larger than you
ever thought possible Apple Cinema displays through the aughts.
All the way to the Pro Display XDR.
32 inches, 6K resolution, mini LED contrast ratio, HDR brightness, its five plus thousand
dollar price tag was defensible, but still quite dear.
Everyone else who wanted an Apple display had to either get the 5K display built into
the iMac or settle at the Apple Store checkout for a $1300 LG 5K ultrafine display.
And the display shaped hole in the Apple lineup felt like a major oversight.
I already lamented about this last fall when I pitched some admittedly strange alternatives,
which I will still defend, but don't worry because Apple have finally given us their
answer, the $1600 Apple Studio Display.
On paper, it's what I've been asking for, a new Thunderbolt display with the lauded
5K resolution in a well built, attractive enclosure.
It's certainly much more attractive than the old LG 5K ultrafine display, which LG still
sells though no longer through the Apple Store.
Despite the new studio display being an all new product from Apple, it essentially uses
the same LG panel that is found in the ultrafine and the iMac, though in here it's about
100 nits brighter. That paired with the anti-reflective coating that Apple puts on their glossy screens means
that you can place it opposite a window and never notice.
It also means that nanotexture is really not worth it unless you absolutely know you need
it. The 200 plus pixels per inch look nice, crisp, and is perfect for macOS.
But accuracy? I still have to figure that out in another video, so subscribe if you want to find out
how to calibrate an Apple monitor. And if it turns out to be perfectly accurate, that should be a given at this price and not
really enough to justify the $300 price increase alone.
So what else is there?
The new studio display has all the latest technologies fitted within a very thin package.
There are the best speakers you'll ever hear built into a monitor.
They're good enough that I don't think you'll need to buy another pair.
Next, the webcam gets center stage, which is probably the best place for it.
This is the webcam and microphone of the Apple studio display.
There is lots of commotion going on behind me as you can see, and the center stage camera
is pretty nifty. When I tested it in a zoom call, I found that it works as good or better than any of the
other webcams I tried. And that's with harsh window light.
Others have not found the webcams as compelling, and their screenshots do show some stark differences.
There's room for improvement for sure, but after some zoom compression, it's not really
that bad. Same goes for the microphone.
All of these fancy new features are enabled by an A13 powered logic board running iOS.
And if that goes wrong, you can only reboot the monitor by pulling the power cord as there's
no off button.
And that's my thing about this monitor. Apple might think they put lots of thought into the features, but when you start zooming
in on the design details, you'll find that they've received little attention.
It's not actually all that innovative where it matters.
The fact they were able to fit the power supply they did behind this panel is mighty impressive.
It's nice too, as you don't have to deal with the giant power brick dangling somewhere.
But that convenience is compromised by the fact that Apple attached a not-for-you-to-remove
cable to power the display. This was a problem they already fixed with the LED Cinema display, but somehow we've
regressed back to this hassle.
Here's a free idea. What about powering the monitor through Thunderbolt from the Mac Studio?
The USB-C standard supports enough to power a display like this.
So could you imagine a single port solution like the old ADC connector?
And then for laptop users, Apple could flip the script offering an external power supply
with Ethernet like the iMac and then make the studio display the perfect hub.
Speaking of hubs, while the USB hub on the back of the display now supports up to 10
gig speeds, the Thunderbolt input is in completely the wrong spot.
Why is it over here? With the downstream ports, it should be tucked in behind the stand with the power cord.
Everything going into the monitor should go through here.
Look how much better this immediately looks.
The included Thunderbolt cable is also annoyingly short.
That means you can't really put the Mac Studio or a MacBook on the left side of your screen.
And if you have two screens, you're going to have to put the computer in the center
between them. And if you want three screens, you're going to need to buy a longer cable, which Apple
will sell to you for $130.
Then there's the whole stand situation.
Apple's hardware designers moved the mounting point for their modern monitor stands from
here in the center down to here on the new iMac and now this.
The benefit is a smaller footprint on your desk.
That's great if you're using a yellow iMac at home. But it's not great if you need more flexibility.
The standard stand is a little low for a tall person like me.
So Apple offers a height adjustable stand option, which uses the same nifty hinge design
as found in the $1,000 pro display stand.
And on here, it's $400, which is a little dear when you note that the stand doesn't
support rotation. Even more annoying is that thanks to all that A13 power on board, the monitor does in fact
support auto rotation, which is awesome.
But for that, you have to opt for the base amount.
Generally, I wish that base amounts and arms would look better from behind.
Here though, Apple isn't really helping things. Again because of the mount placement, Apple had to create this stretched H pattern to
move the mount point to the center. But that means now the Apple logo gets blocked.
A charitable way of putting it is that it's peeking above the plate.
How cute. Oh right, and I almost forgot the worst part.
You have to choose what stand you want at the time of purchase.
Because unlike previous Apple displays, this one has a non-user removable stand.
Murmurs exist that you can take the monitor to the Apple store and have them swap the
stand, but I called and at the time of writing, you can't.
Look, all I'm doing is holding the studio display up to the precedents set by its predecessors.
Those had great cable management. Murmurs had a user-friendly way to swap the stand for a base amount.
So considering that the price has gone up, well then so would the expectation and scrutiny.
If this 5K monitor came out in black with the cylindrical Mac Pro in 2013 for $1600,
our collective heads would have exploded with glee. But unfortunately, the technology to transmit this amount of pixels didn't exist yet.
If in 2016 this monitor had come out in space gray alongside the Touch Bar MacBook Pro instead
of the LG Ultra Fine at $1600, we would have all loved and praised it.
But it's 2022 and we've already had 5 years of a $1300 LG Ultra Fine display and 6 plus
years of the $1800 5K iMac.
This is old display technology and some fancier speakers and center stage camera isn't going
to make up for that or the poorly placed mounting point and Thunderbolt input.
So what have other monitor makers been doing in the meantime?
Well, let me show you my favorite.
My favorite monitor available at the moment is this.
The Huawei MateView. This is a screen that is unlike any other screen you can buy.
It has a 3x2 aspect ratio. It has truly next level industrial design that's just as height adjustable as the expensive
stand option from Apple while being just as attractive.
Many people here actually mistook it for the Apple Studio display.
It's more color accurate and almost as bright as the studio display while costing less than
half the price. As far as value is concerned, this is a truly great monitor.
But there are flaws here too. Unlike Apple, Huawei put no effort in the garnish.
The speaker sounds like it came from a 2005 laptop.
The built in microphone is awful too though there's no webcam anyway.
The matte display finish shows way more glare than Apple's glossy screens.
But perhaps the biggest flaw is the placement of the USB-C input.
It's right here on the side of the stand.
Why? That means it's always visible contributing to the cable clutter.
And if you want to be able to use these built in USB-A ports, which is handy, you have to
use this plug. Oh, and the last issue is that for geopolitical reasons, it's not available in the US.
My fellow Canadians, it's about $900 here, which is sweet.
Apple's external displays have always been quite expensive.
But we accepted that for cohesive industrial design, great build quality and advanced technology.
But as the display technology got older, the prices at least became more manageable.
The glorious 30-inch cinema display launched at $3,500 but was only $1,700 when it was discontinued
six years later. The last Thunderbolt display, which was great by the way, was priced at $1,000.
I think the Apple Studio display costs too much.
It should be 1,300 tops.
Especially when you consider that before you could get an iMac with this panel for $1,800
with a whole computer for only $200 more than this monitor costs.
Apple's hardware engineering has been on a righteous roll these past few years, amazing
us with fast, efficient chips we never thought possible.
This has been great for their computers, but what's happened with the studio display is
that that philosophy has been applied here too, at the detriment to everything else.
This is an electrically engineered product as opposed to a holistically designed product.
And that really is too bad.
Thanks for displaying this Mac Address. If you like my alternative pick for the studio display, give this video a like.
And if you just want to get a studio display yourself, well you might as well subscribe.
Now I'm curious in the comments how important are displays to you.
I think they are a monument of computing on your desk, so they should look and be nice.
Do you agree?