is apple's studio display worth sixteen hundred dollars and how much better is
it than lg's ultra fine 5k which is the same exact panel that is in all of the
5k 20 inch imacs well today we will find out we're gonna compare all of the
differences including some surprising things that you guys probably don't
expect and yes there are ways that this nice big display actually gets beat out
by the lg 5k that's been out now for about six years now i absolutely love
this little cloth handle up there instead of plastic just feels so much
nicer makes you feel better about spending 1600
on a display and i also really like the way apple set up this box actually let
me flip it over here where you open this thing up just like
the mac studio and then the edges literally just popped down
take a look at this it actually gives you a little instructions
bam that is some origami right there bam
nice and easy let's set this down and i assume that inside this package is
probably the cable let's see yep we got a cable in here ah
okay that is our thunderbolt cable for the connection and of course for you
sticker lovers apple has you covered now this thunderbolt cable is very nice it
has a braided cable finish on the outside but look how short this thing is
oh my goodness the thunderbolt cable comes with the lg 5k it looks like to be
yeah literally twice as long now looks like on the back of the mac studio is
where we have some additional thick really thick packaging here and that has
our power cable yeah the power cable is
non-removable which is such a crazy thing that apple is doing why would you
not just have one of those magnetic connections that comes even on the 1300
imac that you have a full computer with instead of display why go with this
route of course the lg ultra fine has a standard power cable so you can replace
it if it goes bad and now let's go ahead and peel off this really nice recyclable
covering on here bam that is off look at that this is why you want a studio
display you don't want that plastic you want the solid aluminum
beautiful design and nice materials now one thing that stands out to me right
away is just how low this display is but the degree of adjustability with that
all aluminum hinge is quite good and that hinge is really nice very easy to
adjust now comparing it to the lg 5k here is the lg at its lowest setting so
it actually does go lower if you want it and as far as tilt
this thing actually has a very similar amount of adjustability so definitely
the imac is not winning and of course the imac doesn't adjust height wise
unless you spend another four hundred dollars for their little arm thing that
allows you to raise the height whereas the lg can be adjusted out of the box up
to this height which is a little bit higher than i normally need it to and
then all the way down here so that is very nice
now what about the stability so here we have an all-aluminum design it is wide
this wide arm look what happens when i shake this table a little bit
the lg is going all over the place while the studio display is barely barely
moving i used this display for about four years ever since it came out and
that is the number one thing that's really annoyed me is just how wobbly
this thing is now with the lg ultrafine 5k you can actually take off this plate
here and then you can actually vase amount it
so if you want to buy your own arm or a wall mount or whatever you could do that
and get a nicer stand for it so it's not the end of the world
with the studio display you can actually get it with a vase amount and it's the
same price but then you don't get the stand now as far as build quality you
cannot compare these we have an all-aluminum beautiful design that's
going to look great compared to an all plastic not super cheap feeling other
than the stand but it's not a great design it's not going to look great on
your desk it's going to make it look worse and with that of course we have
these bezels they don't look great everything stays stands out and the
actual panel just has a plastic glossy coating over here and we're going to
take a look at reflectivity in just a bit
compared to with the mac studio we have this full sheet of glass that is flat we
do have bezels here they're a little bit smaller especially here on the bottom
at least it looks like it compared to the lg 5k but it's all nice and glass
now as far as reflectivity i did not purchase the nano texture coating for an
extra 300 because it makes the display look less sharp and less detailed but
with that said the lg 5k looks almost like a mirror until you see
that it's actually the display it is very glossy uh and there's a lot of
reflections now even though i just have the standard studio display when you
look over at that one even though you do see reflections it's a lot more
dispersed not as bright not as sharp and colorful so apple definitely has much
better coatings on the studio display compared to lg with this 5k panel and
now i have both of them connected to my 16 inch macbook pro let me show you what
the differences are here you can see both the internal display and then the
lg ultra fine and the studio display and with the mlg ultra fine you can still
select your color profile you don't see any hdr just like you don't with the
studio display because unlike the built-in one or the 6k display it does
not go enough brightness it doesn't have mini led to have that but you do see
this automatically adjust brightness option because it does have those
sensors built into the display whereas the ultrafine does not now as far as
brightness the ultrafine goes up to 500 nits just like the imax just like the 6k
display so let's turn that up right there and i adjusted that front camera
so it's not being blown out but the studio display will actually go up to
600 nits now to that camera it doesn't look like it's much of a difference to
my eyes i could see a bigger difference and probably what you guys could see and
the studio display is actually one of the few that goes up that much for
regular usage like i said the pro display is also 500 nits and with this
newer nicer coatings the anti-reflectivity ones you're gonna be
able to fight any sort of issues as far as you know windows in your room or
anything like that so i probably would not pay for that matte coating now one
thing that is very interesting is the difference in contrast and the ability
for hdr i have the same exact 8k hdr video open right here we're actually
playing it back in 4k so it's over sampled but only the studio display
allows you to play back in hdr so the extra 100 is a brightness gives you that
ability whereas the lg 5k display only plays back an sdr now taking a look at
the quality difference it is noticeable it looks like the glass does make it a
little bit sharper especially when i was looking at the icons but contrast is
substantial the studio display has a lot more contrast than i expected with that
i also see highlights with the 600 nits screen we're getting a lot more pop in
the cloud so overall the image does look quite a bit better and having the hdr
ability is really nice to have yeah look at those clouds right there with the
snowboarder uh we do have more clipping less highlight detail even though this
is not a mini led screen it preserves more detail and you get more pop it's
actually pretty surprising and overall i have to be honest with you guys i was
not expecting this much of a difference in terms of the contrast the
reflectivity and the image with them both being 5k panels people were saying
that hey this is the same screen they just upped the brightness a little bit
but if you take the same screen and you just up the brightness you're gonna get
worse contrast in this case we're getting better brightness and better
contrast and just to make sure here is an sdr video so no difference in terms
of going for those ultra brights and extra contrast added uh but here you can
still see
especially you know right here close up i'm seeing that we do have better
contrast with this new display so it's definitely an updated panel so it's very
cool to see apple improving on what they've had previously in the imac we
have less reflections we have better brightness a little bit more detail
thanks to the glass and better contrast as well so a lot more differences than i
expected but now let's go ahead and switch over to the built-in speakers and
the webcams both these displays have vents on the bottom but the imac has
them along the whole bottom which allows air to come in and then also has them up
top so hot air can come out whereas the lg does not now both have speakers that
are stereo one on the left one on their right so let's go ahead and compare the
quality apple said they sound amazing but let's go ahead and take a listen for
ourselves [Music]
all right guys let me know your thoughts as far as the sound quality
now what i will say is the lg does get louder based off of my
apple watch here it does get a couple of decibels louder some of that is the
highs those always peak higher as far as
decibel meeting meters but it definitely gets louder it also has pretty dang good
bass when i got this display i was really surprised by how good it sounded
uh with that said the studio is definitely another level the highs are
toned down a little bit like apple has been doing with their latest you know
computers the macbooks um but this sounds nice and natural very balanced
and the bass gets deep just like the macbook pro they said this has the noise
canceling woofers uh it has six total speakers it definitely gets nice and low
it's a whole other level for movies videos music and it sounds very accurate
very tight whereas the lg sounds a little bit more loose kind of like a
stereo that can get loud but doesn't have that richness and tightness i
wouldn't complain too much about this one but the studio is definitely on
another level and now let's go ahead and compare the webcams this is the lg ultra
finds quality of the 1080p webcam with its dual front-facing microphones it is
shockingly good for a six-year-old monitor it was really good back then it
is still pretty good right now and this is the quality of apple's new studio
display both the 1080p webcam and the new microphones
now this is also a 1080p webcam but it is an ultra wide which you're not seeing
right now because in any application that doesn't support center stage the
software that will digitally crop in and out depending on how many people how
many people are here well it just crops in and instead of being 1080p it is
actually less than 720p which is why you're seeing so much noise and lack of
detail in my face now it is a brighter image it is more flat compared to the lg
but it just does not look as good i wish they just stuck with the regular 1080p
webcam just like you have on the latest imacs but you guys let me know your
thoughts on it and the thoughts of the audio quality now the next difference
with these displays are the usb type-c ports on the back both these monitors
have three of them so these are both hubs that you can connect ssds to any
other kind of devices sd card readers we use this all the time
but we do have a difference the studio display will actually transfer at twice
the speeds 10 gigabit per second compared to five so if you have an ultra
fast ssd like we do you should get a lot more speeds now i connected my ultra
fast ssd to the lg 5k and it actually won't show up either it requires too
much power maybe uh or possibly it just doesn't really want to work with that
five gigabit per second speed my old ssd would get about 350 megabytes per second
connected to the lg where it would get 900 connected directly to my macbook so
let's go ahead and try it out with the studio display so it looks like we got
just over 900 for the write speed and interestingly about
624 for the read speed usually they're right
around the same i'm not sure if it's this ssd or what but we'll do some more
testing for the full review either way this thing i was actually able to
connect it and it's running it two to three times faster than if it would have
been connected to the lg 5k so that is definitely a big benefit so there you
guys go is the studio display worth sixteen
hundred dollars well i think so the speaker sound a lot
better the reflectivity the display quality the brightness the build quality
it's definitely on another level and being that this came out six years later
and we have inflation and higher cost for manufacturing all aluminum
fast supports all of that and compared to this one where it came
out for 300 bucks six years ago it's a much nicer display so if you have the
money i would definitely go for this display you won't be disappointed as
long as you don't need anything for hdr as far as actually grading that for sdr
content creating videos photos all of that this thing is going to be amazing
it's a great all-in-one display uh it has a lot of different capabilities and
it looks great so thank you guys for watching if you guys want to see the
comparison against the 6k xdr for 6 grand with that stand click that circle
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we'll see you in the next video [Music]