(calm drum music)
- 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.
- The Studio Display, the Apple Studio Display
- Biggest disappointment of the last 10 years.
- Yeah. (test screen beeps)
But like many devices we've seen come from Apple
over the past many years, the story is a little deeper
and more annoying,
because 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 gonna 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 gonna show you my nitpicks about the Studio Display
and a very suitable alternative-
(air whooshes)
Not from Apple.
Looks like the cable's already attached.
Oh right, and then there's that.
(calm music fades)
(dull music)
Allow me to at least briefly explain why everyone is so mad.
Apple has a pretty long
in-storied history of making very nice,
quite expensive monitors for their desktops.
There's the Portrait Macintosh Display
from the late 80',
and then the larger-than-you-ever-thought-possible
Apple Cinema Displays through the odds,
all the way to the Pro Display XDR.
32 inches, 6K resolution, mini LED contrast ratio,
HDR brightness, its $5,000+ 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 $1,300 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 $1,600 Apple Studio Display.
(paper thuds)
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 nano-texture is really not worth it
unless you absolutely know you need it.
The 200+ pixels per inch look nice, crisp,
and is perfect for MacOS, but accuracy,
Eh, I still have to figure that out in another video.
So subscribe if you wanna find out
how to calibrate an Apple monitor,
even 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?
(intense drum music)
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.
(fast drum music stops)
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.
(emotional guitar music)
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.
(calm uplifting music)
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 (wheezes) 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.
(calm uplifting music)
(scoffs) Look how much better
this immediately looks. (scoffs)
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 gonna have to put the computer
in the center between them, and if you want three screens
you're gonna need to buy a longer cable
which Apple will sell to you for $130.
(calm uplifting music fades)
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 VESA mount.
Generally I wish that VESA mounts 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.
(inquisitive music)
Look, all I'm doing is holding the Studio Display
up to the precedent's set by its predecessors.
Those had great cable management,
those had a user-friendly way to swap the stand
for a VESA mount.
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 $1,600,
our collective heads would've 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 TouchBar MacBook Pro
instead of the LG UltraFine at $1,600,
we would have all loved and praised it,
but it's 2022 and we've already had five years
of a $1,300 LG UltraFine display
and 6+ years of the $1,800 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, I'll show you one of my favorites
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(psychedelic music)
My favorite monitor available at the moment is this-
(psychedelic music)
The Huawei MateView.
This is a screen that is unlike any other screen
you can buy.
It has a 3:2 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, while we 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.
(sighs) Why?
That means it's always visible,
contributing to the cable clutter,
and if you wanna be able to use
these built-in USB-A ports, which is handy,
you have to use this plug.
(calm music)
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.
(calm music fades)
(gentle guitar music)
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 role
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.
(calm music)
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 wanna get the 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?
(calm music)