thunderbolt display lcd panel free sample

Your Apple Thunderbolt Display comes with 90 days of free telephone support and a one-year limited warranty. Purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan to extend your service and support to three years from your display’s purchase date. Only the AppleCare Protection Plan provides you with direct telephone support from Apple technical experts and the assurance that repairs will be handled by Apple-authorized technicians using genuine Apple parts. For more information, visit Apple support or call 800-823-2775.

Many Apple products use liquid crystal displays (LCD). LCD technology uses rows and columns of addressable points (pixels) that render text and images on the screen. Each pixel has three separate subpixels—red, green and blue—that allow an image to render in full color. Each subpixel has a corresponding transistor responsible for turning that subpixel on and off.

Depending on the display size, there can be thousands or millions of subpixels on the LCD panel. For example, the LCD panel used in the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019) has a display resolution of 5120 x 2880, which means there are over 14.7 million pixels. Each pixel is made up of a red, a green, and a blue subpixel, resulting in over 44 million individual picture elements on the 27-inch display. Occasionally, a transistor may not work perfectly, which results in the affected subpixel remaining off (dark) or on (bright). With the millions of subpixels on a display, it is possible to have a low number of such transistors on an LCD. In some cases a small piece of dust or other foreign material may appear to be a pixel anomaly. Apple strives to use the highest quality LCD panels in its products, however pixel anomalies can occur in a small percentage of panels.

In many cases pixel anomalies are caused by a piece of foreign material that is trapped somewhere in the display or on the front surface of the glass panel. Foreign material is typically irregular in shape and is usually most noticeable when viewed against a white background. Foreign material that is on the front surface of the glass panel can be easily removed using a lint free cloth. Foreign material that is trapped within the screen must be removed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store.

If you are concerned about pixel anomalies on your display, take your Apple product in for closer examination at an Apple Store, Apple Authorized Service Provider, or an Independent Repair Provider. There may be a charge for the evaluation. Genuine Apple parts are also available for out-of-warranty repairs through Self Service Repair.*

The Apple Thunderbolt Display is a 27-inch flat panel computer monitor developed and sold by Apple Inc. from July 2011 to June 2016. Originally priced at $999,Apple LED Cinema Display. New to the Thunderbolt Display was the switch from Mini DisplayPort and USB to a single Thunderbolt connector for data and DisplayPort. The Thunderbolt Display also added a Gigabit Ethernet port and FireWire 800 port. Macs released before 2011 without Thunderbolt, the 2012 Mac Pro and the single USB-C Retina MacBook are incompatible with the Thunderbolt Display without use of additional adaptors.

The Thunderbolt Display was discontinued in June 2016, and replaced by LG UltraFine displays developed with LG on the consumer end, while the Pro Display XDR succeeded it in 2019 as Apple"s professional display. In 2022, the Apple Studio Display was released as the first Apple-branded consumer display since its discontinuation.

Like its predecessor, the 27-inch LED Cinema Display, the resolution is 2560×1440 pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio. It was made with aluminum and glass, having a similar appearance to the contemporary ranges of iMac and MacBook Pro unibody designs. The display featured a built-in 720pFaceTime HD camera (replacing the iSight in the previous model), microphone, and stereo speaker system with subwoofer (2.1 channel). An octopus cable with Thunderbolt and MagSafe is permanently attached to the back of the display for data and charging MacBooks, respectively. On the rear of the display there is a Thunderbolt port, a FireWire 800 port, three USB 2.0 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The Thunderbolt port allows for the possibility of daisy chaining Thunderbolt Displays from a supported Mac, or connecting other devices that have Thunderbolt ports, such as external hard drives and video capture devices. In July 2012, Apple began including a MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adaptor in the box.

On June 23, 2016, Apple announced through a statement that it was discontinuing the Thunderbolt Display and would no longer produce stand-alone displays, saying, "There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users."LG to design the Thunderbolt 3-enabled UltraFine line, consisting of 4K and 5K displays, which were the only displays sold by Apple from 2016 to 2019.Pro Display XDR, the first Apple-branded display since the Thunderbolt Display"s discontinuation. In March 2022, Apple released the Apple Studio Display, the first Apple-branded consumer display since the Thunderbolt Display"s discontinuation, which similarly includes integrated speakers and a webcam.

The Thunderbolt Display drops compatibility with all previous standards, including VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort.Retina MacBook and 2012 Mac Pro do not support Thunderbolt.

Macbook Pro (2012): 2+2 Displays: Can daisy chain two Apple Thunderbolt Displays, in addition to one HDMI display and the MacBook Pro"s own display, for four displays total

MacBook Pro (Late 2016): Apple released a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter for enabling the Thunderbolt 3 ports of MacBook Pro (Late 2016) to connect to Thunderbolt 2 devices.

MacBook Pro (2017-2019) Using 2 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 4 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 5.

MacBook Pro M1 Pro (2021) Using 1 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 2 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 3.

MacBook Pro M1 Max (2021) Using 2 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 4 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 5.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020): 1+1 Displays: Can use one Apple Thunderbolt Display (with Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter), in addition to the MacBook Air"s own display. Further displays have to rely on virtual display output like DisplayLink or Apple Sidecar.

Look, people have wanted Apple to sell the 5K display from the now-discontinued 27-inch iMac as a standalone product for years now. When that first 27-inch 5K iMac came out in 2014, the display was so far ahead of the competition that buying one for the screen alone represented a bargain — that there was an entire computer attached to it was almost a bonus.

So now Apple’s gone and discontinued the 27-inch iMac and essentially replaced it with the new Mac Studio and the new 27-inch Studio Display. If the Mac Studio represents the fulfillment of a 20-year-old Mac power user’s dream, the Studio Display should be the fulfillment of a similar dream that’s been around since 2014: just give us the iMac’s 27-inch 5K display.

Unfortunately, a lot of things have happened since 2014. And so far, the Studio Display’s headline webcam feature works so badly that it’s virtually unusable. This dream is a bit of a nightmare.

(Editor’s note: Apple has released abeta software update for the Studio Display’s camera. You cansee our first impressions hereand when the final software is released we will update this review.)

The Studio Display marks Apple’s first entry in the mainstream display market in a long time — the company released the Pro Display XDR in 2020, but its $4,999 price tag meant it was decidedly for professionals. The Studio Display is more accessibly priced at $1,599, which is still expensive, but at least defensible when you consider that the only other 5K display available is the old and finicky LG Ultrafine 5K, which lists for $1,299.

Apple also made some grand promises about the Studio Display’s audio and video capabilities: it has six speakers, three microphones, and a 12-megapixel camera that are all run by an A13 chip — the same sort of front camera and chip you might find in an iPad.

The pitch, at least on paper, is that you get a 5K display that can display macOS at pixel-perfect resolution with no scaling issues, combined with webcam quality that matches Apple’s world-beating iOS devices. Considering the very recent history of miserable Mac webcams that has only just started improving, this is quite a pitch.

We have two Studio Display review units: the standard $1,599 model and the $1,899 model with Apple’s nanotexture matte glass. Both have the stock stand; adding a stand with height adjustment costs another $400 for some reason. You can opt for a VESA mount instead of the stock stand at no extra charge and pair it with whatever stand you want. But you can’t change from the stand to a VESA mount after the fact — you have to decide how you want this display mounted before you click the buy button. It has been a long time since Apple made displays; the company’s approach to display stands and stand pricing reflects that absence from the market, in the sense that it is from a different planet entirely.

Apple is generally terrific when it comes to displays across its devices, and the Studio Display is great at the basics: it’s clear, it’s sharp, it’s bright. If you have ever looked at a 27-inch 5K iMac display, you know exactly what this thing looks like. The Studio display is the same 27-inch size, the same 5120x2880 resolution, the same 218 pixels per inch, the same 60Hz refresh rate, and has the same single-zone LED backlight. The only real spec difference is that Apple says the Studio Display now has a “typical brightness” of 600 nits vs. 500 on the iMac, but in my actual typical use next to a 2015-vintage 27-inch iMac, that’s pretty hard to see.

The real issue is that $1,599 is a lot of money, and here, it’s buying you panel tech that is woefully behind the curve. Compared to Apple’s other displays across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad lineup, the Studio Display is actually most notable for the things it doesn’t have.

Let’s start with the backlight. In general, the best modern displays create true blacks by cutting all the light coming from the black parts of the screen. There are several ways to do this, and Apple itself uses different tech across its high-end products to produce true blacks in various ways: OLED screens on the iPhones, advanced local dimming on the Pro Display XDR, and Mini LED display backlights on the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro.

The Studio Display has… well, it has none of that. It’s a regular old LED backlight that lights the entire screen all the time, and the darkest black it can produce is basically gray. In normal use in a well-lit room, it looks fine enough — LCD displays have looked like this for a long time now — but if you’re watching a movie in a dark room, the letterboxing will look light gray. There are $379 TVs with more advanced local-dimming backlights than this.

The Studio Display is also notable for being an SDR display, with no HDR modes to speak of. Apple’s high-end iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops all support HDR, but the Studio Display tops out at 600 nits, and Apple doesn’t offer an HDR mode in the software at all. Again, this comes back to the ancient backlight tech: true HDR requires local dimming, and the Studio Display doesn’t have it.

The Studio Display also only offers a 60Hz refresh rate, which is both bog-standard and also woefully behind Apple’s other top-tier products like the iPhone 13 Pro, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro, all of which offer the ProMotion variable refresh rate system that can run as high as 120Hz for smooth scrolling and gaming and as low as 24Hz for movies. (The iPhone 13 Pro can even drop to as low as 10Hz to save battery life.) 60Hz is totally fine for most displays, but this thing costs $1,599. There are a lot of less expensive displays with variable refresh rate and HDR tech out there, and they’re supported by macOS out of the box.

Really the only reason to chase after this display for the screen itself is if you desperately care about having a 5K display that can display MacOS at pixel-perfect resolution with no scaling. I don’t want to discount this: a lot of people care about that a lot, and for those folks, $1,599 sounds totally reasonable considering that the only other 5K option on the market is that buggy LG UltraFine.

For those of you that don’t care about pixel-perfect macOS with no scaling, $1,599 will sound frankly ridiculous, and there are lots of other fascinating displays to think about, including a number of OLEDs, some neat ultrawides, and plenty of displays that support higher refresh rates.

The other reasons you might be thinking about spending $1,599 on the Studio Display are the webcam, mic, and speakers, of which Apple is very proud. There’s an entire A13 Bionic chip powering the audio and camera system here, same as the iPhone 11, and the camera itself is a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/2.4 lens that’s theoretically comparable to the front camera on an iPhone or iPad. There are three mics and six speakers: four woofers and two tweeters, which Apple says can support spatial audio.

I have sent Apple countless screenshots in various lighting conditions and a full sysdiagnose of our Mac Studio and Studio Display review units, and at publish time, all Apple spokesperson Jennie Orphanopoulos could tell me was that Apple’s team had “looked into the images you shared, and discovered an issue where the system is not behaving as expected. We’ll be making improvements in a software update.”

Our rule has always been to review products based on what we have in front of us and never against the promise of a future software update, and based on what I have in front of me, I simply wouldn’t want to use this camera. The cameras on the new MacBook Pro and M1 iMac are far superior to what we’re seeing here, and an iPhone front camera is even better still. I’m hopeful Apple will improve things via software in the future, but I would not spend $1,599 on this display until that actually happens.

The Studio Display comes with a nice braided Thunderbolt 4 cable in the box; that same cable can deliver 96W of power to a laptop, enough to charge my 16-inch MacBook Pro. That cable connects to the Thunderbolt 4 port on the rear of the display; there are three USB-C ports next to it for peripherals. Ports! People like ‘em.

It’s rare that an Apple product is such a miss, but the Studio Display in its current state is a confounding miss. If the webcam actually delivered on the promise of iPhone- or iPad-quality video, it would at least prompt a reasonable debate about whether having local dimming or HDR or variable refresh rate was worth it, but as it stands, you’re getting a less-than-state-of-the-art display and a bad webcam. If you are adamant about having a 5K display connected to your Mac, it might still be the best option. If not, I think you are much better off looking elsewhere.

iFixit took apart Apple"s 27-inch Thunderbolt Display for our viewing pleasure, revealing an iMac-like glass panel that can be removed with heavy-duty suction cups and a host of parts not normally found in an LCD monitor.

In fact, the display itself shares an uncanny resemblance to an iMac display because it"s actually the same model: an LG LM270WQ1, which was used in the iMac Intel 27" from October 2009. This is also the same display that"s in Dell"s competing 27" monitor, albeit with LED backlighting instead of CCFL. The display is 2560 x 1440 pixels and supports 16.7 million colors. Interestingly, that"s 1.07 billion fewer colors than on Dell"s display.

But anyways, the Thunderbolt Display houses a large brushless fan for noiseless cooling. And housed on either side edge of the display in "massive enclosures" are 49-Watt speakers, complete with a miniature subwoofer.

Rather than being soldered directly to the board, the Thunderbolt cable that routes to the display plugs into a standard Thunderbolt socket situated on the logic board. And both sides of the logic board are "packed with enough chips that it"s hard to believe there"s no computer inside this display," according to iFixit.

Ever since Apple released the $5,000-and-up Pro Display XDR in 2019, rumors have persisted that the company was also planning a more affordable screen to fill the same niche as its Thunderbolt Display. You could connect the Pro Display XDR to a MacBook Air that costs one-fifth its price, and Apple always went out of its way to mention that M1 MacBooks were technically capable of driving its 6K display resolution. But it wasn’t exactly an appealing value proposition.

Enter the new Studio Display. With a design that strongly recalls 2011’s Thunderbolt Display and a name that harks back to its late-"90s namesake, the display is tailor-made for anyone who wanted the 5K screen from the dearly departed 27-inch iMac without the computer that was attached to it.

It’s certainly not for everyone, and at $1,599, it’s not the first external display I’d recommend for all Mac owners (especially people who tend toward the cheaper Mac mini and MacBook Air end of the spectrum). But as its enthusiastic reception from several Ars staffers suggests, it will find an audience by virtue of being a 5K Apple-branded monitor, and its design and features are a solid step up from the 5K LG UltraFine display that Apple has sold for the last few years.

Before we talk about the monitor itself, it"s worth briefly reiterating how high-density (aka "Retina") displays are handled in macOS and why the 5K-vs-4K discussion in the context of the Mac isn"t just about visual detail.

Apple had a consistent formula when transitioning to Retina displays: every new screen would have exactly four times as many pixels as the non-Retina screen it replaced. So the iPhone 3GS"s 480×320 screen became 960×640 in the iPhone 4, and the iPad 2"s 1024×768 screen was upgraded to 2048×1536 for the first Retina iPad. The first Retina Mac, the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, used a 2880×1800 display that exactly quadrupled the previous generation"s 1440×900 screen, and when it finally released in 2014, the 5K iMac quadrupled the pixels of the original 27-inch iMac"s 2560×1440 screen. Advertisement

To help offset that downside and take advantage of Retina screens" additional density, Apple also added "scaled" display modes to Retina Macs. These scaling modes increase the apparent resolution of your Mac"s screen; Apple no longer needed to offer both a 1440×900 and a 1680×1050 display option for the MacBook Pro because you could scale its screen to looklike a 1680×1050 screen, with only a minor loss of detail. The GPU would draw your desktop at 3360×2100 and then scale it down to 2880×1800 to match the native resolution of the display panel. Many MacBooks, including the old 12-inch MacBook and some more recent Air and Pro models, actually shipped using a scaled display mode out of the box.

But one person"s "minor loss of detail" is another person"s "unacceptable loss of detail," and that"s why some people (particularly those doing graphics and publishing work) don"t like using 27-inch 4K monitors with their Macs. Compared to a 5K iMac, you either lose usable desktop space by running the monitor at its native, non-scaled 3840×2160 resolution, or you give up some detail by using a scaled 5K display mode.

With a native 5K display, that trade-off doesn"t exist, and that"s why some Mac users want there to be at least one good option available to buy. Enter the Studio Display.

I have a Thunderbolt 3 device that is a 1080p LCD monitor. When the device is connected, System Profiler lists its monitor as using a DisplayPort connection, as well as a few USB 2 devices since this device has touch screen capabilities. It has no external power source -- it"s typically powered over its Thunderbolt 3 connection when connected to an actual Thunderbolt 3 port.

I"m wondering if it"s possible for me to connect this device to a Mac with a Thunderbolt 2 port and use it as a monitor? In theory this is possible since Thunderbolt 2 supports DisplayPort and could provide more than enough bandwidth and power for a 1080p LCD monitor. It would be nice if this device"s USB 2 capabilities worked as well, but not a big deal if they don"t. Basically, I"m not sure any such adapter exists for this sort of thing, or if it would work for my particular needs.

Is this possible? For example, can I use the Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter + a male-to-male Thunderbolt 2 cable to accomplish this? Or maybe just a male-to-male Mini DisplayPort cable?

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The Studio Display – Apple"s new 27-inch, 5K monitor that was released alongside the new Mac Studio desktop – is one of the most difficult displays I"ve had to review. On the one hand, the price tag is sky-high for a 27-inch 5K panel that "only" promises coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and is basically incompatible with Widows. On the other hand, it"s extremely color accurate, color uniformity is excellent, and if you doown a Mac, it offers a seamless experience previously only available on the muchmore expensive Pro Display XDR.

I have a hard time praising the Studio Display because it"s not the "baby Pro Display XDR" that I was hoping Apple would release. I"d much rather Apple had budgeted the $1,600 differently by swapping the webcam, speakers, and microphones for a miniLED backlight and a true 10-bit panel that covers 98%+ of bothDCI-P3 and AdobeRGB. That"s what I consider a "Studio" quality display.

But I have to grudgingly admit that Apple has created an excellent monitor in the Studio Display. A monitor that is, in fact, worth every penny of the $1,600 asking price... even if that money is being spent on features that most creatives could live without.

The Apple Studio Display comes in a few different flavors depending on your preferred mounting option and whether or not you want Apple"s special anti-reflective "Nano-texture" glass.

The Apple Studio Display is worth every penny of the $1,600 asking price... even if that money is being spent on features that most creatives could live without.

All of the variations use the same 5K 27-inch 60Hz IPS LCD panel that promises full coverage of the Display P3 color gamut (DCI-P3 with a D65 white point), for a base price of $1,600. That will get you the standard glass version with either a tilt-adjustable stand or a VESA mount. Spend an extra $400, and you can upgrade to a nicer stand with a height adjustment mechanism similar to the one you found on the Pro Display XDR, albeit without any rotation. And if you want to go all out, you can spend another$300 for the Nano-texture glass.

For photo- and video-editors seriously considering the Studio Display for their ... well ... studio, I"d recommend the VESA mount version with standard glass.

I"ve tested the Pro Display XDR with Nano-texture glass, and while it"s an impressive bit of anti-reflective technology, it"s not worth the extra cash unless your studio suffers from a lot of harsh lighting. As for the mounting options, I personally would not recommend spending the extra $400 on the height-adjustable arm when you could spend half as much on a premium VESA-compatible monitor arm that will let you adjust the display any which way you want.

The built-in webcam with Apple"s AI-powered "Center Stage" technology is one of several features powered by the A13 Bionic chip that Apple put inside the Studio Display.

There"s no denying the build quality of Apple"s recent displays. Both the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display are more solidly built than any other monitor on the market, full stop. Housed in a solid aluminum chassis, with edge-to-edge glass on the front and an impossibly clean design overall, it"s a beautiful monitor.

In terms of design, the only notable feature is the four ports: one Thunderbolt 4 that acts as a display input and delivers a hefty 95W of power, and three USB Type-C ports that offer up to 10Gb/s data transfer. Beyond that, the only other port or button on the display is the power cord input. No buttons for controlling the brightness, contrast, or RGB gains; no volume control for the speakers; not even a power button.

If you try to use the Studio Display with a Windows computer, you won"t have access to any of the display controls, or any of Apple"s cool features like Center Stage.

I know this seems like an odd complaint about an Apple product that"s clearly meant to be used with Apple computers, but as someone who regularly switches between PCs and Macs for work, it immediately disqualifies what is otherwise a pretty impressive monitor. Because there is no physical way to control the display, whenever you unplug the monitor from your Mac and plug into a PC, the Studio Display is stuck on whatever settings you last used.

The only thing you can control inside Windows is volume. To do anything else – adjust the color profile, dial in the white point, or even just change the brightness of the display – you need to do it while the monitor is hooked up to a Mac.

If you"re using an NVIDIA-powered device, you are able to control basic display parameters like color format and bit depth from the NVIDIA Control Panel, and we can confirm that this works. Changing from 8 bits per channel (bpc) to 10 bpc in the control panel actually made the change at the hardware level. But settings like Brightness, Contrast and Gamma won"t work properly if you adjust them at the level of the GPU.

If you have an NVIDIA-powered PC, you can control a few settings from the NVIDIA Control Panel app. Things like resolution, color format, and bit depth.

In order to take full advantage of the Studio Display"s built-in profiles, white point calibration, and features like Center Stage and Spatial Audio, you need to update to MacOS Monterey 12.3 or newer.

The experience above is in sharp contrast to using this display with a Mac, which is totally seamless. All of your settings are controlled from the MacOS Display menu, there are a bunch of accurate built-in profiles, and you can even fine tune the white point of the display at the hardware level by adjusting it in settings (more on that in a second).

This seamless, high-quality experience extends to the rest of the features of the display. The built-in webcam is a nice feature now that it can take full advantage of Apple"s Center Stage feature; the built-in mics may not be "studio quality" per Apple"s marketing, but they"re certainly the best you"ll find in a monitor; and the speakers...

The speakers deserve their own paragraph. There are obviously limitations to what you can do with a 5-speaker array build into a 27-inch monitor, but the sound quality from the Studio Display is mind blowing when you compare it to anything other than a dedicated set of desktop computer speakers. They"re extremely loud, with a resonant bass response and crystal clear reproduction that makes the typical 6W or 9W speakers that are built into most monitors sound like hot garbage.

On the back of the Studio Display, you"ll find one Thunderbolt port that drives the monitor and delivers 95W of power output in return, and three USB Type-C ports for connecting peripherals.

It seems like their goal was to replace the 27-inch iMac with the Mac Studio paired with a Studio Display, and to that end, a great camera, great speakers, and great microphones were a must. I just don"t really care about any of that, and I don"t think most "studio" professionals do either.

Calibrating the Studio Display is as easy as typing in your target white point in Apple"s Display Settings, and letting the operating system do the rest.

The panel at the heart of this display is, spec wise, identical to the panels used in the 5K iMac and the 5K LG UltraFine display that Apple has been selling for several years, but it is not the same panel. Apple confirmed to me that this is a new panel specially designed for this new thin-bezel monitor.

Apple also confirmed this is not a true 10-bit panel. There were several mentions of "over 1 billion colors" during the presentation, but it"s an 8-bit panel with temporal dithering (AKA Frame Rate Control) just like the LCD panels in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The only true 10-bit panel is Apple"s lineup is still the Pro Display XDR, and it"s safe to assume that it will stay that way.

We tested two different settings: the default Apple Display (P3 - 600 nits) setting, and the Photography (P3 - D65) profile. The former setting locks the display at a maximum brightness of 600 nits, disabling brightness controls. Both delivered similar gamut coverage at 98.8% of DCI-P3 and 86% of AdobeRGB, with a maximum Delta E of less than 1.

Out of the box, the Apple Display profile had a white point that was a little warm, coming in over 6700K and straying from the daylight locus by a Delta E of 3.55. The Photography profile was quite a bit better, hitting 6550K by default and only straying from daylight by a Delta E of 1.58. You can see both "out of the box" measurement reports below:

After calibration, color temperature and white point were pretty much spot on, with a Delta E of 0.15 between our measured white point and D65. Less than 1.5 was already below what"s visible with the human eye, so 0.15 is essentially perfect. You can see the final diagrams from DisplayCAL below: 98.7% DCI-P3, 85.9% AdobeRGB, and a white point that"s perfectly aligned with D65.

We don"t have the equipment to do more advanced display characterization than the above, but we did run one final test to check the uniformity of the display. Using DisplayCAL"s uniformity report, we tested 35 total patches (a 7 x 5 array) with each patch compared to the response of the center patch.

Of the 34 test patches, 29 passed recommended tolerance with a Delta E of less than 2, and the remaining 5 were all within nominal tolerance with a maximum Delta E of less than 4. This is exceptional performance that you really only see from high-quality photo- and video-editing displays that put a premium on panel uniformity.

From a performance perspective, this is an excellent panel. My only complaint is the color gamut, which could definitely be wider given the $1,600 price tag. But 99% coverage of DCI-P3 is already great, and when you combine that with the color accuracy and uniformity results above, you"ve got a display that can and should be used for color-critical work.

The Studio Display is an excellent monitor with some really nice features, but it"s expensive, and a lot of that money is paying for features that many creatives don"t need from a "studio" display for professional work.

I see what Apple was trying to do here. It wanted the Studio Display to replace the discontinued 27-inch iMac when paired with a Mac Studio or Mac mini. That"s why it put so much emphasis on features that you don"t typically find in high-end photo- and video-editing displays: like amazing speakers, a built-in webcam, high-quality microphones, and an A13 Bionic to power all of the above. These are all features you"d expect to find in the next-gen iMac, so they"ve packed them inside of the Studio Display instead.

But while these features, when combined with a color-accurate 5K panel, justify the Studio Display"s $1,600 price tag, I would argue that Apple missed the mark by focusing too much on day-to-day usability and too little on the real-world photo-, video-, and graphic design studios that this display is supposedly meant for. Most studios don"t care about webcams or built in speakers, and some even use PCs in addition to (or instead of) Macs.

If you"re a Mac user who needs a high-quality, color-accurate display for both personal and professional use, with all of the Apple bells and whistles included, then the Studio Display delivers the goods.

I said this was a difficult review for me, and this is why: most of my gripes aren"t with the monitor, but with what the monitor might have been if Apple hadn"t chosen to save all their latest display tech for the next generation of the Pro Display XDR.

If you"re a Mac user who needs a high-quality, color-accurate display for both personal and professional use, with all of the Apple bells and whistles included, then the Studio Display delivers the goods. I"ve said it before and I"ll say it again: I don"t think the monitor is overpriced given the build quality, color accuracy, seamless experience, and the impressive hardware Apple has baked in.

But for the professional creatives in the audience who use their monitor to pay the bills, I"d recommend looking at the professional-grade offerings from EIZO or NEC, or holding off until Apple releases the next generation of the Pro Display XDR. Even if you end up paying a little (or a lot) more, you"ll know that every cent went to pay for features that really matter for professional workflows.

During their review of the Apple Studio Display, the Verge noticed that the webcam quality is quite poor. We compared it to the MacBook Pro and the 4K Logitech Brio camera to find out for ourselves.

Earlier today, in their review of the Apple Studio Display, The Verge pointed out that the Studio Display"s webcam image quality left something to be desired. Not properly testing the camera quality was a major oversight on my part, and so I"ve gone back to compare the Studio Display"s built-in webcam against the FaceTime HD camera inside the 14-inch MacBook Pro and a dedicated Logitech Brio 4K webcam.

In the meantime, this is a big knock against a display that was already relying on features like the camera, microphones, and speakers to justify its high price tag.

After looking at the performance of Apple"s M1 Pro SoC powering the new MacBook Pro 16, and beyond reviewing the laptop itself, there"s another interesting component in this laptop that"s worth looking into, and that"s the mini-LED 120Hz display. So today we"re going to take a closer look at what Apple is doing with their brand new screen.

As you"re fully aware, we have a lot of experience testing and reviewing displays, however we mostly cover gaming monitors not laptop displays, so this is going to be a little different. We"re going to run through some tests and provide our thoughts on how good this display is as someone that looks at lots and lots of displays each year.

There are two versions of the new MacBook Pro and we"ve got the 16-inch version, although the 14-inch model"s display is very similar just smaller and with a different resolution. Apple calls this particular display a "Liquid Retina XDR display" which is typical Apple marketing speak. If I translate this into what Apple actually means, they are giving you a high resolution full array local dimming mini-LED LCD with true HDR functionality.

If we dive deeper into the specs, the 16.2-inch panel has a resolution of 3456 x 2234 which continues Apple"s tradition of using non-standard resolutions across their line-up. Apple doesn"t disclose the exact technology used here, but it"s an LCD panel which appears to be IPS-like in design. The backlight has 10,000 mini-LEDs for impressive zone density at this size, allowing for a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1 and peak brightness up to 1,600 nits in the HDR mode on paper.

As for refresh rate, Apple are offering up to 120Hz with adaptive sync, which they"ve rebranded into "ProMotion" although this sort of functionality has been available for many years now in other laptops and displays. The combination of everything though is a first, and the only rivals to this sort of panel are the latest wave of 4K OLED panels seen in a few high-end Windows laptops.

Obviously, a big talking point has been including a notch in the display. Apple claims this was necessary to decrease bezel size and increase the display real estate while retaining the webcam at the top, though I"m not so sure that"s true. The notch is absolutely massive relative to the size of the camera and sensors, and looks kind of ridiculous. I mean, surely this could have been smaller? But at least I"m glad Apple didn"t put the webcam below the display.

I don"t want to dwell on the notch too much as in practice using the laptop it"s not that big of a deal. Let"s take a look at how the Liquid Retina XDR display actually performs and I"m going to start here with some color performance results because I think these are most relevant to a creator-focused display like this. I"ll get to talking about response performance later.

The MacBook Pro"s display is a wide gamut display with 99% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. That"s an excellent result for any creator looking to produce content in that gamut. This also means perfect sRGB coverage, so if you"re designing web content, creating SDR videos, or working with wide gamut HDR videos then Apple is providing you the tools to do that.

Where the MacBook Pro"s display ends up in terms of color gamut is typical for a modern "creator" laptop, the majority of top-end laptop displays have really good coverage of sRGB and P3. Where it falls a little short is in that Adobe RGB coverage, and a competing display like the Samsung OLED you get in devices such as the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED does offer a wider color gamut with full Adobe RGB coverage. That"s not to say the MacBook Pro"s gamut is bad or anything, it"s just not as wide or as versatile as I"ve seen.

Where the display is extremely impressive is in its color calibration, and this is helped significantly by macOS doing a much better job of color management than Windows. The various color profiles included by default work across far more apps in macOS than they would on Windows and this is one area where Windows needs a bit of an overhaul.

If we look at the options provided in the MacBook Pro"s display settings, you"ll find quite a few options including Apple Display and Apple XDR Display presets, along with a decent array of creator focused modes for gamuts like BT.709, sRGB and P3. Apple also offers True Tone and Night Shift functionality, which some people might find useful but ultimately hurt color accuracy. I"ve disabled True Tone for testing.

When looking at the default Apple Display profile, performance is pretty good by default. When displaying sRGB content in this mode, it"s quite likely color management will activate in the app you"re using to display the content correctly and accurately, instead of oversaturating it up to the full P3 gamut of the screen. When looking at saturation sweeps as an example, we find excellent deltaE performance, and good results in ColorChecker as well, especially around skin tones which are crucial to get right.

Greyscale performance was also solid, my laptop didn"t quite hit a 6500K color temperature but came close, and sRGB gamma was being displayed as flat 2.2 instead of using the sRGB function, but these issues are minor and overall performance was very solid.

Based on this you should probably just leave your MacBook in the Apple Display mode for everyday use as it"s accurate enough for sRGB content and will also let you benefit from wide gamuts where needed. The performance in the Apple Display XDR mode is similar as well for SDR content, so that"s an option if you want to also use HDR at times.

If you want even better color accuracy, Apple"s included profiles might be for you. For example, the built-in sRGB mode is even better at displaying sRGB content, with accuracy equivalent to performing a full calibration yourself.

However that limits the usefulness of these modes for viewing content, where the mastering brightness level is less relevant and your ambient conditions are more important. I"d like to see a brightness override toggle, so that each of these modes is still useful for mastering, but can also deliver the best accuracy for watching other content. That would improve the versatility of the display and give you the ability to fine tune accuracy beyond the already very good default mode.

In the regular Apple Display mode for viewing SDR content, I measured peak brightness at around 520 nits, with a variable black level. Bizarrely, the MacBook Pro appears to change its black level limit in the SDR mode depending on the ambient light conditions, even with True Tone disabled. In a lit room, the black level was capped to 0.02 nits, delivering around a 26,000:1 contrast ratio.

However when testing in a dark room, which is how we normally test, the black level halved to around 0.01 nits, increasing the contrast ratio to near 50,000:1. This could be consistently replicated by covering or uncovering the camera and sensors in the notch. I honestly have no idea why Apple would control the display in this way, it"s a pretty minor change all things considered, so it must be beneficial to something, but we have no idea on that one.

In the HDR mode, brightness is extremely impressive. There"s no major difference between sustained and peak brightness, so there"s no automatic brightness limiter that activates after a short period to dim the screen in intensely bright scenes. Brightness is as high as 1670 nits at small window sizes, and over 1500 nits at 50%, before dropping to around 1150 nits for a full screen sustained white window. That"s impressive, although it does come with a corresponding increase to power consumption, so running the display at over 1000 nits all the time isn"t advisable on battery.

Contrast behavior is also different in HDR compared to SDR. When displaying HDR content, the mini-LED backlight will, at times, fully switch off to display black, delivering an effectively infinite contrast ratio. That"s the best case performance you"ll see. In more tricky conditions, such as a checkerboard test or measuring light and dark areas close together, I measured a contrast ratio of slightly over 50,000:1. This is right where you"d want performance to be for HDR content, contrast ratios of 50,000:1 worst case and up to 1,000,000:1 or greater in other situations. Apple are meeting all the recommendations for performance that I"ve heard when speaking to HDR, calibration and mastering experts.

This performance also destroys basically any other LCD based monitor I"ve looked at before. On the standalone monitor side, it"s virtually unheard of right now to see LCD zone counts higher than a couple of thousand. This limits worse case contrast to around 12,000:1 in the case of the 2,000-zone Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 with VA technology, or just 4,000:1 in a checkerboard test.

Apple choosing to use 5-10x the zone count massively improves the achievable contrast ratio in tricky situations and I"d say this amount of zones - and the density of zones - is what is required as a minimum for the best HDR experience with an LCD panel. Even Apple"s own ridiculously overpriced Pro Display XDR doesn"t compare as it has a paltry 576-zone backlight and it was criticized at launch for poor blooming compared to professional level HDR mastering displays. The MacBook Pro"s display will be far better for producing HDR content, aside from the small size.

So from one perspective it"s easily one of the best LCD-based HDR experiences I"ve seen, but on the other hand it isn"t a self-lit panel like an OLED which is completely free of blooming and in some situations OLED still delivers better HDR. Of course, OLEDs have other drawbacks such as lower brightness levels and the risk of burn in so I can understand why Apple would opt for LCD instead. Besides this one complaint though the HDR experience is excellent, especially for a laptop.

Unfortunately there is a major drawback to the Liquid Retina XDR display used on the new MacBook Pros, and that"s the motion performance. While it"s nice to see Apple upgrade the refresh rate to 120Hz compared to the 60Hz they were using previously, the display being used here doesn"t have the appropriate level of response times to keep up with that 120Hz refresh rate. The panel is actually very, very slow, which is a disappointment.

In a full black to full white transition, gamma corrected as per our current test methodology, the MacBook Pro"s display is exceptionally slow, taking nearly 100ms to complete this rise. Even if we apply exceptionally generous tolerances and only measure 60% of the total transition time, it still takes 39ms to transition, which is one of the worst results I"ve ever measured.

This is exacerbated by using a combination of IPS-like LCD technology, and an always-active mini-LED backlight, noting that both the LCD layer and mini-LED need to change to transition fully.

Luckily full transition fall times aren"t as horrific, though still reasonably poor at over 15ms even with our very generous 20% tolerance. The real transition time is more like 35ms, so less than half that of the rise time, but far slower than most other LCDs out there. The best laptop grade OLED panels can perform these transitions in under 2ms with the same test conditions, making them an order of magnitude faster.

I tested a few more transitions of varying degrees and typically the MacBook Pro would fall between 20 and 40ms, though luckily there is no overshoot to speak of. When viewing UFO test results, you can see the product of these horrific response times: a substantial blur trail behind moving objects. Even though the panel can feel somewhat smooth to use because it has a moderate refresh rate of 120Hz, the actual clarity in motion is terrible and this impacts the usefulness of the higher refresh rate.

Right next the MacBook Pro we have the Aero 15 OLED"s panel which has half the refresh rate at just 60Hz, but massively faster response times. You"ll see here that even though the MacBook Pro"s display is twice as fast in refresh rate, the extremely slow response behavior limits motion clarity to more like a 60Hz monitor or worse. The level of smearing is insane and I"m not sure how a modern LCD could end up this slow, Apple really should have experimented with some sort of overdrive.

Now, all Apple fans are probably sitting here annoyed that I"m criticizing the display for motion performance because the MacBook Pro isn"t a gaming laptop. And they"re right, it"s not a gaming laptop. But motion performance is relevant beyond gaming, it impacts things as basic as scrolling through websites or even watching videos. Fast moving video content like sports is affected due to slow transition times, and scrolling through text can show really bad ghosting trails, especially with white text on a black background. But really anything on this display that moves, especially stuff that moves fast, can quickly become a blur fest.

There is no doubt that the MacBook Pro"s Liquid Retina XDR display is excellent for content creation. It has perfect P3 color gamut coverage and outstanding factory calibration, with particular attention to detail paid to multiple color specifications for mastering.

Apple provides many different profiles that are all above average to great in terms of accuracy, and this should provide peace of mind that if they are using this display in one of those color spaces, everything is looking correct as it should. macOS also helps here, thanks to superior color management than Windows.

The Liquid Retina XDR display has impressive HDR specifications and performance. A mini-LED backlight zone count of 10,000 is the star of the show in this respect, significantly reducing blooming compared to other LCD-based HDR monitors, and providing exceptionally high brightness. The level of performance is good enough for both enthusiast level mastering and HDR playback, so the MacBook Pro is a great device for video editing on the go when you also factor in its overall performance.

A few nitpicks aside, the major downside to the display is motion performance. This display is exceptionally slow even for an LCD, despite packing a 120Hz refresh rate. This affects areas including web browsing and any work with text as you scroll through content, and blur trails can be visible across a wide range of use cases, not just gaming. It"s not bad enough to negate the benefits you get elsewhere, but Apple needs to put a lot of work into optimizing how quickly their panels transition. I also feel the lack of HDMI 2.1 on the MacBook Pro is a bit puzzling, going HDMI 2.0 for external monitors (in addition to Thunderbolt) is a bit annoying.

Now comes the ultimate question: is this the best laptop display ever, as Apple claims it is? That will depend on your perspective. Evidently, if you"re buying a high-performance laptop for gaming then no, but the MacBook Pro is clearly not suited nor aimed at gamers. But if we put that aside and ask about the best display for content creation and productivity, we think Apple has a solid claim to that throne.

The only real competition right now are OLED panels, which come with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. There are a few other mini-LED laptop options on the Windows side, like the screen you get in the Acer Predator Helios 500, but that display only has 512 zones, not the 10,000 on offer here. So it"s a battle between the MacBook and the OLEDs you see in products like the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED.

The reasons to get an OLED display over this LCD would be in terms of its self-lit pure HDR experience with zero blooming, significantly faster response times for better motion clarity, and wider color gamut allowing for accurate work in the Adobe RGB color space as well as P3 and Rec.709. However, the drawbacks are also significant, including a 60Hz refresh rate limitation with current 4K offerings, the risk of permanent burn in, and significantly lower brightness. Actual implementations we"ve seen also lack the calibration Apple is offering.

On the balance of things, I"d prefer to get the Liquid Retina XDR in the new MacBook Pro than an OLED, especially for color-accurate content creation, and the HDR experience is close enough to OLED that I can forgive very minor blooming on occasion. I wouldn"t say Apple is miles in front with this screen, but it"s certainly very impressive and calling it the best display for production work is justified.

The Apple  24 inch LED Cinema display  and the Apple thunderbolt display have been a  source of frustration for many people.   They flickers, go black, the screens gets garbage on them, the fans turn on and off.   After reading lots of forums and trying various things I have practically completely eliminated all the flickering on my  24 inch LED Cinema display,  here is how.

It’s  had a problem with flickering ever since I first got it back in 2009.  It started off that once a day or so it just went black for five seconds.   At other times  the  screen is completely filled with gobbledygook  until I sleep the display and restart it.   At other times the screen just flickers black for a fraction of a second,  but all the fans  in the screen power down and then power up again.  Apple have released various ‘fixes’  to the problem over the years which have never fully resolved  the problem. Phone calls to Apple support were of no use after the first year because they just claimed it was a hardware problem and ‘out of warranty.’  The flickering got extremely bad recently with ‘El Capitan’   and the flickering also got worse when I connected a Pegasus Thunderbolt hard drive.

It’s not just the Apple LED Cinema display that has been affected. Even Apple’s latest ‘stunning’ Thunderbolt Displays have problems too.  The Apple help forums are riddled with complaints…

But if you already have one, here are a few things that might help.Run  the display directly from your Mac Mini,  do not daisy chain it with a hard drive such as the Pegasus Promise.  Daisy chaining definitely caused more problems.

Try unplugging and plugging the thunderbolt connector or Apple display port connector,  sometimes the problem can be worse if the connect is not in tightly.

I have a 2009  LED Cinema Display, but if you have a newer thunderbolt display, try replacing the all in one cable with a  thunderbolt cable.  A lot of people have found out the problem was with the cable.  You’re probably better off trying to borrow a thunderbolt cable  or seeing if your local Apple store will lend you one because they are in excess of $50 each.

If  you are having really bad problems, make a corner of your screen a hot corner to put your display to sleep.  sometimes my computer is blinking so badly the screen goes crazy and I can’t see anything,  I can’t even see the menus to ‘ restart’  the computer.  But if I move my mouse to the ‘hot corner’  to sleep the display, and then wake the display up again sometimes the problem goes away.

Crazy as it sounds,  wrapping my thunderbolt cable in aluminium foil was the biggest help of anything.  I looped up the excess thunderbolt cable into a circle and put aluminium foil around it to shield it.

Here I have activated the bottom left hot corner so that it puts the display to sleep. When things get really bad I can put the display to sleep with my mouse without having to see what’s happening on the screen. Then I can wake it up again with my spacebar and more often than not the problem has fixed itself temporarily.