Studio Display XDR review: Apple professional display shines brightly

Apple. The new paragraph 27 in Studio Display XDR is the best display so far. It has an exceptionally bright and gorgeous 5K screen, and wants to be a professional monitor for content creators using Mac everywhere, and the price matches.

Studio Display XDR, designed for use in combination with the latest or high-end Mac, sells Pound2,599 (Euro3,099/2,899/4,799 AUS$), but if you want to carry a stub, the price is Pound3,000. It is above the standard price of Studio Display £1,499, which is £2,000 less than the 2019 Apple Pro Display XDR it replaced.

For this level of monitor, it is designed to be quite low-key. The machine is aluminum, with a black glass front, with a relatively thick even border around the 27-inch display screen. Optional heights and tilts can be removed from the outer frame, which is about the size of the foot and can be easily installed on the table.

There are many unusual features that are usually not available on professional monitors. It has six loudspeakers, which are much better than most monitors or television speakers and perform well when listening or watching videos. Its three microphones and its excellent 12MP webcam can easily make video calls through the AutoScatter and Scanning Center Stage and MacBook Pro and iPad desktop view technology of Apple. It contains a hub, with two Thunderbolt 5 ports and two USB-C ports, which can charge up to 140 W to the laptop and connect to MacBook Pro or similar devices through a cable.

Display XDR is equipped with the latest iPhone A19 Pro chip to support its functions, although it does not have a user-accessible operating system and even in a 35oC heat wave, no sound fans can keep their internal components cool.

The star of this show is a super-clear 27-inch 5K IPS LD screen, which uses a magnified version of backlight technology used in MacBook Pro. It's a beautiful display, with a broad perspective and a really vivid picture. Its MiniLED backlights have 2,304 luminous areas that, while maintaining their contrasts, can maintain a very bright 1,000 Nit in a bright environment for everyday content and peak at 2,000 Nit in HDR content. It dwarfs the standard 600nit display of apples, which are already brighter than most competitors.

This allows monitors to easily overcome any bright indoor lighting and the most direct sunlight. But for those who have to deal with dizziness on a regular basis, it can also be equipped with nano texture coatings that can be very effective in projecting direct light sources.

Very high peaks also mean that XDRs perform well in the correct display of HDR content, whether simply watching a movie or creating a movie in applications like Final Cut Pro or Adob e Premiere. High-density luminous areas can help to keep shadows and black beauty and darkness in bright scenes by closing off undesired backlights, and to control well the luminous “spill” effects around bright object edges of dark background. This is the best MiniLED screen you'll see.

The screen was calibrated at the plant, with a high colour accuracy, covering the P3 and Adob e RGB fields, making it an excellent spot-in-the-show screen that could be used to edit photographs and videos in case-in-box. However, apples also allow self-defined calibration and include multiple colour reference modes, which are essential for video production, colour classification or medical imaging.

For day-to-day use, XDR is equipped with the Apple True Tone system, which adjusts the colour of the screen to the environment light for easy viewing, but can close the system and automatically brighten up to achieve color accuracy. Up to 120 Hz self-adaptation rates keep rolling, mouse and work as smooth as modern smartphones. However, the screen can be automatically adjusted to the appropriate frame rate to take full advantage of any video content being displayed or processed, or to lock in a specific frequency as required.

XDR can be used in conjunction with most modern Mac and many iPads with M series chips, but Mac needs M4 chips or better chips to drive the screen at 120Hz. XDR can also connect to other monitors via the Thunderbolt port so that you can run multiple monitors by a cable if you need to. Even MacBook Neo can use it, but only 4K resolution, not the original 5K of XDR.

This monitor can also be used with certain computers with Thunderbolt 4 or 5 and DisplayPort Alt, but cannot be guaranteed and many functions are limited, such as brightness adjustments. XDR cannot be used with games or other devices.

Specifications

- What?

Display screen: 27 inches (self-adapted 120Hz) IPS LCD, with True Tone

- What?

Resolution: 5,120x2,880 (218ppi)

- What?

Brightness SDR:1,000nits

- What?

HDR Brightness: Peak 2,000 Nit

- What?

Camera 12MP Central stage

- What?

Audio: six speakers, three microphones

- What?

Port: 2 Thunderbolt 5 (140W), 2 USB-C

- What?

Dimensions: 62.3 x 36.2 x 21.4 x 3.3 cm (excluding racks)

- What?

Weight: 6.3 kg (excluding racks)

Sustainable development

Studio Display XDR is made of recycled aluminium, copper, glass, gold, rare earth elements, tin and zinc. It is generally serviceable and has maintenance manuals.

Price

Apple Studio Display XDR sold at a price of GBP 2,599 (Euro3,099/2,899/4,799 AUS$). An additional £300 (€300/$300/$500/AUS) is required for nanotextile glass.

By contrast, the sale price for Studio Display was Pound1,499, and that for ProArt Display PA32UCXR was Pound2,799.

Judgement

Studio Display XDR is the best monitor in Apple's history. It's a huge upgrade to its regular Studio Display, providing everything that Mac users might want. But it's also very expensive for a general monitor.

This pushes it to the producer or the professional field. It is technologically advanced, with 5K resolution, 120Hz refreshing, colour accuracy and extreme brightness, and is sufficient to play a role in large alliances. For many content creators, it may be the only monitor they need to edit and grade their colours so that they can work in the HDR as easily as they do with the Internet. This explains why it has other functions, such as built-in loudspeakers, microphones, cameras and Thunderbolt 5 hubs, all of which are very convenient for users with only one workstation, rather than those who stay in dedicated editing packages all day long.

It is unlikely to replace reference monitors used in radio or film production, which may cost up to Pound30,000, but it is a viable option for thousands of content creators using Mac. Especially those who want to plug in and use monitors but do not actually need proper calibration.

With a low-light 5K competitor starting at about Pound1,500, the best display of apples is a gorgeous super-high screen that does not disappoint wealthy Mac users.

Advantages: 5K resolution, superlight, SDR brightness of 1,000 Nit, HDR brightness of 2,000 Nit, 120Hz refreshing rate, wide view, excellent network cameras, microphones and loudspeakers, Thunderbolt 5 hub, high colour accuracy for opening boxes, multiple colour reference modes

Disadvantages: Very expensive, needing modern or high-end Mac to be fully used, PC compatibility limited, unable to unseparate the rack after purchase, loss of comparison, weight, no standard DisplayPort or HDMI input compared to OLD.