Yeah, the build quality is what keeps me coming back to it. It’s just something about Apple designing that just takes the cake compared to other brands.
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Apple Studio Display - Owners Thread
- Thread starter KPOM
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Yeah, the build quality is what keeps me coming back to it. It’s just something about Apple designing that just takes the cake compared to other brands.
I’ve had mine for a few months and think it’s great.
I think the screen image quality is superb, I use it for photo editing.
The speakers are pretty good and the mic decent enough.
I think on launch the camera was maybe over softening video, but that was resolved.
For me a big plus is the build quality, I can adjust height and it’s rock solid where my other monitor for work laptop wobbles for ages after adjustment.
Thanks everyone! Most likely going grab one.
Wishing that Pro Display was in same price range
The videos I've watched are generally in the "it's expensive but not bad" review.
I returned my LG for an ASD with zero regrets. I could literally see it wobbling sometimes when I was typing (and saying this got me some heat on here). I've seen posts of other people that mentioned the same thing.
I don't really want to read all the previous 94 pages but I might be in the market for this Studio Display but heard about how awful the camera is and that Apple was going to have a fix for it. Has the fix for it come out yet and if so did it work?
TIA
TIA
I’m curious, what DO they say to get?
If you want a decent 5K 27” there are literally zero options, as far as I can tell.
Is the screen pretty good? Yes.
Is the camera total trash? Yes.
Are the speakers better than what I already had on my desk? No.
Would I have preferred ProMotion? Absolutely.
Is it way overengineered? Yes.
Is it way overpriced? Yes.
Have I bought two? Yes.
Do I regret it? No.
Initially video was looking a little overly smoothed. But I felt the criticism overstated the issue and made it sound worse than the reality.
But after the update I think it looks ok, and better than pretty much all the other videos I see on Zoom and Teams.
I’ve tried a few monitors over the last 3/4 years, mainly LGs with odd Dell one. Many are cheaper than the Apple Studio Display and the key thing they do which the Apple ones don’t, is the variety of screen sizes (and budgets). The ASD can seem expensive by comparison, but here’s what they have going in their favour…
They “just work” With Apple devices which means…
I have two and they’re brilliant.
My only wish is that Apple would produce them in a variety of sizes - I’d love a 34” and 40” ultrawide for example and think they’d sell well.
They “just work” With Apple devices which means…
- They wake from sleep (quickly) every time, without fail.
- All the scaled resolutions in macOS are pin-sharp.
- The speakers are pretty damn good. Better than any other built-in speakers I’ve heard. I still use HomePods, but they’re good for other stuff.
- The webcam is ok. But its built-in so looks nice and is also very reliable.
- The screen is very bright. Much brighter than any others I’ve tried from 3rd parties.
- The 5K panels are very good and look very nice indeed.
I have two and they’re brilliant.
My only wish is that Apple would produce them in a variety of sizes - I’d love a 34” and 40” ultrawide for example and think they’d sell well.
It's definitely not great but it's "good enough" for me. I'm on Zoom calls pretty frequently and it's a non-issue for me.
There has been a firmware update that did help a little, but in my opinion the image quality is still total rubbish, and the framing is still wrong with Center Stage turned off. Others think it’s fine, or don’t care, you’ll have to decide for yourself.
There are two issues.
The first is Apple’s choice of a fisheye lens to support the Center Stage function, which means that for normal use a large portion of the image needs to be cropped out. I don’t think any amount of computational photography magic can compensate for this hardware limitation.
The second is a total lack of settings options. An app allowing adjustment of the framing and a slider from more noise to more smoothing would go a long way, and could of course be added in a future update.
I bought two myself.
Display is amazing. A. Maze. Ing.
Camera is better than trash. It's 1080p in a 4K world, but I personally think it's getting a worse reputation than it deserves.
Either way, I'm very satisfied with my pair.
Mine is dead silent as are most others. Go listen to one in a store, if you can find one quiet enough.
It's definitely something Apple needs to figure out and fix, but mine have no such issues. And I have multiple (over 50) smart bulbs, dimmers and switches all over my house which some people notice are contributing to their issues. Also have an EV in the garage and solar panels on the roof, adding to the potential for noise on the power lines. Again, no power supply buzz at all. My house was built in 2017, if that has any bearing on the situation.
Mine is silent. I've got one of the ones that gets stuck in restore mode for a while when you upgrade it and I would recommend it.
In other words, "I'm too lazy to do some research. Can somebody do it for me"
A simple google search would've also given you the answer.
Not really, since opinions on whether the “fix” provided by the firmware update is sufficient or not varies widely, which is evident just from the last 20 posts in this thread.
The only reasonable answer is “you need to try it and see for yourself if it works for your use case, preferences and quality requirements”.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. 🙂
There have been two firmware updates since the display was released. One helped the camera, the other fixed an audio issue that some people were having.
In my humble opinion, the camera is not awful. It produces a mid-range 1080p image with the benefit of Apple's Center Stage feature.
- Should the camera be a "high-end" camera in a $1500 display instead of what Apple gave us? Probably. But they're pretty much just reusing the front camera assembly from an iPad Pro in the Studio Display. I guess if you need a high-end 4K webcam, you'll have to get a Logitech Brio or something like that and use it instead. But the rest of the display is so good that the camera becomes a non-issue in comparison. If all you want is a display with a built-in camera and you don't care about 600+ nits of brightness, P3 color support and 5K resolution, then get yourself a $600 Dell or Samsung with a camera and call it a day.
- Is the 1080p picture the Studio Display produces bad for a 1080p camera? It's very much mid-range like I said above, but please don't blow the 1080p image up to 27" at 5K resolution and then complain about noise and artifacts. No 1080p camera can withstand being enlarged greater than 4x times to 5120x2880 resolution and not still look like garbage. Ask the people at the other end of your FaceTime call. If they say you look ok, then you look ok.
Of course not, but the ASD camera still manages to produce much worse garbage results than the Logitech C920s 1080p camera I am using instead, which has the added advantage of correct framing.
I much prefer an honest noisy image over a cartoonish smoothed image.
Apple's attitude was likely to just use the bare minimum, and that's what's most frustrating to me. They used left-over iPhone 11 parts for the camera module, SoC and several other components (see iFixit teardown) rather than choosing a solution that benefited the customer.
If the ASD was priced cheaper then I would let it go as I would consider the camera to not be a focus of the product, but the fact is this is a premium priced product that's marketed as having a "sensational camera". Using an external webcam isn't particularly convenient as it then angles down on the user rather than being at eye line.