Has anyone already used Studio Display XDR with PC?

[Pezimak]

I tried my works Dell laptop today in the Apple Store with the XDR, tried thunderbolt 5 cable the Nexhype display port / USB to USB C cable, and various iterations. No matter what I did I could not get that XDR to go above 1080P resolution, plugged the laptop into the Standard Studio Display with the Thunderbolt cable and instant 5K resolution... But after testing them A LOT, I think I'm going to go for the standard Studio Display with nano texture. Simple plug and play with my setup, for my eyes documents looked better on it, bit less glare around the characters as it s LCD, speakers are superb in it.

My only decision to make is do I go VESA or height adjustable stand hmm...

At the moment I don't want to drop £3300 on the XDR with the 'hope' Apple update the firmware one day to allow it to work with my works PC laptop... I have to think about how I will be using the monitor day on day out for 8 hours plus..

 

[Cobalt`]

I tried my works Dell laptop today in the Apple Store with the XDR, tried thunderbolt 5 cable the Nexhype display port / USB to USB C cable, and various iterations. No matter what I did I could not get that XDR to go above 1080P resolution, plugged the laptop into the Standard Studio Display with the Thunderbolt cable and instant 5K resolution... But after testing them A LOT, I think I'm going to go for the standard Studio Display with nano texture. Simple plug and play with my setup, for my eyes documents looked better on it, bit less glare around the characters as it s LCD, speakers are superb in it.

My only decision to make is do I go VESA or height adjustable stand hmm...

At the moment I don't want to drop £3300 on the XDR with the 'hope' Apple update the firmware one day to allow it to work with my works PC laptop... I have to think about how I will be using the monitor day on day out for 8 hours plus..

Could you please share the specifications of this Dell laptop? I’m curious why the standard display shows 5k resolution, while the XDR display doesn’t.

 

[thenewepic]

'hope' Apple update the firmware one day

I don't think Apple would ever fix this on their side. Basically it's not an Apple problem. GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD are working so better ask Intel for the updated drivers.

 

[taphil]

I tried my works Dell laptop today in the Apple Store with the XDR, tried thunderbolt 5 cable the Nexhype display port / USB to USB C cable, and various iterations. No matter what I did I could not get that XDR to go above 1080P resolution, plugged the laptop into the Standard Studio Display with the Thunderbolt cable and instant 5K resolution... But after testing them A LOT, I think I'm going to go for the standard Studio Display with nano texture. Simple plug and play with my setup, for my eyes documents looked better on it, bit less glare around the characters as it s LCD, speakers are superb in it.

My only decision to make is do I go VESA or height adjustable stand hmm...

At the moment I don't want to drop £3300 on the XDR with the 'hope' Apple update the firmware one day to allow it to work with my works PC laptop... I have to think about how I will be using the monitor day on day out for 8 hours plus..

I have an Asus NUC15 with Intel graphics and TB4. TB works fine with the older SD, but with SD XDR I also can only get 1080P.

 

[goneil45]

I also brought my Dell Latitude 3520 work laptop (which on a spec level is one degree above garbage) into the Apple Store and plugged it into the SD XDR using the Thunderbolt 5 cable and could not get it above 1080p 60hz. It showed “Wired Display” in settings and I wasn’t able to control brightness (not surprised). But it looked beautiful even at low res. I wasn’t totally shocked by the this considering the Windows port is DisplayPort 1.4 vis USB-C and the graphics are Intel Iris Pro. I’m actually surprised it worked at all. So initially I called that win UNTIL I plugged the same PC into the regular Studio Display right next to the XDR. I managed 5K 60hz on it with the same cable Thunderbolt 5 cable.

As has been touched on before, this seems to confirm my suspicion that for whatever reason, the XDR is handling onboard graphics different than even the refreshed Studio Display (2026) and that it has nothing to do with what cable you use at all. It is deeply frustrating to me that a display that costs twice as much has far more limiting output capabilities as it stands right now. I could maybe understand the older Studio Display running things differently than the XDR; but the fact is, the updated standard Studio Display and the XDRs should be equals in terms of running minimal specs (as in anything below 5K 120hz). the fact than an inferior display can run a machine at 5K 60hz but the XDR doesn’t is infuriating to me.

 

[thenewepic]

I’m curious about linux drivers for the Intel graphics. As we’ve seen linux drivers for the NVIDIA GPUs support 5K@120 meanwhile Windows drivers for the same cards currently support up to 5K@60. It might be that linux drivers for the Intel work better with this display too.

 

[Pezimak]

I also brought my Dell Latitude 3520 work laptop (which on a spec level is one degree above garbage) into the Apple Store and plugged it into the SD XDR using the Thunderbolt 5 cable and could not get it above 1080p 60hz. It showed “Wired Display” in settings and I wasn’t able to control brightness (not surprised). But it looked beautiful even at low res. I wasn’t totally shocked by the this considering the Windows port is DisplayPort 1.4 vis USB-C and the graphics are Intel Iris Pro. I’m actually surprised it worked at all. So initially I called that win UNTIL I plugged the same PC into the regular Studio Display right next to the XDR. I managed 5K 60hz on it with the same cable Thunderbolt 5 cable.

As has been touched on before, this seems to confirm my suspicion that for whatever reason, the XDR is handling onboard graphics different than even the refreshed Studio Display (2026) and that it has nothing to do with what cable you use at all. It is deeply frustrating to me that a display that costs twice as much has far more limiting output capabilities as it stands right now. I could maybe understand the older Studio Display running things differently than the XDR; but the fact is, the updated standard Studio Display and the XDRs should be equals in terms of running minimal specs (as in anything below 5K 120hz). the fact than an inferior display can run a machine at 5K 60hz but the XDR doesn’t is infuriating to me.

Precisely, there is no reason what so ever for the XDR to not support 5K 60 on a Windows PC laptop, if the standard Studio display does. To me I thought the text looked awful at 1080P.

 

[Pezimak]

Could you please share the specifications of this Dell laptop? I’m curious why the standard display shows 5k resolution, while the XDR display doesn’t.

Sure it is a Dell Pro PC 14250 14", has an Intel 13th gen i5 1345U with 16GB RAM and Intel Iris Xe graphics, with 128MB VRAM. No idea if that is manually assigned though as the BIOS is locked out.

 

[Cobalt`]

I’m curious about linux drivers for the Intel graphics. As we’ve seen linux drivers for the NVIDIA GPUs support 5K@120 meanwhile Windows drivers for the same cards currently support up to 5K@60. It might be that linux drivers for the Intel work better with this display too.

Yeah I am curious too since Pezimak did say:

plugged the laptop into the Standard Studio Display with the Thunderbolt cable and instant 5K resolution...

I wonder if the same machine could then output 5k at 60Hz on Linux.

Swapping operating systems isn’t a practical solution, especially if you absolutely need Windows. However, it could at least suggest that a software solution might be possible on the Windows side.

 

[Menno]

I took my HP ProBook (with Intel Iris Xe graphics and USB-C/DisplayPort output) to the Apple Store to test it with the Studio Display XDR.

It worked instantly — full resolution and 120 Hz, completely plug and play. No drivers, no tweaks. Pretty impressive for a relatively basic business laptop.

Both laptops are fully up to date with Windows updates pushed by our IT department.

We also tried my wife’s Dell laptop, and it handled 5K at 120 Hz just as smoothly.

Didn’t expect this level of performance from non-Apple hardware, but it just works.

 

[Pezimak]

I took my HP ProBook (with Intel Iris Xe graphics and USB-C/DisplayPort output) to the Apple Store to test it with the Studio Display XDR.

It worked instantly — full resolution and 120 Hz, completely plug and play. No drivers, no tweaks. Pretty impressive for a relatively basic business laptop.

Both laptops are fully up to date with Windows updates pushed by our IT department.

We also tried my wife’s Dell laptop, and it handled 5K at 120 Hz just as smoothly.

Didn’t expect this level of performance from non-Apple hardware, but it just works.

What cable did you use?