As much as I love this Apple Studio Display, I can't disagree that it feels expensive. But I don't think it feels like it's a poor value. Admittedly, value is subjective and so if the display doesn't do the things you care about it's going to feel like a poor value to you.
Totally, it is subjective.
But - poor (subjective) value doesn't mean it sucks. I know folks want all these specs (more nits, mini-LED panels, HDR labels, more, more, more...) but the truth of it is that it doesn't matter in use to a large number of people who might buy this monitor. Personally, I value the MacOS integration above all else. I know that my 14" M1Pro MBP display has all the specs but, to my eye, the ASD looks just as good. Sure the deep blacks aren't quite as black, and the highlights aren't quite as bright, but the image quality absolutely stunning.
Honestly I'm disappointed in some ways because of my own fault. I was hoping Apple would release a 27" XDR. For me 32" is too large as I like to have 3 x 27" on my desk and 3 x 32" would just be too much. I used to have 3 x 30" Dells, like you the 3007WFP-HC and 3008WFP's. From 2009-2018 I ran with those. And then I went down a smidge to the 27" size and preferred it plus the specs were better at that size now it seems the 32" sizes (like the Pro Display XDR) are getting the best specs, even the gaming 4K 144Hz panels with G-Sync and 512 zone HDR are coming in the 32" size.
Also - I had no idea about 4K vs 5k and MacOS scaling until I saw some of the arguments about this panel. What I can tell you is that I bought 3 different 4K panels in December and returned each and everyone of them because they didn't look good to me subjectively. There was something 'not right' about how they looked. And I was coming off a 2560 x 1600 non-retina 30" Dell. The 4K panels should have blown my mind, but none of them did.
This is likely just the matte vs glossy thing to be honest with you. Apple using glossy really makes colours pop and look more vibrant, not much to do with the 4K vs 5K thing. But having said that, not many manufacturers offer the ability to go glossy for an external display like Apple, making the studio have a feature some may want. And like yeah it works, their glossy displays do pop and look more colourful as a result.
The ASD just works right out of the box - no glitches, no failures to sleep/wake or other compatibility issues that I have seen with other non-Apple monitors. The sound is amazing and I love that I can adjust volume and brightness from the keyboard. Even autobrightness works really well. Heck the webcam is good enough for work Zoom calls and people get a kick out of Center Stage when someone else walks into the frame.
This is all true with all the monitors I've used with macOS regarding sleep/wake working fine, no glitches etc - To get the display brightness controls to work with macOS for third party displays I use an app called Lunar, it uses the Display Port and HDMI control channels to actually control 3rd party monitor brightness properly like an official Apple display. It can even use the ambient light sensor on your Mac to do it automatically and it has other useful features too like it can automatically turn off your laptops display when connected to an external if desired.
Check it out
here for anyone reading who wants a more Apple-like experience with their external display.
It's not labeled HDR, but it's more HDR than some HDR-labeled monitors. 600 nits might not be the sexy 1,000 nits of other monitors, but my desk is alongside a window and on a sunny day, I have no problems with the ASD. The colors 'pop' comparably to the MacBook's display and they look perfect side-by-side.
I think 600 nits is nice and all but I'd probably run it at 300-350 anyway. For me as a HDR purist I'd want lighting zones. Cause it's no good having one bright thing in a scene and the rest of the screen is blown out because it only has a single backlight across the whole panel. HDR just doesn't work well without zones, it may actually make the viewing experience a lot worse even.
I started this thread because I felt that the YouTuber's were giving this thing short-shrift based on the specs, but not actual use. They also beat up on it because of price vs competition. I can't defend the price, but come on it's Apple - the same company that charges $19 for a polishing cloth. But it doesn't suck. Far from it. For me, it has been $1600 well spent.
I'd say the power cable and stand situation sucks quite bad to be honest. Webcam seems like it's sub-par even with their updates but that's just my opinion, I'm someone that setup a DSLR as a webcam when lockdowns started and I'd find it hard to go back to this grainy looking image but that's just again a personal thing. I'm sure the speakers are nice having the 16" MBP and knowing how tiny those speakers are but the sound they deliver the studio is probably really good.
I wouldn't mind this thing so much if they said okay this is the Studio Display and here also is the Studio Display XDR that had the HDR FALD backlighting with 10,000 MiniLED's etc - I'd have even looked past the stand and power cord to get it and paid an extra thousand bucks.
If they refresh the 32" XDR again before releasing a 27" I may have to bite the bullet and go all 32". I'm gonna need a larger desk.
If you are using the display for text rather than images, then 5K versus 4K is a pretty big deal. For text work, you should never run a Mac at anything other than 200% scale. This is actually not a subjective opinion, at any other scale you’re defeating the font rendering engine by resampling the screen image from 5K to 4K. So, yes there are great 4K displays but their use on the Mac is compromised by either giving you less screen space or having a degraded image quality. If you’re doing photo work then a 4K monitor won’t have exactly the same problems. I do think that Apple could have and should have made Mac OS work well with 4K displays at fractional scale but at some point they likely came to the conclusion that then vast majority of Mac users were using displays that Apple provided (laptops, iMacs) which they had control over the resolution and pixel density of and that they weren’t going to bother making the rendering system truly scale independent the way that Windows did.
This is really subjective, like I can barely tell the difference haha, the pixel density is already so high. Maybe if it was a 32" or 40" screen sure but I don't agree at 27" that 4K vs 5K is that noticeable. I even run my 16" display at the highest desktop size to get more real-estate and it's not that different there either the PPI is very high.
Maybe I just need my eyes checked
