Noob questions regarding Apple Studio Display. Please help with purchasing decision.

[applegoldfish]

Hello everyone, I have some noob questions for you regarding Apple Studio Display (ASD). Honestly, ASD will be the first monitor in our family, and thus we (me and my family) don't have any technical know-how about monitors in general. The ASD is $2100 in my country and reading/watching all these reviews marks the ASD at $1600 as super expensive, but it is what it is. So, my concern is about longevity of ASD.

First and foremost - English is my third language and sorry if these questions irks you or make me sound stupid but considering the money involved I should ask these questions to this warm community and seek out all the information I need to know

Considering the initial cost of ASD, I plan to use ASD for at least 10 years. I am currently planning to hook this up w/ M1 Mac Mini 16/256.

Anyway, these are my questions -

1) Let's say in 2025 - 2026 I upgrade the current M1 Mac Mini w/ the newer model of Mac Mini or Mac studio available at that time, will my ASD be compatible w/ the new boxes? Point being, if I keep changing the guts (computer w/ SOC) will my monitor be compatible w/ Mac Mini's/MBP/Mac Studio's/Mac Pro/iPad Pro which are gonna come out in the next 10 years? (Yes, convertors are fine as long as the ASD works down the line)

2) Pairing ASD w/ M1 Mac Mini will put any load on Mac Mini's CPU or make it run warmer because ASD is a 5K resolution and it needs a lot of power to push those many pixels? So is there a chance that pairing ASD w/ M1 Mac Mini hurts the performance of Mac Mini?

Thank you so much for taking the time and reading it.

Much appreciated.

 

[forrestwhite]

1) Shouldn't be an issue. It has Thunderbolt 4 which was released recently so it should future proof it to an extent. Worse case a new interface roles out in the future, and then you just buy the appropriate adapter. I still use my ~10 year old Thunderbolt display w/ adapters. Other than connections, my only concern re: future proofing would be around the panel specs itself as it's already dated (e.g. LG was using pretty much this same panel for the last ~3+ years).

2) Not at all. I've seen M1 Mac Mini's in a demanding studio environment driving LG 5K monitors with no issue. The M1 Mac Mini specs even allow it to drive the XDR monitor @ 6K with no issue. With the ASD, it does have the A13 so not sure what (if any) graphics offloading happens there yet, but I'm sure we'll know more about this soon.

 

[applegoldfish]

1) Shouldn't be an issue. It has Thunderbolt 4 which was released recently so it should future proof it to an extent. Worse case a new interface roles out in the future, and then you just buy the appropriate adapter. I still use my ~10 year old Thunderbolt display w/ adapters. Other than connections, my only concern re: future proofing would be around the panel specs itself as it's already dated (e.g. LG was using pretty much this same panel for the last ~3+ years).

2) Not at all. I've seen M1 Mac Mini's in a demanding studio environment driving LG 5K monitors with no issue. The M1 Mac Mini specs even allow it to drive the XDR monitor @ 6K with no issue. With the ASD, it does have the A13 so not sure what (if any) graphics offloading happens there yet, but I'm sure we'll know more about this soon.

Thank you so much for your answer and as for the display I won't be able to afford the Studio Display Pro (if any) even if it start at $2500. So, ASD is my one and only option rn.