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Studio Display XDR Impressions

boswald said:
What kind of sick person targets a hospital? Oh, wait - I don't really want to know. 🙁
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Yeah, there have been some very large and highly publicized (at least in professional circles) hospital hacks and ransomware attacks. I suspect a lot of them are state-sponsored/assisted (N. Korea, Russia...).
 
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ascender said:
I've got two XDRs running at 120Hz, daisy-chained, with an M4 Max Studio, running Tahoe.

I've had one crash in about a week of uptime, but I do still think there's some issues like you describe with these (and with bandwidth as well as memory usage) which need to be ironed out. I've not heard of anyone having issues like you're having though.
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I only have issues with plugging both displays directly to the mac, no issues with daisy chain. Have you tried plugging the two displays directly to the mac?
 
Yes, we tried everything and had a support case with Apple engineering too.

Tech specs say it will work, Apple say it will work, but Apple Engineering say it won't work.
 
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I'd to report that even after the firmware update, and running on 26.5b1 PB, I've had a crash of the screen : left half is black, right half is noise. For a few seconds, then the whole MacBook Pro reboots.
 
mightysashiman said:
I'd to report that even after the firmware update, and running on 26.5b1 PB, I've had a crash of the screen : left half is black, right half is noise. For a few seconds, then the whole MacBook Pro reboots.
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Are you set to adaptive refresh rate? I haven't had this occur since I switched both my displays to fixed 120Hz and disabled the variable refresh rate option.

M5 Max on 26.4.1 (public release track)
 
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VRR seems to cause me problems. Once I went to 120hz I've had no problems at all. Some apps seems to get into some crazy back and forth with frames when VRR is on and it ends with the computer crashing hard.
 
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bhodinut said:
VRR seems to cause me problems. Once I went to 120hz I've had no problems at all. Some apps seems to get into some crazy back and forth with frames when VRR is on and it ends with the computer crashing hard.
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Things have definitely settled down over the last couple of weeks. With a pair of these set to 120Hz and daisy-chained to a Mac Studio I've not had a single crash.... until about an hour after I made this post.

I copied the error log into a couple of AI to see what they made of it, both coming up with:

"Most likely practical causes:
  1. External display, cable, dock, or adapter issue
  2. macOS display driver/DCP bug
  3. Sleep/wake or display sleep transition problem
  4. High-refresh/HDR/variable refresh mode change problem
  5. Less likely: hardware fault in GPU/display controller or monitor path"
 
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some questions using the XDR Display with Windows 11:

is True Tone on by default? (didn't connect the display to my Mac yet)
is there any chance to change the color temp (Mac or Windows - 6500k, to 7000k etc...)?

Which Brightness and Sound Control App/software can you recommend for Windows 11?
 
How are the viewing angles on your Studio Display XDRs?

In my case, I can see a noticeable white balance shift depending on whether I look towards the bottom or the top of the display (bottom is redder), and I can see a green tint (similar to what has been described before) if I tilt my head to the left and look towards the right of the display. The latter (green tint) wouldn't really be an issue in a single-monitor setup, but the former (red tint) is noticeable from my normal viewing position (eyes about 1/3rd from the top of the display).

I did not see a similar effect on the previous unit I had (a nano-texture version, which I exchanged for the glossy one), but the colour grain/speckle was significantly hurting my ability to resolve nearby colours, so maybe the nano-texture was just hiding the issue.

I understand that some colour shift is inherent to the display technology, but Apple's claim of "superwide viewing angle" seems misleading, and I am trying to figure out if what I see on my unit is expected or if I got a lemon.
 
iUserXDR said:
How are the viewing angles on your Studio Display XDRs?

In my case, I can see a noticeable white balance shift depending on whether I look towards the bottom or the top of the display (bottom is redder), and I can see a green tint (similar to what has been described before) if I tilt my head to the left and look towards the right of the display. The latter (green tint) wouldn't really be an issue in a single-monitor setup, but the former (red tint) is noticeable from my normal viewing position (eyes about 1/3rd from the top of the display).

I did not see a similar effect on the previous unit I had (a nano-texture version, which I exchanged for the glossy one), but the colour grain/speckle was significantly hurting my ability to resolve nearby colours, so maybe the nano-texture was just hiding the issue.

I understand that some colour shift is inherent to the display technology, but Apple's claim of "superwide viewing angle" seems misleading, and I am trying to figure out if what I see on my unit is expected or if I got a lemon.
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There's definitely a panel lottery. I've returned and exchanged a couple due to tint shifts (green and red) like you mentioned with just subpar viewing angles, cosmetic defects, and one with a dead pixel. The monitor I just got a few days ago definitely seems to have better quality control, white uniformity, less DSE, however viewing angles seem about the same but with less of a dramatic tint. None of the issues I had previously. I wonder if these are newer builds compared to the ones that first shipped in March.
 
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iUserXDR said:
How are the viewing angles on your Studio Display XDRs?

In my case, I can see a noticeable white balance shift depending on whether I look towards the bottom or the top of the display (bottom is redder), and I can see a green tint (similar to what has been described before) if I tilt my head to the left and look towards the right of the display. The latter (green tint) wouldn't really be an issue in a single-monitor setup, but the former (red tint) is noticeable from my normal viewing position (eyes about 1/3rd from the top of the display).

I did not see a similar effect on the previous unit I had (a nano-texture version, which I exchanged for the glossy one), but the colour grain/speckle was significantly hurting my ability to resolve nearby colours, so maybe the nano-texture was just hiding the issue.

I understand that some colour shift is inherent to the display technology, but Apple's claim of "superwide viewing angle" seems misleading, and I am trying to figure out if what I see on my unit is expected or if I got a lemon.
Click to expand...
I don’t notice anything like that over here on a glossy XDR, the viewing angles are quite good and no obvious red tint to me.
 
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Chrisjmv said:
some questions using the XDR Display with Windows 11:

is True Tone on by default? (didn't connect the display to my Mac yet)
is there any chance to change the color temp (Mac or Windows - 6500k, to 7000k etc...)?

Which Brightness and Sound Control App/software can you recommend for Windows 11?
Click to expand...
You don't need any sound control app as it's natively supported.

Brightness, I use this app as it's the only one that works for me: https://github.com/LitteRabbit-37/Studio-Brightness-PlusPlus

Note that we're at mercy of devs to update and fix the issues. Right now, that app does not support HDR brightness adjustments on Windows and does not respect changing brightness between Mac and Windows as it reverts to max brightness every time you switch from Mac to Windows.

I'm currently trialing this app: https://displaybuddy.app/windows
 
  1. In case anyone didn't see this, it's possible to get 87hz refresh rate working on 5k resolution on Windows 11 with Jan '26 drivers. Thanks to Searchyyyy at nvidia.

  2. Install CRU
  3. Edit the Active profile for XDR
  4. In Extension Blocks, select the third DisplayID 1.3 block that has the detailed resolutions of 5k resolutions
  5. Edit the Detailed resolutions and add:

    Active: 5120 | 2880
    Front porch: 8 | 68
    Sync width: 32 | 8
    Back porch: 40 | 6
    Blanking (grayed out) should be: 80 | 82
    Total (grayed out) should be: 5200 | 2962

    Refresh rate: 87.324 (actual 258.653)

    Select Preferred.



  6. Click Ok, and okay the rest of dialogs to save it.
  7. Exit CRU and use CRU's restart the graphic subsystem.
  8. You should be able to select the 87 refresh rate now for 5k.

cru-5k-87hz-apple.png
 
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MikhailT said:
  1. In case anyone didn't see this, it's possible to get 87hz refresh rate working on 5k resolution on Windows 11 with Jan '26 drivers. Thanks to Searchyyyy at nvidia.

  2. Install CRU
  3. Edit the Active profile for XDR
  4. In Extension Blocks, select the third DisplayID 1.3 block that has the detailed resolutions of 5k resolutions
  5. Edit the Detailed resolutions and add:

    Active: 5120 | 2800
    Front porch: 8 | 68
    Sync width: 32 | 8
    Back porch: 40 | 6
    Blanking (grayed out) should be: 80 | 82
    Total (grayed out) should be: 5200 | 2962

    Refresh rate: 87.324 (actual 258.653)

    Select Preferred.



  6. Click Ok, and okay the rest of dialogs to save it.
  7. Exit CRU and use CRU's restart the graphic subsystem.
  8. You should be able to select the 87 refresh rate now for 5k.
Click to expand...

Thanks very helpful.

Active should be 2880 not 2800, the rest worked fine.
 
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I was able to compare my unit to the exhibition models and another new unit at the Apple Store. None of the other units had such a bad red-green diagonal colour shift (so the employees recognised that my unit had an issue), however all units had a strong green-cyan tint on the right when looking at the monitor at a (mild) angle. On the new unit, it was so bad that it was visible head-on, so I refused it and asked for a refund instead 🙁

So far, 4 out of 5 units I tested had some viewing-angle-related defect. However, the three I owned were all produced on week 9, 2026 (beginning of March) according to BetterDisplay, and the exhibition models were likely at least as old.

I hope they indeed improved QA in newer batches. However, in the part of the world I live (Scandinavia), there might not be a lot of turnover, so I'll wait a few months for the old inventory to clear before trying my luck again, and I'll order online (since the Apple Store I visited only had bad units locally).

The Studio Display XDR is still the most impressive monitor I've ever used, but I can't justify the price for a defective unit that I may not be able to calibrate properly. I'll try to make a longer post soon with my detailed impressions (including some very positive ones!).
 
calvinchan.hkg said:
I have M2 Max MBP, does it support 120Hz when connecting the new Studio Display XDR?
Much appreciated if anyone can answer. Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...
Yes - all M1 series chips, plus the base M2 and M3, are restricted to 60Hz, but the M2 Max and Ultra can do 120Hz.
 
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