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Two More Studio Display 2 Upgrades Leaked in New Report

neuropsychguy said:
These are not gaming monitors.

It’s easy to get caught up in the refresh rate arms race, but the Studio Display isn't a gaming monitor -- it’s a 5K production tool (or maybe higher resolution in the newer one(s) coming out). Driving 14.7 million pixels is a massive bandwidth load compared to a 1080p or 1440p gaming screen. Even 4K gaming monitors struggle to hit those ultra-high rates without using Display Stream Compression, which degrades image quality subtly. That doesn't matter for gaming and consumer production, but creative professionals are generally not going to use monitors like that.

Apple also prioritizes 'Retina' pixel density (218 PPI) and color accuracy because their target audience is designers and editors, not competitive gamers. For them, text clarity and color-matching matter more than hitting 240Hz. To make everything run fluidly at 5K (27") or 6K (32") requires high bandwidth. Thunderbolt 5 can finally drive something like a 6K monitor at 120 Hz.

Also, which of those gaming monitors have the color accuracy and other features for people working in photography, graphic design, or video? How many of them have Thunderbolt connectivity?
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120Hz isn't just about gaming. I was suffering from extremely painful eye strain. Spoke to my eye doctor, advised high refresh rates even though I do not game on my production systems and really 60fps gaming is good enough to me. It made a world of difference. I can literally tell just moving my mouse on the desktop if its 60Hz it hurts my eyes.

Plus, Apple has had Pro Motion 120Hz on laptops, iPads and iPhones for a while now.
 
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citysnaps said:
Excelent assessment overall.

"Also, which of those gaming monitors have the color accuracy and other features for people working in photography, graphic design, or video? How many of them have Thunderbolt connectivity?"

And your quote above is spot-on. See my previous post #71, above. My Studio Display hasn't drifted at all with respect to color accuracy since setting it up when I purchased it in 2022. A nice change coming from a large LG display that frequently drifted, wasting ink and paper when making first prints after processing in Lightroom.
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Color accuracy is not really that important unless you are in the print and film industry. Some exceptions sure, but I have over worked my self getting something fully color accurate and my client has a cheap monitor and doesn't see the accuracy of it. It's much less important for digital professional production -- again exceptions to everything. But I stopped caring once I moved to 120+ Hz and color accuracy is just fine.
 
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code-m said:
Yep bring on the dongles from Thunderbolt to HDMI. Apples view on its monitors was similar to the few generations of iPod, only restricted to Mac users due to iTunes and say limited appeal. Once it opened it to windows users, iPod sales and adoption exploded.

Apple still living in its Mac club is the best then wonders why sales for its accessories is not that great.
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A terrible analogy. Monitors are largely commodity devices with many if not most windows users racing down to low cost and there are plenty of vendors competing in that market. How many 5k monitors exist for PC's? not many. the market isnt there. So why would PC owners rush to buy an Apple 5k monitor? Heck many Apple users wonder why they need a 5k monitor.

The iPod on the other hand was unique in the MP3 market for ease of use and storage space with broad appeal. So it made good business sense to open it up.

Apple is not a peripherals company. It develops/sells them when it perceives industry is not serving the apple market well enough. Once it thinks it has nothing to add, it drops out. Witness the fate of the ImageWriter, and Airport.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Not something I should have to use on monitors of this price point.
It's also overkill as perhaps I just want to hook up an ATV, Chromecast or a Console to that 2nd input.
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all 4k devices, best served by a much cheaper 4k monitor. but you know that. the question apple asked and answered is why would someone buy a 5k monitor to run 4k devices. And you can already do Apple TV on the Mac you presumably have hooked up. shrugs. sure, you want maximum flexibility because you want maximum flexibility, but Apple believes in focusing on doing things well, not necessarily flexible.
 
Ethosik said:
Color accuracy is not really that important unless you are in the print and film industry. Some exceptions sure, but I have over worked my self getting something fully color accurate and my client has a cheap monitor and doesn't see the accuracy of it. It's much less important for digital professional production -- again exceptions to everything. But I stopped caring once I moved to 120+ Hz and color accuracy is just fine.
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If you're fussy about color... accuracy is critically important if you're a photographer who makes a lot of prints of their work, and/or has books produced. That's why calibration pucks are sold and used.

Fortunately, with my Studio Display I've never had to use one. Unlike when I used a large LG display and needed to use it frequently due to drift. A very frustrating experience. Costly too, wasting ink and paper on bad prints if I didn't calibrate frequently.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
It helps that Windows is wildly better than macOS at non-integer scaling and 4k looks fantastic and is fully adequate on Windows.
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So the point was, that there isn't a large market for an Apple 5k monitor in the PC world. Thanks for confirming. I was disagreeing with someone claiming Apple was missing the market by not trying to appeal via an added HDMI port. Glad we agree.

But yes, Windows always goes for what is cheaper. Shrugs. Choice is good.
 
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enc0re said:
Bandwidth is a non-issue. TB5 was designed for this use case by being able to go asymmetrical (120 Gbps / 40 Gbps). You could run 6K120 HDR uncompressed and have enough left over for (let's say) 4 USB4 ports on the back of the display.

If you were running all 4 USB ports at max bandwidth (what are the chances?), they would have to share and go down to USB 3.1 Gen 2 each. Still really impressive.
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If you are a gamer, sure, what do you care about those TB ports? You want a fast monitor. TB5 can probably handle that in 5k. You aren't connecting raid SSD raid drives to edit 8k video.

I have a 320 hz oled monitor for my gaming setup that was half the price. Apple isn't competing with that. So has been stated, Apple doesnt make a gaming monitor.

Its makes a 5k monitor for everyone else, including you tubers, photographers, musicians, that DO want to have TB ports acting as TB ports. Then bandwidth IS an issue. I do have several high speed devices connected through TB.

Shrugs. Not sure why people insist Apple makes a gaming monitor. There are better, cheaper, ones already out there.
 
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My four existing Studio Displays (two are nano screens) work just fine. The two plain screens came along with my M1 Ultra Mac Studio purchase and I have zero complaints and no interest in new displays. If not broke, don't fix 😱
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Yes, I do, especially at a premium price



Adding a 2nd input isn't going to impact their ability to do things well, at all. It simply makes for a better product for the customer.
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price has nothing to do with it. sorry. As you know Apple does market their devices as premium devices, but not the most flexible. period. that's the way it's been since 1984. You apparently want something different. Cool. It's called windows.

Often the better product is the simpler one. When HDMI is on Apple devices it is to interface with a non apple device (TV, projector). The ASD is for apple computers. If you want something else, it's an open market out there. And for the ones that demand HDMI input anyway, pay $20 for an adapter. Don't push bad design on the rest of us. 🙂
 
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Ethosik said:
120Hz isn't just about gaming. I was suffering from extremely painful eye strain. Spoke to my eye doctor, advised high refresh rates even though I do not game on my production systems and really 60fps gaming is good enough to me. It made a world of difference. I can literally tell just moving my mouse on the desktop if its 60Hz it hurts my eyes.

Plus, Apple has had Pro Motion 120Hz on laptops, iPads and iPhones for a while now.
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I agree about the benefit of 120 Hz, but the commenter I replied to was writing about 240+ Hz gaming monitors that are not really relevant to Apple Studio monitors because they are not gaming monitors.

My reply makes more sense in the context of the comment I was responding to.

“When we going to get ProMotion HDR that exceeds 120Hz? Gaming industry monitors refresh rate 120Hz/240/480Hz, Apple still stuck on 120Hz for some of its hardware line.”
 
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Will be interesting to see where they land with features and price points. A 5K/120hz Mini-Led with at least one Thunderbolt 5 port for the same MSRP of $1599 "should" be the baseline.. But Apple always reasons in ways that are inscrutable from the outside. We'll end up with 5K/90, Thunderbolt 3 and a price hike.
 
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