Used Pro Display XDR or New Studio Display XDR for Photography

[AndreeOnline]

Honestly, as a photographer myself, I wouldn't purchase either.

Does your photography process mainly result in printed images?

Out of curiosity: have you tested HDR development for digital display?

When I looked at my photos in Lightroom on my MacBook Pro I moaned for two reasons:

I will have to go over select parts of my entire collection (substantial) and redevelop them for HDR. When I've done that, it will be a years-long struggle before anyone else* can reliably see what I see on my screen.

We need browser support for .jxl in all major browsers and updated online services that handle HDR properly. And people with HDR devices should be served their preferred library (might still be SDR).

*= the large masses.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Does your photography process mainly result in printed images?

Out of curiosity: have you tested HDR development for digital display?

When I looked at my photos in Lightroom on my MacBook Pro I moaned for two reasons:

I will have to go over select parts of my entire collection (substantial) and redevelop them for HDR. When I've done that, it will be a years-long struggle before anyone else* can reliably see what I see on my screen.

We need browser support for .jxl in all major browsers and updated online services that handle HDR properly. And people with HDR devices should be served their preferred library (might still be SDR).

*= the large masses.

Yes I do a lot of printing, so Adobe RGB is important for me because virtually all my printing services require it.

 

[Zubba]

Honestly, as a photographer myself, I wouldn't purchase either. The standard Studio Display is fine for your needs and, in one regard, better.

Backlight uniformity has been proven to actually be better on the standard SD (see PetaPixel), which is critical for photography.

Also, consider the following:

- You don't need a high refresh rate.
- You don't need super-high brightness (1000+ nits)
- All three displays have P3-wide colour, if you're working strictly in digital realms.
- If you're printing your photographs, then you should know that Adobe RGB, surprisingly and disappointingly, is virtually equal on the Studio Display and Studio Display XDR (84-86%). BenQ and Asus ProArt have monitors for less than half the price have Adobe RGB at 95%+.

If your needs are only photography then I would strongly consider a BenQ or Asus ProArt. However, the regular Studio Display can be worth it if you need nice(er) speakers, microphone, camera, and high quality enclosure.

Uniformity is something highly dependent on a per panel characteristic. What article in petapixel did you see the claim that the standard models exhibit greater uniformity than the XDR? Link?

 

[jabbr]

I read through the PetaPixel article and uniformity is only mentioned for brightness, and they didn't compare the XDR to the OG studio display. If they did a comparison between them in regards to dark uniformity I guarantee you the XDR would win in a landslide because of the 2000+ miniLEDs vs one single light.

 

[Frixo Cool]

What's the catch that there are no used Pro Display XDR 32" available for purchase in the EU? All you can find on eBay is USA, and then the shipping and customs fees are too high.

 

[rnb2]

Does your photography process mainly result in printed images?

Out of curiosity: have you tested HDR development for digital display?

When I looked at my photos in Lightroom on my MacBook Pro I moaned for two reasons:

I will have to go over select parts of my entire collection (substantial) and redevelop them for HDR. When I've done that, it will be a years-long struggle before anyone else* can reliably see what I see on my screen.

We need browser support for .jxl in all major browsers and updated online services that handle HDR properly. And people with HDR devices should be served their preferred library (might still be SDR).

*= the large masses.

Thanks for fighting this fight when people refused to understand what you were talking about!

As soon as I saw Greg Benz's explanation of what adding HDR processing to Lightroom really meant and tested it on my M1 Pro 14" MBP (since replaced with an M4 Pro 14", then an M4 Pro Mac mini), I saw the transformational possibilities and began dreaming of having something like my 2018-vintage 27" 4k BenQ SW271 with a MUCH brighter backlight. I happened to find a great deal on a 1400nit/2304 dimming zone TB4 Philips 27" 4k last year ($500!, a steal), but the color was a little bit off and half the display went dark just within my 30-day return period (Philips didn't have any warranty replacements available). Lightroom Classic's wonky handling of multiple displays made using a MacBook Pro's display for processing along with a larger display for the photo grid an exercise in frustration.

At $3300, the Studio Display XDR was a tough pill to swallow (though not as tough as the Pro Display XDR), but when they (shockingly) knocked it down to $2900 without the stand (I was already using a multi-arm VESA setup), and then B&H knocked $50 off of that in mid-April, I placed the order. Super happy with the purchase, but like you, I find myself looking at the daunting task of reprocessing a ton of photos from the last 20+ years, including many that I considered "not good enough" on first pass that might find an entirely new life with HDR processing.

I even managed to wow my wife, who really doesn't care about this stuff, with a demonstration of what a big deal that HDR button is the other day with a decent shot of a snowy egret, properly "exposed to the right" (so no blown highlights), but in SDR, there was no discernible detail in the feathers at all. In the old days, I'd have been pulling down the whites and highlights to bring that detail out, but now I just click the HDR button and the whole photo literally pops to life with color and detail. The one big frustration is not knowing how much of the potential audience will be able to see these photos as they're meant to be seen, but even mid-range iPhones and Android phones have HDR screens now, so that's some consolation.

The miniLED backlight might not matter for photographers who are primarily interested in processing for print, but processing for screen viewing is a whole different world now, and the Studio Display XDR is the best way to access that world.

 

[Frixo Cool]

Studio Display XDR is great, but way to small for me. Can't go back to 27". Apple should offer a matrix of displays: regular studio monitors in 27" and 32" and XDR versions also in 27" and 32".

My choice would be a regular 32" at a reasonable price because I need a large work surface, and professional color grading is not crucial for me.

 

[SDAVE]

Studio Display XDR is great, but way to small for me. Can't go back to 27". Apple should offer a matrix of displays: regular studio monitors in 27" and 32" and XDR versions also in 27" and 32".

My choice would be a regular 32" at a reasonable price because I need a large work surface, and professional color grading is not crucial for me.

I don't think they'll do a 32", pretty much 27" in general are big sellers.

They also dumbed down the casing and got rid of the Mac Pro design language with the perforated holes and put the XDR in the Studio Display package to fit with the Mac Mini/Mac Studio/MacBook Pro

If you really need 32" there are the ProArt displays I think.

 

[JoeG4]

Studio Display XDR is great, but way to small for me. Can't go back to 27". Apple should offer a matrix of displays: regular studio monitors in 27" and 32" and XDR versions also in 27" and 32".

My choice would be a regular 32" at a reasonable price because I need a large work surface, and professional color grading is not crucial for me.

Word! I was thinking about this for a while but went with the Asus 32" 6k because 32" matches the height of the 57" super ultrawide monitor I have next to it, and it feels nice to have matching height monitors.

Now that I've sat here using this 32" a bit I can't imagine buying the 27" instead lol.

It feels kinda out-of-touch from Apple, too! 34" ultrawides have been very popular outside the Mac world. On this forum, a bunch of people expressed interest in a 32" studio display... and instead they went and did the opposite and made a 27" XDR display and made it even more niche lol.

To be fair, the 27" XDR is selling a lot better than I expected. Seems a whole bunch of people on /r/macsetups on reddit bought one (Or even TWO)... what the disposable income batman?! I make pretty good money and I'm not feeling comfy about dropping $7k on two monitors on an impulse buy LOL.

 

[rnb2]

The difficulty is that 6k takes 40% more bandwidth than 5k just to display the pixels - remember that the Pro Display XDR was only 60Hz and couldn't fit much more than just the raw pixels into Thunderbolt 3. It had no camera or speakers, and the additional USB-C ports were only USB2. Thunderbolt 5 has much more bandwidth, but there's a limit to how much you want to dedicate just to displays, and how much die space Apple wants to dedicate to driving displays on their processor packages. As it stands, an M4 Pro MacBook Pro can't drive more than one external display if you ask it to drive the Studio Display XDR at 120Hz (the M4 Pro Mac mini, lacking a built-in screen, can).

In the end, they decided that HDR and ProMotion were more important to their overall market than 6k - I don't believe that there is a 6k 120Hz miniLED panel out there to be used if they wanted to. Honestly, a 6k display might be most likely to appear in a theoretical new iMac Pro, where Apple could do something similar to the dual display controller setup they used on the original 5k iMac in 2014 to get around the problem of sending 6k 120Hz over Thunderbolt. Whether such a machine will make it to market anytime soon is hard to guess from outside Apple.

 

[JoeG4]

In the end, they decided that HDR and ProMotion were more important to their overall market than 6k - I don't believe that there is a 6k 120Hz miniLED panel out there to be used if they wanted to. Honestly, a 6k display might be most likely to appear in a theoretical new iMac Pro, where Apple could do something similar to the dual display controller setup they used on the original 5k iMac in 2014 to get around the problem of sending 6k 120Hz over Thunderbolt. Whether such a machine will make it to market anytime soon is hard to guess from outside Apple.

I would have been interested in a 32" studio display. Somehow Asus is selling a 6k screen for $900 and LG is selling one for around $1500. I think they could have figured out how to make one happen for $2500-3k.

 

[Zubba]

I would have been interested in a 32" studio display. Somehow Asus is selling a 6k screen for $900 and LG is selling one for around $1500. I think they could have figured out how to make one happen for $2500-3k.

None of those are 120hz, or miniLED; they are not remotely the same thing.

 

[JoeG4]

None of those are 120hz, or miniLED; they are not remotely the same thing.

Then people could buy the 120hz miniled studio display XDR and be happy with it.
And the people who want a 32" 6k screen that isn't 120hz or miniled could have that.

 

[rnb2]

Then people could buy the 120hz miniled studio display XDR and be happy with it.
And the people who want a 32" 6k screen that isn't 120hz or miniled could have that.

There are a number of possible reasons why Apple might not want to be in the prosumer 6k market right now - maybe they can't source the panel for a price that makes it attractive once they add the Apple Margin (as you noted, it would have to be a fair bit above the 27" Studio Display), or that they don't think there'd be enough of a market at their price to make it worthwhile (I guess those are pretty much the same thing...)? Also, once the decision to discontinue the Pro Display XDR was made (and it needed to be heavily revised or discontinued), making a prosumer 6k alongside a prosumer and pro 5k would leave them endlessly answering "why don't you also make a pro 6k any more?". For now, they just say that they make awesome 5k displays, and that's that - whatever 6k displays the market wants will have to be filled by someone else.

The story with ultrawides is a bit easier to see, as there isn't a panel that meets their Retina standards (>218ppi for desktop use). Ultrawides are also used a lot (but certainly not exclusively) in types of gaming that Apple just doesn't market to, because their GPUs (as good as they are in performance per watt) can't compete with Nvidia or AMD for raw fps.

 

[Frixo Cool]

It's not so much about the resolution, in my case I don't need 6K, not even 5K, for a lot of my design work 4K is more than enough, but the screen size definitely matters to me. If the standard for professional use back in 2005 was Apple Cinema 30", then today they should be at least at the level of two decades ago!

 

[rnb2]

It's not so much about the resolution, in my case I don't need 6K, not even 5K, for a lot of my design work 4K is more than enough, but the screen size definitely matters to me. If the standard for professional use back in 2005 was Apple Cinema 30", then today they should be at least at the level of two decades ago!

It's all a matter of how many pixels you have to push through the pipe, and how fast you want to refresh them - 2026 Apple wants 218ppi@60Hz at a minimum over a shared Thunderbolt pipe, and the 30" Cinema Display was doing ~101ppi@60Hz over a connection that was only for display data. If you need a 30"+ display and 4k is all you need, there are literally dozens of options out there, many of excellent quality. Apple isn't going to make a 32" 4k display.

 

[SDAVE]

It's not so much about the resolution, in my case I don't need 6K, not even 5K, for a lot of my design work 4K is more than enough, but the screen size definitely matters to me. If the standard for professional use back in 2005 was Apple Cinema 30", then today they should be at least at the level of two decades ago!

It's 100% about resolution and PPI.

Going from a 27" 4K display to a 27" 5K Display (whether its Studio Display or Studio Display XDR or another brand with IPS or OLED panel) is a huge jump.

If you're a designer for example, seeing typography on a 5k display or high PPI display (Like MacBook Pros/Studio Displays) is a huge + compared to 4K displays.

For a while I had dual 4k displays and dual 2.5k UltraWide displays (looked like a spaceship) as I waited for Apple to release new displays (I have 2 of the first gen displays) and it was such a pleasure to use 5K displays again for design work, I could never go back.

32" 6k for me is too much real estate as I work with dual displays usually, 27" x2 is perfect for me, but it has to be a minimum of 5K resolution.

I've had every Apple display after Jobs came back (except maybe the expensive Trinitron CRT screens from way back, although I saw it in person) including the 23" Studio Displays and 30". While for its time they were great displays, the PPI was really low especially for design work on the 30".

Display Technology has advanced but not to the degree I would like. OLED is still super expensive especially tandem OLED and it still doesn't hold a candle (pun intended) to miniLED (which is also expensive) which spits out crazy amount of NITS especially for HDR content (which I personally don't care about, but seems Apple does).

At the end of the day, technology like batteries, camera sensors, displays, whatever, is based on economy of scale. The more popular they are, the more people buy them, the more it will advance and get cheaper due to competition. The IPS display in the cheaper Studio Display is still good but its an iteration of 10+ year old panels from LG (most likely Apple still uses them). It's perfected to a T for what it is and still works well. Yeah they're not perfect blacks but who cares.

I would eventually get the new XDR displays but paying $7000 for dual is insane, I'd rather get a M5 Ultra and keep my dual Studio Displays. Hopefully a a few years from now miniLED will become more mainstream and prices will go down, but from what it seems, Apple is one of the only manufacturers using miniLED, most others use OLED (inferior NITS) so I don't know if we will ever see miniLED drop in price, since Apple doesn't push out that many displays as the whole industry does. So we will eventually see Apple move to OLED when it has good enough brightness and costs drop.

 

[rnb2]

I would eventually get the new XDR displays but paying $7000 for dual is insane, I'd rather get a M5 Ultra and keep my dual Studio Displays. Hopefully a a few years from now miniLED will become more mainstream and prices will go down, but from what it seems, Apple is one of the only manufacturers using miniLED, most others use OLED (inferior NITS) so I don't know if we will ever see miniLED drop in price, since Apple doesn't push out that many displays as the whole industry does. So we will eventually see Apple move to OLED when it has good enough brightness and costs drop.

There are actually a lot of miniLED displays in the gaming space now, and 5k is becoming a thing as gaming GPUs get fast enough to drive them. Gaming was stuck at 4k for many years, but we're seeing more activity in the 5k space than ever - it just took a decade+ for the more mainstream part of the industry to get there.

 

[SDAVE]

There are actually a lot of miniLED displays in the gaming space now, and 5k is becoming a thing as gaming GPUs get fast enough to drive them. Gaming was stuck at 4k for many years, but we're seeing more activity in the 5k space than ever - it just took a decade+ for the more mainstream part of the industry to get there.

Still not that many, especially 5k. 5k is a weird format for mainstream consumers. The display industry is a race to the bottom anyway, so unless you're talking about specialty monitors, that's another story.

You have to move hundreds of millions of units for any tech to drop in price, such as OLED, QLED or IPS. It's just simple economics.

Apple has been making use of 5K displays since 2015 with the iMacs. We took that for granted. I can personally never go back to 4k. I do game sometimes on my Mac Pro but I run at lower resolutions due to being stuck on the 6900XT (I guess I can throw in a 5080/5090 in there under Windows to run 4k-5k with DLSS with everything maxed out but the GPU prices are ridiculous right now).

 

[rnb2]

Still not that many, especially 5k. 5k is a weird format for mainstream consumers. The display industry is a race to the bottom anyway, so unless you're talking about specialty monitors, that's another story.

You have to move hundreds of millions of units for any tech to drop in price, such as OLED, QLED or IPS. It's just simple economics.

Fair point, but five current or announced 5k miniLED displays (Apple, LG, MSI, AOC, and HKC), plus five more LEDs (Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, and Philips), is a whole lot better than the days of "Here, you get this LG UltraFine, and you'll like it".

 

[SDAVE]

Fair point, but five current or announced 5k miniLED displays (Apple, LG, MSI, AOC, and HKC), plus five more LEDs (Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, and Philips), is a whole lot better than the days of "Here, you get this LG UltraFine, and you'll like it".

Probably announced to compete with Apple.

 

[rnb2]

Probably announced to compete with Apple.

Absolutely, but unlike 2014, there is a developing market beyond "Apple productivity" (which led to the death of all of the LG alternatives in the mid-to-late 2010s). When I bought my BenQ SW271 in late 2018, there was nothing besides that LG 5k, with all of its well-known issues, so if you wanted something better (hardware calibration, AdobeRGB/P3 color, etc), you had to settle for 4k (and possibly run it in "looks like 5k" mode, as I did). Now, with Apple back in the display game and setting the high end of the market, there is plenty of space for others to do something decent-to-good and still make a reasonable margin well under Apple's price.

All of those other 5k displays are also dual-mode, with 330Hz 2k settings, so even if you can't game at 5k, you can use it at 5k for productivity, then switch to the 2k mode for gaming. With AI frame interpolation and upscaling, 5k will be usable for gaming if you have the GPU for it at some point. 4k (or ultrawide 5k) is still the sweet spot, but it's the next step on the 720p > 1080p > 2k > 4k > 5k > 6k > 8k > etc continuum.

 

[twilightgod]

I have tried Asus ProArt 6K and Kuycon G32P 6K, they are not on par with my iMac 5K in picture quality, ProArt is matte, G32P is glossy in the first layer, but still a bit matte under that.
Pro Display XDR is too expensive for Lightroom use without HDR requirement, also it's hard to find now.
Maybe 2 x Studio Display is the best choice right now?

 

[SDAVE]

I have tried Asus ProArt 6K and Kuycon G32P 6K, they are not on par with my iMac 5K in picture quality, ProArt is matte, G32P is glossy in the first layer, but still a bit matte under that.
Pro Display XDR is too expensive for Lightroom use without HDR requirement, also it's hard to find now.
Maybe 2 x Studio Display is the best choice right now?

I've used a lot of monitors and I never personally like Matte displays at all because they screw up the blacks by brightening the darks. I work in dark rooms anyways so reflections is never an issue. I have 2x Studio Displays (last gen) and very happy even tho these "panels" are "old" I don't care. The blacks are still gorgeous and has high PPI. I've had LG and other displays before this, they are usually always matte (non Apple displays) so I hate them tbh. Before the studio displays came out, I was pissed that I was using non-Apple displays. Studio Displays are some of the best displays I've ever owned because they are calibrated to match MacBook Pro displays and good enough blacks and color to handle my workload. Yes there are more "technically better" displays out there and possibly even cheaper you can find on sale, but Apple has a proven track record (for me) for stability, reliability, etc. Also they look great on the desk to top it off and they don't have crappy plastic stands which shake when the desk is moved. I also use the built in webcam all the time and sometimes the Mic (I have an external Mic for Zoom calls). Speakers I rarely use. Next up is the dual XDRs but I can't justify spending $7000 on 2 displays right now, even though I do color accurate work, what I have is good enough for me. If you can find new old stock/certified refurb for good $ for previous gen Studio Displays, go for it.