Very disappointed with thunderbolt displays

[air23cary]

I was a maniac and got 2 ATDs to hook up to my i7 mini. Now I am pondering whether I should return both.

First, the glare everyone always talks about. It doesn't bother me in the least, so I'm not deducting any points for that.

A few things upset me. First, the speakers are awful. I had a 24 inch ACD a couple years ago, and that sounded much better.

Second, the speakers on both displays make a static noise sound (like volume is turned all the way up with nothing playing) constantly. It usually last for 20-30 seconds, then comes back five, ten, fifteen minutes later. Incredibly annoying.

Third, the screen colors do not match. One is bright and clear, the other is dark and yellow. I have tried to calibrate both.

Finally, these things take forever to wake up (and my mini is SSD).

Has anyone encountered these problems?

 

[throAU]

I'd return them both, or at least take into the apple store to demonstrate the problem.

The screen colour mis-match and speaker hiss sounds like faults to me - they're not a cheap display, and apple displays are supposedly good quality in terms of colour matching for pro level work - and for that reason I would consider those particular displays "unacceptable".

 

[thekev]

The screen colour mis-match and speaker hiss sounds like faults to me - they're not a cheap display, and apple displays are supposedly good quality in terms of colour matching for pro level work - and for that reason I would consider those particular displays "unacceptable".

Actually it's not that atypical for displays to have matching issues out of the box. This comes down to limitations in the technology. The problem here is that Apple doesn't offer anything in the way of tools to compensate for this. Note the sheer amount of features dedicated to matching one piece of hardware with another. Even if they matched out of the box, there's no way to guarantee they would age identically. The OP could return the one he feels is unacceptable and try again. I think some people on here have mentioned being happy with a dual thunderbolt display setup. It's just that Apple's pass fail criteria may not be fully aligned with some of its more demanding users.

Many of the companies that offer professional grade displays use tiered systems. They'll bin things to a different tolerance for their more expensive displays and use additional forms of correction to resolve residual minor issues in backlight uniformity. In the US I'd probably suggest NEC as they're around the same price at this point. The problem is I don't think they have built in speakers. They don't have the docking functionality, and they can't be chained like thunderbolt displays. They also cannot use thunderbolt cables. A mini displayport to displayport cable will work.

 

[-jc]

Cheap display or not, if you have the room on your desk, get separate speakers instead of relying on built-in ones in any monitor, they will be infinitely better and there's loads to choose from. The issues you're having sound like faults, I would return them to Apple.