Can We Talk About How Bad Of A Value The Studio Display Is?

So there were a lot of surprises at Apple’s ‘Peek Performance’ event.

But now that I’ve had some time to digest it I’d have to say the event wasn’t really that noteworthy.

I mean it was better than that one event a few years ago that could have just been a press release. But only barely. And that’s because of the Mac Studio and Studio Display.

They are undeniably the flagship products of the event and, honestly, I don’t think they’re that good.

Yeah, I mean, they are good now, but just wait until the Mac Pro comes out. Then the Mac Studio is done for. In fact I suspect that there’s a good chance the Mac Studio never gets an update and just becomes the new trashcan Mac Pro.

But I already talked about the Mac Studio. I wanted to talk about the Studio display.

No Mini-LED, No Pro Motion, Why Bother?

I was shocked that the Studio display had no Mini-LED or Pro Motion. I mean the iPad Pro has both of them, the MacBook Pro has both of them, the iPhone Pro has OLED instead of Mini-LED and has Pro Motion. So, what? Is the Studio display not pro? Is this $1700 display not a pro product?

Speaking of $1700, why is it $1700? So it’s very hard to find a 5K resolution monitor because as far as I can tell that’s just a resolution Apple made up. But there are tons of 4K monitors and they cost less. How much do they cost?

1500? Lower. $1200? Nope, lower. $1000? Lower still. $800? Keep going. $500? Nope, you can get a 4K monitor for $300. $300! Less than a fifth of what you can get the Studio display for! For the price of a Studio display you can get 3 4K monitors, a mechanical keyboard, mouse, webcam, speakers, some sort of USB hub to hook it all together, and still have plenty of money leftover!

How does Apple get away with this? It should be illegal to charge that much for a monitor. And everywhere I look people are defending it. Saying things like It’s a nice monitor, it integrates with macOS, it uses a single cable, it has center stage, it has Hey Siri, etc.

I will admit the Studio Display is a nice monitor… if you get the tile- and height-adjustable stand which costs an additional $400 making the display even more ludicrously expensive. Or I guess you could get the VESA mount which doesn’t cost anything extra but then you need an arm to mount it on.

Like, if you need center stage or Hey Siri or something just buy an iMac. Or an iPad. And I’m sure there’s a product somewhere that will allow you to connect and charge your device with a single cable.

And Its Not Even Pro

If Apple had sold the Studio display even a few years ago I would have been like, “Yeah, it’s a pretty bad deal, but it’s a good display.” Now it’s not even a good display. I mean it’s passable, it’s better than what I’m using right now. But for the price… it’s a terrible display.

While I was thinking about this article (yeah, I have a massive backlog of articles to get to) this came out:

The Alienware 34 Curved QD-OLED Gaming Monitor. Like, how many buzzwords can you fit in there, right? Obviously it’s quantum dot OLED which is the cutting edge tech. The only thing better is Micro LED which I don’t even think is available on monitors yet.

And on top of that you get 99.3% DCI-P3 coverage (the Studio display is 98.8%), 1000 nits of brightness (Studio display is only 600, although because it’s OLED the entire display can’t be 1000 nits at the same time), 1000000:1 contrast (Mac studio is 1200:1), HDR, 175 Hz, display port, 2 HDMI’s, 5 USB ports, audio out, a headphone jack, ~60ms response time, and G-Sync. What more do you want? OK, it is ‘only’ 1400p (not even 1440p for whatever reason) probably because it’s for gaming and they want a fast response time. Personally I’d prefer 4K over response times, but it is still a fantastic monitor.

So this thing has to cost a fortune, right? Like 5 grand, at least. Nope, $1300. $400 less than the Studio display. Like, how is that even possible?

And Its Poorly Designed Too

Like, first the cable. What is going on with this cable?

Apparently Apple says it’s not removable but if you pull hard enough (like bending the display hard) you can technically remove it. Like, why not just put in a display port and HDMI like a normal company? Why not use MagSafe?

It just doesn’t make sense. Actually it does, Apple just doesn’t care about this product so they just threw in some sort of diagnostic plug they were using internally or something. And I know this because they put an A13 in the display. An A13! Now, why would they do that?

It appears to only be powering the center stage feature. So why not just cut down the chip? Because it would cost too much to cut down the chip. And why does it cost too much to cut down the chip? Because Apple doesn’t expect to sell a lot of these. So they just decided instead of spending R&D time to actually do it right they just threw an iPad in there.

Literally, it runs full iOS.

With 64 GB of storage!

Oh, I am going to enjoy hearing about the bugs people get when using this display.

And now we’re even hearing the webcam is poorly placed.

This reminds me of that one Pixel phone, I think it was the 2 XL which just had so many problems. Like every week it would have some major problem. That’s what the Studio display feels like.

Conclusion

So I wrote a piece about how the Apple Tax doesn’t exist:

And I’m sort of regretting posting this. I mean I still stand by that piece for entry-level stuff. But it definitely does not hold for premium stuff like the Studio Display.

Actually can you call the Studio Display premium? Not really, maybe not premium but ‘niche’.

This display is ridiculously overpriced and I don’t know why people keep on defending it. OK, maybe in certain very specific scenarios where you need colour accuracy it may be worth it. But come on, how many people really need that? And is that worth the 5x cost premium?

Wait. Before you go why not give this article a clap or two.