Apple Studio Display Review – Is it worth the $1,600 price tag? I didn’t think so.

I have a love/hate relationship with Apple’s Studio Display. It’s gorgeous, I really want one and it would be the perfect monitor for my laptop and Mac Studio. The problem is, it costs $1,600 and to me, that’s too much for just a monitor. I don’t care how good it is, that’s just too much.

I’m not against spending top-dollar for tech that gives me good value for my money. My recently retired 27″ iMac cost me about $2,500 nearly ten years ago and it was the most expensive piece of tech I had purchased at the time. And it served me well for almost a decade so I’d say it was worth every penny. But even now, ten years later, nearly two thousand dollars for a monitor alone feels like a lot. It’s probably a great monitor but is it really so good that you can justify the price tag?

Alternatives for Apple Studio Display

My initial thought was that I’d be better off using a cheaper 4K monitor. I had an older HP 32″ 4K monitor I got from work to set up in my home office, so I started with that. At this point, I’ve mostly worked on my iMac so I haven’t used the HP monitor a lot. I set aside my old iMac which needs a break at this point, put the massive 32″ HP on my desk, and hook it up to my laptop. And… it looks like crap.

The frustrating part is that it’s not that bad, it’s just not as good as my iMac. Or what the Studio Display would be. If you’d ask my wife she’d look at it and say it looks fine. But after getting used to Apple’s retina display and the way macOS handles scaling on Apple monitors, a third-party 4K monitor just doesn’t look as good. The sharpness wasn’t as good and when adjusting it things either looked too sharp, or blurry. The HP also has an annoying “feature” – it tells you to allow the display at least 30 minutes to warm up before doing any color-critical work. What is this, an old diesel engine or something? I don’t have time to wait for my electronics to “warm up” before actually getting work done.

I had trouble getting it to a comfortable brightness level and the scaling is challenging as well. If you set it to a native 4K resolution of 3840×2160 everything on your screen will be TINY. To combat this you can set the resolution to something a little smaller, making things on your screen bigger, but I never really like the scaling. The available resolutions would be different depending if I had my MacBook Air or my MacBook Pro connected to the display. So I would use one computer for a while, get used to the resolution and scaling and then switch to another one and struggle to get comfortable because the resolutions were different. I even tried third-party applications like EasyRes but that didn’t make a big difference.

After a few days, I started getting used to the resolutions and even started to get used to the less-than-ideal image quality. But in the back of my head, I knew I was missing out, so this isn’t it.

Apple Studio Display vs. LG UltraFine 5K Display

I wasn’t happy with my 4K HP monitor, but maybe there’s a better alternative out there. The most common comparison is the LG UltraFine 5K display, so I took a deep dive into reviews and comparisons to see if that would be a good alternative. To save you hours of research I can sum it up here: they’re very similar, colors and image quality on Apple’s Studio Display can look a bit more vibrant and rich, the LG can feel a little cheaper with its plastic frame and the key difference – the LG is $300 cheaper.

That was the biggest issue for me, the UltraFine 5K is also a very expensive monitor. If I’m going to spend $1,300 on a monitor that’s almost as good as the Studio Display, I might as well dish out a few hundred more and get the full Apple experience.

Side note – at the time of writing this article the UltraFine 5K is 25% off on Amazon making it $600 cheaper. That could’ve very well changed things for me, so I recommend checking the current price before deciding one way or another.

LG 27″ Inch UltraFine 5K – Check price on Amazon

I’m out of options so I’m buying Apple’s Studio Display

After doing my research and price comparisons I admit my loss and realize I’ve been spoiled for years by my trusty old 5K retina iMac and its amazing display. And if I want the same look and feel with my new M1 and M2 Macs, Apple’s Studio Display is the only way to get it.

I’m probably overthinking it way more than most people would, but I just hate spending my hard-earned money and when I do spend it, I want to make sure I made the best choice and got the best bang for my buck. Also, there’s nothing I hate more than staring at displays that have poor image quality. Whether it’s the sharpness or colors, looking at a poor-quality screen is like torturing yourself. This was the biggest deciding factor for me. I spend 8 hours a day looking at my monitor so besides getting a good quality chair and desk, having a monitor that’s pleasant to look at might be the biggest and most important investment in my own well-being. I’d much rather have a slower computer with a great monitor, than the fastest computer with a bad monitor.

Apple Studio Display – First Impressions

So I bit the bullet and bought the Studio Display. I’ve had it for about two months now and I’m extremely happy with it. The best way to describe it is that I often sort of forget that I have it, I get fully immersed in the content I’m working with and nothing bothers me, so the device does its job and allows me to do mine.

It’s extremely similar to my 5K retina iMac, except my iMac was suffering from bad image retention issues around the edges of its display and so far the Studio Display has none of that. They’re both 27 inches but somehow the Studio Display feels smaller than the iMac, probably because the bezels on the iMac are much larger. Also at 27″ the Studio Display is much smaller than my 32″ HP monitor. The difference between 27 and 32 might not sound like a lot, but it’s more than you’d think. Apple does offer a 32″ option with their Pro Display XDR, but those start at $5,000 so I’m not quite there yet.

Studio Display – The Good

I’m finally happy with the image quality. I do a lot of video work so I spend my time pixel-peeping videos and nit-picking colors, graphics and video quality, and this display allows me to do accurately edit and review videos.

Other things I like: having 3 USB-C ports in the back of the display. I use these to connect hard drives, printers, and even my Genelec speakers. There is one Thunderbolt 3 port in the back, but you’re going to use that to connect the display to your computer. The nice thing about that is that the ThunderBolt cable will both provide the signal but also charge your laptop, so when connected to the Studio Display, you don’t need to plug your laptop into a charger separately.

I have good speakers on my desk, but I have to say the built-in speakers in the Studio Display are really good. I could see a lot of people being totally happy with the built-in speakers alone without any additional speakers. The webcam is good, nothing groundbreaking there, but it does offer you Apple’s Center Stage -feature where the camera slowly zooms and focuses on the speaker, so if you lean from one side to another, the webcam will follow your movements like you have a dedicated cameraman operating your camera. I kind of like it, but you can turn this off if you’re not a fan of it.

The last thing worth mentioning is the build quality. Heavy-duty aluminum that looks slick and is extremely sturdy and stable. Same quality I’m used to with all my previous Apple devices, so nothing new, but maintains to set the bar high when it comes to build quality.

Studio Display – The Bad

There’s nothing particularly bad about the Studio Display. After using a 32″ monitor for a few weeks it did feel a little small at first and I wish Apple had a larger option available that didn’t cost $5,000. What feels good always depends on what you’re used to, so if you’re used to working on your laptop screen alone this thing will feel massive. If you’re coming from a bigger display, it might feel a little small.

I’ve seen some complaints about how you can’t connect two computers to the Studio Display at once. I didn’t think I’d want this functionality, but after juggling between my work laptop, personal laptop and then later adding a Mac Studio to the mix I started to see the point. Sure, unplugging the cable from one computer to connect it to another doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re swapping between computers multiple times a day it does get annoying, to a point where i just dedicated the Studio Display to one computer. If there was an option to plug in two computers at once and switch via software, that would be awesome.

Unplugging the display cable also led to another issue – since I have hard drives connected to the back of my display, I always forget to eject my hard drives before disconnecting the display cable. Connecting hard drives directly to the computer would be an easy fix, but with something like my MacBook Air that only has two USB/Thunderbolt 3 ports, that’s not really a viable option.

Bottom line – Is Apple Studio Display worth it?

To me, it is 100% worth it. I didn’t want to jump to this product immediately and after spending a lot of time researching and trying alternative options, I can confidently say I made the right decision. The only thing I might enjoy more would be an updated iMac with this display and an M3 chip, but it seems like Apple doesn’t want to give that option to us. If your budget allows it, go for it. If you can’t justify the price tag I would find the best 4K monitor you can afford, or maybe look at the 24″ M3 iMac. The iMac is smaller and doesn’t have the power and connectivity that the Mac Studio lineup has, but for lighter work you’ll get a great computer with a high-quality display, all in one.

It’s also worth mentioning that Amazon has discounts on the Studio Display and the price keeps changing. At the time of writing this, the Tilt-Adjustable Stand with Standard Glass option is listed for $150 off at $1,449. It’s always good to check the price before buying, you could save a few hundred compared to buying directly from Apple.

Apple Studio Display – Check Price on Amazon

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