Apple’s Studio Display - there’s only one reason to get it!

Let's talk about the Apple Studio Display

So another video out this week from MKBHD and this one about the Apple Studio Display

And the title of the video is, quote, the Apple Studio Display is a bad deal

Now, I don't think he's saying that the Apple Studio Display is a bad deal. He's saying he's quoting people who are saying it's a bad deal

And I think I've been one of those people who have said that is a bad deal

That's not to say that it's a bad display. It's just to say that it's a bad deal

Like for what you get for the price that you're spending, it's overpriced

And I think that is a pretty common sentiment at this point. And I've been doing more research into this this week

And I'm a little more upbeat on the Apple Studio display. And here's why. There really is nothing else like it

It meets a very specific niche. And if you have to have all the elements that it offers

it's really only maybe one of three displays that's out there that will check off all the boxes that you're looking for

What are those boxes? Well, you want something that is 5K, right

There's a lot of 5Ks that are out there. There's a lot of 4K displays that are out there

But the problem that you'll find with 4K displays is most of them are not retina

So the studio display is, I think, 218 pixels per square. inch. So is the LG

Ultra Fine. There's one other monitor I forget what it's called. It was a Dell monitor

that was, that met that standard of 218 pixels per square inch or

better. And actually the Dell was like even higher. It was like 260 or 280

Although I don't remember what the resolution was, like the overall resolution. So you can find

a lot of great monitors out there that are 4K that have

really fast refresh rates, built in speakers. They connect via Thunderbolts. I mean

There's a lot of stuff that matches the studio display, but when it comes to that one specific thing

do you want retina or not? Do you want to be able to see the pixels? Or do you care if you see the pixels or not

Then your two choices are basically, or your three choices are basically the LG Ultrafine

the studio display or the Dell that I can't remember the name of

But besides the Dell is like $3,900 or something. So it's a lot more expensive, you know

Really? Yeah, it's really. 3,900? It might even have. have been more

So that's the market that Apple. It's a very niche space that Apple is competing in

And when you look at the price of the LG Studio display, which is what Apple is probably comparing themselves to

that's $1,300. The Apple Studio display, it's a lot more beautiful. It's more sturdy

It has better built in speakers. I would say that it has a better built-in web

camera or a webcam, but it doesn't really. I mean, there's some weird stuff going on with the webcam, which we'll talk about here

in a minute. And then you get the beauty. You get the aesthetic

And the one thing, the one takeaway that I came away with from MKBHD's video

And it was a great video, man. He made some great points. Is when people say it's overpriced, well, is a Porsche overpriced, right

Is a Bentley overpriced? you kind of get where I'm going with this and and I'm kind of robbing his points

And it a fair question right Like you paying for a high performance piece of equipment There really nothing else like it It beautiful And it specific it has very specific features for very specific people So yeah it not a Hyundai It not a Honda It a performance piece of equipment And so is it overpriced Well it depends on who you asked I think it is overpriced for what you get I think the reason that I disappointed the reason that a lot of people are disappointed is not because

it's not a great monitor, it's that Apple could have done something really special with it

I mean, they could have taken the ProXDR display and they could have basically miniaturized it, right

And release the Apple Studio display, which would have been a smaller

like slightly inferior version of the ProXDR display. But that's not what they did

They just took the display that was in the 5K iMac and just put it into a

different enclosure and changed the price to $1,600 and are selling it to you. I mean

that's essentially what they're doing. So in that regard, it is kind of a miss because when you

when you frame it that way, it kind of just seems like a cash grab. I mean, and honestly

that kind of feels like what it is. Apple was like, well, business users are going to be buying

the M1 or the Mac Studio and they need a monitor. And so why don't we make a monitor for them

How can we do that? Well, let's just take the monitor out of the iMac, the 27-inch iMac

and sell it to them in a different format and, you know, change the price a little bit

And people will be happy with that. They'll get the webcam, they'll get the speakers built in

they'll have a full solution and we'll make some extra profit on that. And so it doesn't do

anything particularly that great more than any other monitors, but it is retina. It is beautiful

and the display is very good. And that's kind of maybe all you need

And that's all they did. I think it's unfortunate that it doesn't have

mini LED built in. I think that would have been a huge bonus

for the monitor because you would have had a much better contrast ratio. I mean, it's just LED backlight

It's just a single LED backlight zone. So the contrast ratio is not going to be that great

It doesn't have promotion, as we've mentioned, which I'm not super bummed about

I would have preferred to have a, like the mini LED, display system from the ProXDR. So you get the much better contrast ratio. And so it's just

it's, it's a fine monitor with a really high price tag. And if you, if you need a monitor that

you want to match your Mac Studio, then it's a good option. If you don't care what it looks like

I would definitely go with the LG Ultra Fine because it doesn't outperform that monitor really in

any way except for brightness. And it is slightly improved. I mean, from the benchmarks that I've seen

from the people that have reviewed it, it is slightly better. So Apple, didn't literally just take the display out of the iMac, the 27-inch of iMac, and toss it in

the new enclosure. Or if they did, they did improve it slightly in some ways. But if you don't

care about retina, well, now your whole world is open. You can do, you can get really great

monitors. Like the, there's one really good one from, let's see, your Eve Spectrum. So there's

this company called Eve. I was actually going to contact them and see if they'd send me a monitor

to review. Whoops, that's not the one. And they have a really high quality, much loved monitor called the Spectrum

And it has a lot of the features that you would probably want

It 4K It 144 Hertz Let see here Oh here the 4K one right Let look at this one It 144 Hertz It got an iPS panel

It's got HDR with up to 750 nits of brightness. Like, that's even brighter than the studio display

It's got adaptive sync, and it can charge your MacBook Pro with a USBC cable, up to 100 watts

which is even better than the studio display. It comes with a matte or gloss

coating, like the glossy coating is going to make your picture just really pop off the screen

And it's beautiful. It's got, I think, very beautiful industrial design. So you could do this instead

Now, what's the PPI on this? I think it's like 163 or something

So it's a lot less. It's not retina. So how much do you care about retina? Is the retina worth it to you

Because if it is, then you're going to need to spend the extra money on either the LG

Ultrafine or the Apple Studio display. But I would argue that this monitor, if you don't care about retina quality, this is close

And unless you're pixel peepin, I don't think you're even going to notice, this is the one that I would probably get because it's cheaper

It's beautiful. It's beautiful bells and whistles that you would want. And it has beautiful industrial design

No speakers, right? I guess it doesn't matter. I wonder how good the speakers is actually some of this

It does have speakers. I think it says no. great question. I mean, the thing about the speakers in the Apple studio display is that they

sound great for what they are, but they're not great sounding speakers. For what they are. For what

they are. They're tiny speakers that are buried inside of a display. And I think for what they are

they're impressive, but they're not impressive as speakers. Does that make sense? Yeah, a lot of, you know

I agree with you about that video. I really enjoyed watching that video. And you know what? It made me want

one of those things. Because it, you know, the whole like way that there's no, you know, it's got the power

whatever power module built in so you don't have this giant brick on your floor. You mean the

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, right, sorry, talking about

what is it, Marcus? Marquez Brownlee, yeah, Marquez. Yeah, I thought that video was great

I mean, it really, it made that, it showed how that thing is nice, right

It showed the, like, the luxurious aspects of it. And you ordered it without the vertical adjustment, right

Yeah. Because I'm like, my, my logic there was, how often do you adjust the vertical, the vertical position of your monitor

Five times a day. You do? I mean, when you're into, when you're into yoga, you know? Oh, yeah

I guess for you, because you're doing the downward dog, you still want to see your display. But for me, like, I was thinking about it

because I almost ordered it with the extra the spring loaded It looks so cool

It does look cool, yeah. And it would be cool. I have no doubt that it is super cool. But I was thinking about my current display

and I'm like, I literally never move it up and down. So I'll just get a stand for it

because a lot of people have complained that the studio display sits too low. So I'll just get like a stand for it to raise it up

and then I'll be good to go. I hope I didn't make the wrong decision. Although if you do make the wrong decision

you can get it fixed now. Sure you can. You just got to take it into the Apple store

and have them, you know, fix it for you. So I'm not as, I'm not as, I don't know, what's the word

I'm not as down on the studio display as I once was

Now, I will again mention that I got a significant discount on mine

So I got mine for which I think is reasonable it I think still slightly overpriced at but it a lot better than I would not pay for this monitor just period

I would not do it. Because after you add in tax, you're at $1,800, $1,800

And this display at that price is just not worth it to me

It might be worth it to you. If you're like, I have to have something that has the Apple aesthetic, I have to have something

that plays well with my MacBook Pro, and I have to have something that is Retna, well, then really

this is the monitor for you because there's nothing else. And Apple knows that. That's why the

price is $1,600, right? And that's what I did not know when I first started talking about this

I thought there were a lot of options. There's not. There's not even a lot of options for 5K monitors. They're rare. And there's no options once you go to Retna. If you want something that's

218 PPI or greater, you got nothing. I mean, you got this or you got the LG Ultrifying or that

Dell. But I think that Dell that I mentioned might be 4K, not 5K. I'd have to go back and look

So it's slim pickings and T.C. knows that. That's why he's reaching into your wallet and pulling out

that $1,600. And you don't like it, but you're like, all right, take it away, C, C. Give me my monitor

So I'll be reviewing this once it comes in. I've got one on the way. I think it will be here

next week along with my Mac Studio. So that would be cool. And I'll have to have

some firsthand experience to share from a layman's point of view from the point of view of

someone who actually paid for it right a payment yeah you know i i i've i plucked down my money

on the table so when you do it that way you get the most honest reviews you do because now you're

like did i did i do i regret spending the money did i get what i was hoping i was going to get is

performing the way i expected to because for me so i got a let's see here i got reformed in the chat

and he was saying Arafon I didn't know you were on here

found you from your personal YouTube channel sad to see that you haven't posted a video in a while

yeah so here I am welcome I'm here the whole time although my YouTube channel is covered in cobwebs

but part of my plan is to reboot my YouTube channel and I wanted something that was powerful

to edit videos and make some changes to the YouTube channel so part of my strategy was like

getting the Mac studio. So I'm buying this from a creator's perspective. Right. Like

what can I do with this? This is it's going to save me a much of time. I'm not convinced

man. I'm, I'm really back and forth. Like, it's so much money. And I think, am I just

is this the Steve Jobs Halo effect? You know what I mean? It's like Apple's marketing is so good

They make you want things that you oftentimes don't necessarily need. And us Apple fans, we have

we have a tendency to over buy and pay for things that we don't necessarily need

I think about the Mac Pro is a perfect example. All those poor chaps who spent $15,000 on a Mac Pro two years ago

And now, for the most part, the Mac Pro is completely pointless

And that's the second time that's happened. The second time that's happened. Remember the trash can in Mac Pro, right

It's like all the people who spent big bucks on that with Big Hub, and big dreams and it just got, well, it failed

and Apple just discontinued it. Can you imagine? So I'm not trying to be negative Nancy here

but I am trying to keep it real