Apple’s New Studio Display XDR Is $3,299, and You Don’t Even Have to Pay for the Stand

Apple has launched two improved models of its relatively old Studio display and really old Pro XDR Display Tuesday. The new $3,299 27-inch Studio Display XDR is a 27-inch 5K model that brings a long-awaited 120Hz refresh rate to Apple’s monitor lineup as well as a boost in brightness. Meanwhile, the updated $1,599 27-inch Studio Display has an improved webcam and Thunderbolt 5 support – but no HDR or high refresh rate for the general public, which is disappointing.

Starting today, Apple has removed the original 32-inch Pro Display XDR from its lineup. The move makes sense – it’s six years old – but it leaves the company without a bigger size. The high price of this model, more than $5,000 at launch, plus another $1,000 for a stand that could be raised, lowered, and tilted, was hard to swallow despite excellent performance.

It’s interesting that Apple dropped ‘Pro’ from the name of the XDR display, although it has improved the specs over the old model and still has a huge choice of reference profiles. It can reach a peak brightness of 2,000 nits compared to 1,600 nits for the Pro (still using a mini-LED backlight), it increases the refresh rate from 60Hz to 120Hz, and it includes the same audio and webcam as the Studio Display (the Pro had neither). Although Apple’s specs say it supports Adaptive Sync, it doesn’t label it as ProMotion. It has two Thunderbolt 5 connections and two slow USB-C ports (10 GB/s).

And wow: Apple has stopped ignoring the existence of the Adobe RGB color space and includes the D50, D65 and HDR variants as benchmarks, although the company still provides its P3-based local versions for design and photography.

The updated Studio Display is now essentially a stripped down version of the XDR that doesn’t support HDR and has a slow panel, which I don’t think is a good compromise for the webcam and audio. You can still add external audio and video, but you can’t add HDR or speed up the panel, and HDR at 600 nits is fine. It’s also basically four years old, and this would have been a good time to upgrade it more significantly.

And let’s not forget that a height-adjustable stand is an essential basic feature for a monitor, and charging extra for it on a $1,599 screen is still fodder.