Is it worth investment for Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR? It supports true 10-bit color and the full DCI-P3 color gamut. The Pro Display XDR is a 32-inch 6K LCD that can hit 1,600 nits of peak brightness, with 1,000 nits of sustained brightness from a full-array local dimming backlight composed of 576 special blue LEDs. Know more in Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass review.
In the box
- Apple Thunderbolt 3 Pro cable (2 m)
- Polishing cloth
- Power cord (2 m)
- Pro Display XDR – Standard glass
Pros & Cons
Pros
- DisplayHDR 1600 looks incredible.
- Best Image Quality with Unique 6K Resolution
- 1,600-nit peak brightness for HDR editing
- A true workstation-class display with myriad profiles stored in hardware
- Very High Contrast Ratio in SDR and HDR
- Imaging Almost Comparable to OLED
- USB-C Connectivity
- 96 Watts TB3 Port
- Exceptional color accuracy.
- Functionality with Windows in Boot Camp, or with specialized broadcast-workflow hardware.
Cons
- No hardware controls
- No Stand and VESA Mounting Included
- Doesn’t Work with Windows PCs
- No Alternative Connectivity Built In
- Limited to a single Thunderbolt 3 input
- No input alternatives to USB-C
Specs – Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass
- 1600 nits peak brightness, 1000 nits sustained
- 6K resolution
- 576 local dimming zones
- True 10-bit color
- Screen Size: 32 Inches
- Resolution: 6016 x 3384 6K UHD
- HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision support
- 100% DCI-P3 coverage (tested in-house)
- Single-cable connectivity, with 3 additional USB-C ports
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Panel Technology: In-Plane Switching with Oxide TFT (IPS)
- Refresh Rate: 60Hz
- Response Time: ?
- Brightness: 500 cd/m2 SDR (1600 cd/m² HDR Peak)
- Built-in Speakers: No
- Stand: Height – Yes
- Stand: Tilt – Yes
- Stand: Swivel – No
- Stand: Pivot – Yes
- VESA Compatibility: Yes
- Connectivity: Thunderbolt 3.0 x 1, USB-C x 3
- Dimensions with Stand(WxHxD): 28.27″ x 20.98″ x 9.29″
- Weight: 25.97 lbs
Price
The Pro Display XDR costs $4,999, with a $999 optional stand. Even at $6,000 total, that’s substantially less than $43,000, a number Apple certainly wants you to think about to put the price in perspective.
And I think maybe everyone would have been better off if Apple had never mentioned that $43,000 Sony at all.
Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass review
Build
The 32-inch Pro Display XDR has a 6,016-by-3,384-pixel native resolution, known casually as “6K.” The chassis shares much of its design aesthetic with the revamped 2019 Apple Mac Pro, in particular the “cheese grater” metal housing that serves a dual purpose: looking good, and keeping the circuitry and LEDs at work underneath cool.
Design
The honeycomb design on the back is meant to act as a heatsink, which keeps it cool while operating at high brightness levels. The Pro Display XDR has a sleek and refined all-aluminum chassis with 9mm borders. This reduction in bezel size offers a more immersive viewing experience whether you’re hard at work or taking a breather. Either or, users can kick back and relax thanks to its wide viewing angles, which preserve color and image quality.
Size
In portrait mode, the combo measures 31.7 inches tall with the display set in the top position. The stand itself measures 7.1 inches wide and supports a tilt of -5 to 25 degrees.
This display measures 28.3 (W) x 1.1 (D) x 16.2 (H) inches. With the Pro Stand attached, the display measures 25.7 inches tall in the top position and 21.0 inches tall in the bottom position when oriented in landscape mode.
Connectors
The Mac Pro does not offer video cards that support DSC, in case you’re wondering.
The other three USB-C connectors operate at different speeds, depending on your computer: most supported Macs can only run them at USB 2 speeds, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro can run them at the USB 3 speeds because its video card supports a new standard called Display Stream Compression that leaves enough bandwidth on the Thunderbolt bus for faster USB connections.
There are four USB-C connections on the back, but they are far more confusing than you’d expect. (Or perhaps not, given that USB-C is generally confusing.) One of the USB-C connectors, marked by a lightning bolt icon, is a Thunderbolt 3 port, which is how you plug the display into your Mac.
Sensor
The Pro Display XDR has two light sensors, one on the front and back, that measure ambient light and work with Apple’s True Tone technology to constantly adjust the display’s color and brightness.
Display
The Apple Pro Display XDR’s LED-backlit display utilizes a feature known as “full-array local dimming,” or FALD for short. FALD is a method used to backlight displays that differs significantly from other monitors. In traditional LED-backlit displays, the whole panel is brightened and dimmed through “global dimming,” in which every LED at the back of the panel is controlled by a single setting. This means that as scenes brighten or darken, the whole panel brightens or darkens with them.
There’s another mode called “Apple Display” that limits brightness to 500 nits, keeps True Tone and the sensors active, and basically matches the profile Apple uses for all of its other displays.
HDR Display
For HDR applications, you set the display to a mode that’s totally color-accurate but which sets overall brightness to 100 nits and limits peak brightness to 1,000 nits. This mode is only suggested for use in a standardized, controlled lighting environment.
The 6K resolution (6,016×3,384 pixels) is both a blessing and a curse. If you’re editing 6K video, retouching 25-megapixel or bigger images, working on highly detailed illustration and so on, it comes in really handy. But the resolution, along with the HDR, is one of the reasons hardware compatibility is an issue.
Resolution
The Apple Pro Display XDR’s most impressive performance is its color quality, starting with its 100% sRGB, 99% Adobe RGB, and 99% DCI-P3 gamut coverages. Its default accuracy is exquisite with a deltaE average of only 0.57 by default, so most users won’t need to calibrate this monitor for its intended purpose.
The Apple Pro Display XDR’s retina display has 218 pixels per inch which makes it one of the sharpest desktop monitors in the market. Retina displays have been regarded as the best options for clarity, and this model isn’t an exception. You get a lot of virtual space and crispness with this monitor, but some users might want to use scaling as a trade-off.
Contrast ratio
The Apple Pro Display XDR’s SDR brightness is at 499 cd/2 but its contrast ratio already reaches more than 10000:1. The backlight can pulse to as much as 1580 cd/m2 in SDR which then quadruples its contrast ratio to around 39600:1. These numbers look like they were made up, but they are part of what you are paying for when buying this monitor.
Color
This display supports 99% of the P3 color space and 10-bit color depth to handle 1.073 billion colors total. It is factory-calibrated for BT.709, BT.601, and sRGB but also works with content encoded in BT.2020.
macOS Catalina introduced customized reference modes for the display in 2020. Owners can retrieve these modes in a firmware update that’s only delivered through a Mac running the latest OS.
Here is a list of the built-in reference modes:
- Pro Display XDR (P3-1600 nits)
- Apple Display (P3-500 nits)
Gaming
The Apple Pro Display XDR isn’t meant for gaming since it pixel response time isn’t as fast as the other IPS monitors we’ve seen in recent times. You won’t normally see smudges or trailing in games like Civilization 6 or even League of Legends, but fast-paced games like Warzone via Bootcamp will reveal some smudges and persistence.
Compatibility
To support the 6K resolution, the host PC must have the following:
- A GPU supporting DisplayPort 1.4 with Display Stream Compression (DSC) and Forward Error Correction (FEC).
- A GPU supporting DisplayPort 1.4 with HBR3 link; Thunderbolt Titan Ridge.
This display works with the following Apple devices running macOS Catalina 10.15.2 or newer:
- Mac Pro (2019) with MPX Module GPUs
- 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
- 16-inch MacBook Pro
- 21.5-inch iMac
- 27-inch iMac
- MacBook Air
- 13-inch MacBook Pro with four Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Any Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports paired with Blackmagic eGPU or Blackmagic eGPU Pro
It also works on Windows and Linux PCs that have the following:
- DisplayPort over Thunderbolt
- DisplayPort Alt-mode over USB-C
Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass review Performance review
The Apple Pro Display XDR boasts a 32-inch IPS with Oxide TFT panel that has a stunning 6016 x 3384 resolution, a 60Hz refresh rate, and an unspecified response time. The 500 cd/m2 backlight has a sustained brightness ceiling of 1000 cd/m2 and a peak of 1600 cd/m2, along with a 1000000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass review customer review
No regrets, best monitor I’ve ever seen
I wish other companies could compete and that Apple would bring some of the XDR’s features to other products like the iMac. Auto rotate is amazing when working in something like Pages, as it gives you so much more room. The retina clarity at this size is game changing for me. I just wish you could buy a non hyper-bright xdr variant for less. Also, the stand should actually come to the imacs and/or get a vesa adapter such that you can use its stand with other vesa products. The m1 imacs have a beautiful stand, that is not at all ergonomic (too short). Were it possible, I’d plop a vesa m1 imac on a pro stand for the height. There are stands that have vesa capability out there, they just look like trash. The pro display is too expensive, but that’s because there isn’t enough competition out there. No other company seems to think retina displays are important, making 4k panels that are too large and prioritize high refresh rates. Essentially, the market is divided between gamers and bog-standard office workers, neither of which seem to understand or care about resolution. If you work in graphics of practically any kind, this monitor will turn you into Smeagol in less than five minutes as there is simply nothing like it out there (the dell 8k is higher resolution and ppi, but about the same price and housed in garbage plastic). Oh, don’t buy the nano texture. Look up ebay resale figures for both and you’ll see a trend. For anyone who stares at a screen all day, they are the work truck or shoes – the thing that can make a huge difference in comfort and utility, but is priced that way. I still have my thunderbolt displays this many years on, only have passed them down to others in the household. Point being – this is a ten year+ monitor.
By Customer at Best Buy
Alternate of Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR with retina 6K display – Nano-texture glass
LG is one of the most important manufacturers in the world in everything related to displays. Not only does it have televisions that are a real delight in terms of image quality, but also monitors that offer everything that many users need in their day to day and regardless of whether they are leisure or professional activities.
For the latter, he presented in January of this year and taking advantage of a particular CES in Las Vegas due to the pandemic, a monitor for professional users that attracted the attention of many due to the use of an OLED panel. Something that we will not say that there was not already, but it is true that it is unusual. The normal are screens with LCD LED technology.
Available in two screen diagonals, the LG UltraFine Display OLED Pro is a screen that with its 27 and 31.5 inches offers an image quality at 4K resolution where the most striking thing will logically be its ability to reproduce colors and blacks that will make the delights of colorists, photographers and any other user who is interested in enjoying the best representation.
To all this we must add the Thunderbolt connectivity that it offers and of which it is not necessary to remember again that it allows, just by connecting a single cable to a compatible device with the same connection, to be able to enjoy aspects such as charging at 90W of power or the integrated HUB on its back and where other accessories such as external hard drives, printers, microphones, etc. could be connected.
Knowing the screen already and knowing that the quality it will offer will be the best in the market, it is logical to think that it will not be cheap to get one. And yes, it is true, but everything will depend on how it looks.
The 27-inch model of the UltraFine Display OLED Pro will be priced at $ 2,999 (approximately 2,600 euros), while the 31.5-inch model would go to $ 3,999 (approximately 3,500 euros).
Too much difference between the two models for so little in a matter of diagonal? Well, yes, they are almost a thousand euros and the difference between working with a 27-inch screen to another of 31.5 inches may not be such a sharp jump, since both have the same resolution. But that will be something that everyone will have to value.
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