Apple’s Pro Display XDR – A PC Guy’s Perspective

could Apple have single-handedly disrupted an entire industry with the Pro display XDR because here's the thing too mere mortals like you or me $5,000 for a monitor might seem like madness but compared to the professional-grade displays that Apple has directly in their sights here it's a steal of a deal so let's experience it together and see for ourselves but first we need to experience this Segway ruggable rugs are spill and stain resistant and machine washable and they'll stay in place with their non-slip pads use code line is 15 to get 15% off your order and free shipping at the link below [Music] starting on the outside the pro display XD arse box is robustly built and like its partner-in-crime the mac pro has a fabric carrying handle that makes the whole thing feel decidedly sturdy and premium and that's a good thing because at five thousand dollars this thing ain't cheap once you open it up you're greeted by a power cable a Thunderbolt cable and a little note saying that you should be thankful that you even got that I'm just kidding about the last bit but it is true Apple's touch their guns in spite of the criticism they faced and included no mounting hardware whatsoever in the box let's look at the sold separately mounting hardware the $200 vase amount adapter simply slots into place twist the lock clockwise to secure it and then you mount it like any normal evasive display done I can actually see why Apple wanted to do their own mount for this because it is seriously easy to use and it's rock-solid if you want to roll your own monitor arm we've actually got affiliate links for a couple of recommended ones down below the bottom line here is that while it annoys me that Apple doesn't include anything I can also respect that they didn't want to throw in pricey accessories that won't be used and given that they are going up against displays that cost tens of thousands of dollars another 300 bucks isn't going to be a difference maker for a pro who wants a top-tier display with great ergonomics then there's also the pro stand option for $1000 and the cold hard truth here is that this is a product for sucker wannabes who buy pro things to flex on their buddies I mean most of the professionals I know are not into less functionality for more money and while Apple's claims of weightless adjustment and stability basically hold up I suspect that most real-world deployments of this display are going to use the vase adapter and a proper monitor arm which is probably why Apple opted to make this stand available separately at a luxury item price rather than just put it in the box but let's take a closer look at it anyway since I'm stuck with one now adjustments can be made with a single finger if you're a designer who's sick of moving around your iMac to show your work to curious observers by the way that design loads working on is available on store calm but unfortunately there are a few problems with this first there's no horizontal adjustment available whatsoever so tilting the display left or right is going to require you to move the entire stand which can be particularly annoying with a multi-monitor setup especially if you need to angle one of them second the height adjust is not on a slider it's on a lever instead and this might seem like a non-issue but as you adjust the display up and down you're also moving it back and forth which means you might need to fiddle with how it sits on your desk it's just not that elegant now some people here didn't like the amount of play in the pivot mechanism but I didn't mind it you never know when your desk is gonna be not quite level and I really appreciated the simple latch mechanism smooth rotation of the display and the satisfying flick when it goes into place so that's all fine and good but what's it like to actually use on paper out of this world it's factory calibrated and Apple is one manufacturer I actually trust to do a bang-up job of this it's got 576 local dimming zones and it's got reference modes for HDR print digital cinema and more it boasts incredibly deep blacks with advertised sustain brightness of 1000 nits and peak brightness of 1600 nits and in person honestly it just kind of looks stunning the only thing that I felt I needed to change out of the box was true tones this is an Apple feature that changes the on-screen colors according to MB of light and I get having it supported and thankfully it is disabled in any of the reference profiles but I find it I'm noxious enough on a phone and even for a casual computer use I would prefer not to have the distraction fortunately it's easy enough to turn that off and change any reference modes that you want via the display applet in System Preferences but that is gonna be a problem the only way to control this monitor is through Apple's System Preferences there are no buttons or OSD whatsoever so unlike the Apple Cinema displays of yesteryear on windows your mileage with this bad boy will vary consider now a Mac running bootcamp does allow you to control the display with all the features you'd expect as in Mac OS but that little widget is not available for PC scrubs like us what's more the pro display XD RS thunderbolt link makes use of apple's custom timing controller that utilizes two simultaneous DisplayPort links on a single type C cable that's how they're achieving that astonishing 6k resolution so just like with LG's ultra fine 5k ya ya might be able to get it to display a picture with a thunderbolt equipped PC by jumping through some hoops but good luck running full res using any of the selling points like all the pre calibrated mode switching and I mean even adjusting the backlight so what that means for a PC shop like us is that right out of the gate even though they could have made it work Apple has eliminated the option of upgrading all of our editing workstations to pro display XD RS so then make sure you guys get subscribed because we've actually worked out a deal to drop in on a local production studio with Mac workstations to see what they think of it for today though we do have editors of our own and we do have a Mac Pro so let's see what they think so as soon as I opened Final Cut and it loaded all the HDR stuff I was like I'll never be satisfied with anything else ever again because this is the first time that I've seen like real HDR on any system the windows implementation of it is total crap so I feel jealous on this monitor I did not notice any bad fringing around stuff it looks great the only thing that really does annoy me about it is off-axis yeah on the darker colors it does change brightness quite a lot but overall it's really nice no I don't think the color accuracy was sacrificed to get the HDR working I mean it's they built it for HDR if flyness media group had to start doing HDR I mean I guess we already have this monitor so we might as well use it but I just I really don't want to have to use Macintosh I don't know the system very well anymore I don't wanna so there are a couple of things to note that we didn't originally plan for in this script it doesn't really like to run on a PC the other side of the coin is in Mac OS it's pretty much the only way to get HDR on your machine now there are external boxes aja banks one but for whatever reason apples got it locked down and that's no good I've seen a couple of pictures showing that compared to the higher-end displays it's really bad for like halos and rings around bright objects but that's only really how it looks on camera to my eye and to Terrans eye and to most other people it's kind of difficult to notice in the HDR proofing mode honestly I can see it being a problem in like pin light types of situations that being said the amount of bloom is very low objectively there are some problems with the pro display XDR first and foremost is uniformity while it's reasonable most of the time brightness does taper off pretty noticeably around the edges giving it kind of an artificial vignette effect that's especially visible with solid colors more disappointingly on a 25% gray tone the panel displays a whirring amount of texture on what should just be a solid color and that's without the fancy glare reduction coating we opted to leave that off so large vertical bars mean that in spite of the panel's deep blacks it'll definitely be a little bit more difficult for artists and colorist to do their jobs on darker images interestingly this test also shows a pretty big variation in viewing angle on these gray tones in spite of apple's claims of super wide viewing angle I mean with that said this 25% gray is a worst case scenario for the display and most of the time these things aren't noticeable but it is there thankfully as brightness drops all of these effects become less visible and the built-in reference modes all dim the screen accordingly anyway and they do a lot more from what we can tell the reference modes do a damn fine job of maintaining color accuracy it's worth mentioning that getting accurate results out of this thing with a color imager or a spectrophotometer is at roar right now but from what we've been able to glean with the tools we have it's safe to say that it's as accurate as they say it is with Delta is reliably below 1 in the reference modes now you do lose access to brightness controls while running in these modes and the protists play XD ours standard modes are definitely going to be better for content consumption even if they sacrifice some balls to the walls accuracy but guys when you flip this thing into I'm creating now ladies and gentlemen look at me I'm an artist mode you can expect an accurate pro level experience so the pro display xtr seems like it lives up to its promises and I mean when the competition's price tag has 5 digits a four-digit one like this looks pretty darn good but Apple also isn't alone here trying to disrupt that industry a soos is pro art PA 32 you see X costs $1,000 less and not only comes with a stand to make that 1,200 to $2,000 less but it has Adobe RGB support instead of Apple's p.3d 50 for print work and it has double the number of local dimming zones thanks to its mini LED backlight it's only really missing the pro display XD rs impressive peak brightness and 6k resolution so let us know in the comments below if you want us to get a soos to send one of those over so we can compare this against the PC world's Pro display XDR for today all that's left to say though is it's a flawed gem but the flaws are pretty minor and it's definitely still a gem so good job Apple this product makes professional-grade HDR mastering more accessible to small and midsize studios everywhere and that's a great thing well as long as they're running Mac OS you know what else is accessible FreshBooks is cloud accounting solution with fresh books you can work anywhere thanks to their mobile app first ebooks allows you to create professional-looking invoices on the go it's not pictures of your receipts so that you don't lose track of them stay on top of important conversations see when your client has viewed their invoice or when an invoice has become overdue and all kinds of good things so you can spend more time running your business instead of more time doing paperwork for your business so start a 30-day free trial at fresh book komm forward slash tech tips are gonna have that link below thanks for watching if you guys are looking for something else to check out maybe flip on our Mac versus PC editing face-off between iJustine and our very own Taryn van he Mert I'll see you guys over there

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 4,261,803

Rating: 4.9033904 out of 5

Keywords: apple, mac, pro display xdr, display, monitor, colour, accurate, calibrated, HDR, high dynamic range, brightness, pro stand, VESA mount adapter, review, macos, boot camp, final cut pro, adobe premiere, windows, thunderbolt, mac pro

Id: X089oYPc5Pg

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lipscomb88]

They mentioned reviewing the Asus Pa32ucx and I really want to see the comparison. Even though it's mini-led vs a more traditional backlight and 4k vs 6k, only the Asus is available to me on windows.

I love my Dell up2718q panels but I would love to get an upgrade to one of these bad boys.

[u/senior_neet_engineer]

Contrary to Apple marketing, this is not in any way comparable to $40k monitors with 8 million dimming zones.

[u/olivias_bulge]

the 25% grey solid being an issue is rough. and its not just vignetting it has... texture?

when im rendering a custom smoke asset with a fluid simulation. using a solid fill at various levels of white to black is helpful for see how well the smoke falls off over time, and ensuring you arent hitting your fluid container boundaries before youre fully transparent.

i hope the other monitor they teased does well i need my even solids and this had a lot of promise :/

[u/dylan522p]

So their comparison to 40k reference monitors was obviously bogus, but for the price, it is quite a good monitor. Apple's first party displays have always been a good price on launch. The blooming was also overhyped by people who hate Apple. Taren's praises were so universal. He would use that monitor right now if he could on windows.

[u/Sylanthra]

What's the rational for locking this thing down to MAC only.

[u/[deleted]]

They claim no brightness/contrast control on Windows without even trying the ClickMonitorDDC utility to check if it works (it likely does: this works on the LG Ultrafine 5K).