is a senior reviewer covering TVs and audio. He has over 20 years experience in AV, and has previously been on staff at Digital Trends and Reviewed.
It’s been almost exactly four years since Apple released the 5K Studio Display that so many wanted, even if it didn’t really deliver as a high-end display. Apple has now revamped the Studio Display lineup, sort of, with another Studio Display and the Studio Display XDR. They’re both 27-inch 5K (5,120 x 2,880) displays with the 12MP Center Stage camera — which is a significant upgrade over the old camera and looks clear with minimal noise — and six-speaker spatial audio system built in, and two Thunderbolt 5 ports alongside two USB-C.
The new Studio Display looks like the same panel from four years ago, just with the upgraded camera, speakers, and ports. It has the same peak brightness of 600 nits and is only capable of SDR, like the old model. Even the pricing is the same, at $1,599, or an extra $300 if you include nano-texture glass. Now you can also add a tilt- and height-adjustable stand — for an extra $400. Cool, I guess.
The Studio Display XDR, on the other hand, is far more interesting. It’s replacing the 32-inch 6K Pro Display XDR, which cost $5,000 and was released in 2020. The Studio Display XDR uses a completely new mini-LED display with 2,304 local dimming zones, has a max brightness of 2,000 nits, has adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz (although you’ll need a newer Mac to support it), and supports HDR. It has a bunch of accurate reference picture modes, native support for both P3 and Adobe RGB color spaces, and two general picture modes calibrated to Apple CMF 2026 — a new display standard Apple has developed. It’s a lot of attractive specs for creative professionals, but it also has a very Apple typical starting price of $3,299 — twice as much as the regular Studio Display. It had better be good.
The Studio Display XDR’s panel is the most advanced we’ve seen on a standalone Apple monitor, utilizing mini-LEDs with a quantum dot-based optical stack and IPS LCD panel — like recent Macbook Pros, but with higher resolution and peak brightness. Images and text are crisp and clear. Dimming control is able to tame light bleed from bright images next to dark areas pretty well, although it still doesn’t compete with OLED. And since it’s an LCD, its viewing angles aren’t as wide as an OLED’s, but I was still able to get far off-axis before seeing any significant changes to color or saturation — something its predecessor struggled with.
There are a total of 16 presets, including two general use presets and 14 reference modes to cover a wide range of professional uses from HDR video to digital cinema editing to photography. Each preset lists its color space (such as P3, BT.709, or Adobe RGB) as well as another detail, which could be the target gamma, peak brightness, or target white point. For professionals, this is a really nice touch so you know the monitor is properly set for whatever content you’re working on. Later this year, Apple will also add two DICOM presets — which are needed for reading medical imaging such as CT scan, MRIs, and X-rays properly — and a medical imaging calibrator. The two modes are expected in April (the medical imaging calibrator is currently under FDA review).
The reference presets are all highly accurate. For my testing, I used a Colorimetry Research CR-300 spectroradiometer with Calman calibration software and Pattern for Mac pattern generator from Portrait Displays. The brightness of each reference mode was consistently on target from the smallest window size to a full white screen — for instance, the Digital Cinema (P3-D65) mode has a peak luminance target of 48 nits and its measurements ranged from 47 to 47.8 nits. Color and grayscale accuracy across the board are also impressive with most in the range where any discrepancies are considered imperceptible. Saturation and hue (the intensity and color family coordinates) are nearly perfect for grayscale and many of the standard test colors. Luminance is where some things start to stray.
And that’s the one flaw I encountered while measuring. Brightness at the lower end of the grayscale was too high, so shadows aren’t as deep as they should be, and some darker colors are too bright. But this is with the factory calibration. You’ll also be able to calibrate the Studio Display XDR, which I fully expect every professional or studio to do. Right now there’s only fine-tune calibration adjustment available (for only white point and luminance), but full calibration (which covers white point, color primaries, luminance, and gamma) will be enabled with a later update.
Perhaps the most interesting modes are the two general-use presets — named Apple XDR Display (P3-2000 nits) and Apple XDR Display (P3 + Adobe RGB-2000 nits) — which allow the display to reach 2,000 nits of brightness in highlights and 1,000 nits with a full white screen. I confirmed the brightness in my testing, with the XDR maintaining 2,000 nits peak brightness up to a 25 percent window before decreasing as the window size got bigger, down to just under 1,000 nits at full white. It’s very bright at a normal desk sitting distance, and I never used it at close to the max brightness. While the first preset is only for the P3 color space, the second general preset supports both P3 and Adobe RGB color primaries, allowing you to easily switch between video editing work that uses P3 and print/photography work that requires Adobe RGB without needing to change the display mode.
As with the Pro Display XDR, there are two ambient light sensors — one on the rear of the display and one on the front — that let the monitor dynamically adjust brightness depending on the lighting conditions in your room. If you have True Tone enabled, the white point will also be adjusted. When the display uses any of the reference modes, the ambient adjust option is grayed out.
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