Apple’s new 27in Studio Display XDR is its best monitor yet, with an exceptionally bright and gorgeous 5K screen that wants to be the pro display for Mac-wielding content creators everywhere, with a price tag to match.

Built to be paired with the latest or high-end Macs, the Studio Display XDR costs from £2,599 (€3,099/$2,899/A$4,799), although it is a cool £3,000 if you want it with a stand. It sits above the standard £1,499 Studio Display and is £2,000 cheaper than the 2019 Apple Pro Display XDR it replaces.

Its design is rather unassuming for a monitor of this calibre. The body is aluminium and the front is black glass with a relatively thick uniform bezel around the 27in display. The optional height- and tilt-adjustable stand is minimalistic in form with a fairly small foot, which makes it easy to fit on a desk.

There are a number of unusual features typically not found on professional monitors. It has six speakers in it, which are infinitely better than most monitor or TV speakers and do a sterling job for casual listening or watching video. Its three mics and good 12MP webcam make video calls effortless with Apple’s auto-panning and scanning Centre Stage and Desk View technology from the MacBook Pro and iPads. And it has a hub built into it with two Thunderbolt 5 ports and two USB-C ports, capable of charging a laptop up to 140W for a one-cable connection to a MacBook Pro or similar.

The Display XDR has the A19 Pro chip from the latest iPhone to power its various features, although it has no user-accessible operating system, and inaudible fans to keep its internal components cool even in 35C heatwaves.

The star of the show is the super-crisp 27in 5K IPS LCD screen, which has a scaled-up version of the backlight technology used in the MacBook Pro. It is a glorious display with wide viewing angles and a truly vivid picture. Its miniLED backlight has 2,304 dimming zones, which preserve contrast while allowing it to sustain a very bright 1,000nits for everyday content in bright environments and hit a peak of 2,000nits for HDR content. It dwarfs Apple’s standard 600nit displays, which are already brighter than most rivals.

That allows the display to easily overpower any bright indoor lighting and most direct sunlight. But for those who have to regularly deal with glare, it is also available with a nano-texture coating that very effectively diffuses direct light sources.

The very high peak brightness also means the XDR does a fantastic job of properly displaying HDR content, whether that’s simply watching a movie or creating one in apps such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe’s Premiere. The high density of dimming zones helps keep shadows and blacks nice and dark in bright scenes by turning off the backlight where it is not needed and controls the blooming “halo” effect around the edges of bright objects with dark backgrounds very well. It is the best miniLED screen you’ll see.

The screen is calibrated at the factory to be highly colour accurate covering the P3 and Adobe RGB gamuts, which makes it a fantastic plug-and-play display for photo and video editing out of the box. But Apple also allows for custom calibrations and includes a wide variety of colour reference modes, which are essential for video production, colour grading or medical imaging.

For day-to-day use, the XDR has Apple’s True Tone system, which adapts the colour of the display to ambient lighting for easier viewing, but it and the auto-brightness setting can be turned off for colour-accurate work. The adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz keeps scrolling, mousing and work as smooth and fluid as it is on a modern smartphone. But the screen can automatically adjust to a suitable frame rate to make the best of any video content being shown or worked on, or locked to a specific frequency should you need it.

The XDR will work with most modern Macs and many iPads with M-series chips, but Macs require an M4 chip or better to drive the display at 120Hz. The XDR can also be daisy-chained with other displays through the Thunderbolt port, so that you can run multiple monitors from one cable should you need them. Even the MacBook Neo can also be used with it, but only at 4K resolution, not the XDR’s native 5K.

The display can also be used with some PCs that have Thunderbolt 4 or 5 and DisplayPort Alt mode, but support is not guaranteed and many of the features are limited, such as brightness adjustment. The XDR also cannot be used with games consoles or other devices.

Specifications

• Display: 27in (adaptive 120Hz) IPS LCD with True Tone

• Resolution: 5,120×2,880 (218ppi)

• Brightness SDR: 1,000nits (auto high brightness mode)

• Brightness HDR: 2,000nits peak

• Camera: 12MP Center Stage

• Audio: six speakers, three mics

• Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 5 (140W), 2x USB-C

• Dimensions: 62.3 x 36.2 x 21.4 x 3.3cm (without stand)

• Weight: 6.3kg (without stand)

Sustainability

The Studio Display XDR is made with recycled aluminium, copper, glass, gold, rare-earth elements, tin and zinc. It is generally repairable, with repair manuals available.

Price

The Apple Studio Display XDR costs from £2,599 (€3,099/$2,899/A$4,799). Nano-texture glass costs an extra £300 (€300/$300/A$500).

For comparison, the Studio Display costs £1,499 and the Asus ProArt Display PA32UCXR costs £2,799.

Verdict

The Studio Display XDR is the best monitor Apple has ever made and is a huge upgrade on its regular Studio Display, offering everything that a high-end Mac user is likely to want. But it also costs an awful lot for a general display.

That pushes it into the prosumer or professional territory. It is technologically sophisticated and has the 5K resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, colour accuracy and extreme brightness to play in the big leagues. For many content creators it could be the only display they need for editing and colour grading, allowing them to just as easily work in HDR as browse the internet. That explains why it has the other features such as speakers, mics, a camera and a Thunderbolt 5 hub built into it, all of which are very handy to users who only have one workstation for everything, not those who spend their days in a dedicated editing suite.

It is unlikely to replace the reference monitors used by those in broadcast or film production, which can cost up to £30,000, but it is a viable option for the many thousands of Mac-using content creators out there. Particularly those who want a plug-and-play display that doesn’t really need proper calibration.

With less bright 5K rivals starting at about the £1,500 mark, Apple’s best display is a glorious super-premium screen that won’t disappoint for the well-heeled Mac user.

Pros: 5K resolution, super bright with 1,000nits for SDR and 2,000nits for proper HDR, 120Hz refresh rate, wide viewing angles, great webcam, mics and speakers, Thunderbolt 5 hub, highly colour accurate out of the box, many colour reference modes

Cons: very expensive, requires modern or high-end Mac to fully use, limited PC compatibility, stand cannot be removed after purchase, miniLED displays some loss of contrast compared with OLED, heavy, no standard DisplayPort or HDMI inputs.