Apple Pro Display XDR

 Apple's latest 32-inch 6K advanced monitor starts at $4,999.

At a Glance

• New high-end monitor from Apple, designed to work with the new Mac Pro.

Apple's New Display

• 31.6-inch display size
• 6K resolution
• Premium price tag
• Companion to 2019 Mac Pro

Pro Display XDR

After the Apple Thunderbolt Monitor, which was discontinued in 2016, Apple stopped producing Apple-branded displays, but Apple returned to the display market with the Apple Pro Display XDR in 2019, a companion display for the new high-end Mac Pro modular high-throughput.

The Apple Pro Display XDR is the best pro display in the world, according to Apple. It's priced at $4,999, which is pricey, but it was created by Apple to compete with professional reference displays rather than home-use displays.Reference monitors are configured when editing images and videos to provide superior brightness, colour accuracy, and contrast ratio for colour grading and evaluation purposes.

The Pro Display XDR is a 6016 x 3384 resolution 32-inch 6K Retina display that provides more than 20 million pixels for what Apple claims is a super-sharp, high-resolution viewing experience with 40 percent more screen real estate than a 5K Retina display.

The Pro Display XDR, design wise, fits the Mac Pro with the same aluminium enclosure with a lattice pattern that functions as an advanced thermal device. The display is sold alongside a Pro Stand with a "intricately engineered arm" designed to counterbalance the display, using edge-to-edge glass with a narrow 9mm border.

The Pro Stand, which costs $999 on top of the display's $4,999 price, provides adjustment of tilt and height and makes use in both landscape and portrait modes. There is also an optional adapter for the VESA mount that is interchangeable with the stand.

It features 10-bit and P3 large colour support to replicate true-to-life colours, plus it provides peak brightness of 1,600 nits and brightness of 1,000 nits sustained. A superwide viewing angle and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.

Apple equipped the Pro Display XDR with a "industry leading anti-reflective coating" with a new matte option called "nano-texture" available as a $1,000 upgrade to cut down on glare and reflected light. In order to minimise reflectivity and glare, the nano-texture feature uses glass etched at the nanometer level, and it is a special Apple innovation.

The Pro Monitor XDR features HDR, with its high brightness, which shows what the eye sees in the real world, which Apple says is a whole new extreme.'

Using a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, the Pro Display XDR attaches to a machine, and the latest Mac Pro will accommodate up to six of the XDR displays.

Alongside the latest Mac Pro, Apple launched the Pro Display XDR, with orders starting on December 10 for both.

Design

The Pro Display XDR, measured diagonally at 32 inches, is Apple's biggest display ever. The edge-to-edge monitor has super slim 9mm bezels, and it uses the same latticed aluminium style on the back as the Mac Pro.

Apple claims that the lattice pattern decreases weight, increases ventilation, and acts as a heat sink, helping to preserve the brightness indefinitely for the Pro Monitor XDR.

The lattice design more than doubles the air-exposed surface area, and cool air is drawn into the inlet and exhaust vents and hot air is expelled from the device.

The Pro Display XDR's aluminium enclosure is only an inch wide, so while it's a big display, it's lightweight to optimise portability for its size. The Pro Monitor XDR is 16.2 inches tall, 28.3 inches wide, and weights 16.49 pounds.

Stand

To go with the Pro Display XDR, Apple has built a Pro Stand, and the stand is sold separately for an extra $999. It offers height adjustment from 5 ° to +25 ° tilt and 120 mm, as well as allowing the Pro Monitor XDR to rotate into portrait mode and back to landscape mode.

Using magnets, the Pro Stand connects and detaches quickly so that the show can be taken on site, and an optional VESA mount adapter is also available separately for $199. The Pro Monitor XDR is 25.7 inches tall with the foot at its maximum position in landscape mode. At the lowest point, it's 21 inches long, and maxes out in portrait mode at 31.7 inches.

Display Quality

With a 6016 x 3384 resolution and more than 20 million pixels, Apple's Pro Monitor XDR is a 6K display. With over 1 billion colours, P3 provides professionals a more real-life viewing experience for picture and video editing with a wide colour gamut and true 10-bit colour.

The monitor has 40 percent more screen real estate at a 6K resolution and 218 pixels per inch than a Retina 5K display.

Apple says the Pro Display XDR features the industry's best polarizer technology for a super wide color-accurate off-axis viewing angle, which lets multiple people view more accurate content at the same time.

The Pro Display XDR was engineered to offer up to 25x better off-axis contrast than a typical LCD.

An anti-reflective coating keeps reflected light from impacting the display, and there's an optional $1000 matte upgrade that uses a nano-texture technology. Nano-texture is glass etched at the nanometer level to cut down on reflectivity and glare, unlike a standard matte display that uses a coating designed to scatter light.

The nano-texturing method produces a matte look that can preserve contrast while scattering light as much as possible to minimize glare. Those that want to get the nano-texture finish will need to make sure that the display is only cleaned with the polishing cloth offered, as it could be harmed by normal cleaning cloths.

The Pro Display XDR supports True Tone. To adjust the display to the ambient lighting in the environment, the feature takes advantage of what Apple calls a breakthrough dual ambient light sensor design (with one sensor at the back and one at the front).

The more advanced True Tone feature facilitates more advanced colour and monitor intensity changes for effective viewing under all lighting conditions, Apple says.

HDR

The Pro Display XDR brings high dynamic range "to a whole new extreme," according to Apple, which is basically how the display got its name. The XDR stands for "Extreme Dynamic Range" because a "whole new level." includes light, contrast, and colour.

There is a backlighting device that provides continuous full-screen brightness of 1,000 nits and peak brightness of 1,600 nits, which exceeds a normal display. For example, a standard desktop display has a sustained luminosity of 350 nits.

For vivid highlights and super-dark blacks, it has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. With advanced LED technology, light shaping, and intelligent image processing, the Pro Display XDR cuts down on unintended glow called blooming, according to Apple.

Ports and Connectivity

The Pro Display XDR attaches via a single Thunderbolt 3 cable to a Mac, including the latest Mac Pro. Up to six of the Pro Monitor XDR displays support the Mac Pro.

One Thunderbolt 3 port provides up to 96W of power and three USB-C ports for charging or synchronization.

Workflow

Apple says it is easy to change the Pro Monitor XDR to meet the demands of HDR, HD, SD video, digital cinema, and wider uses such as photography, web creation, web design, and printing.

Pick a mode and you can reconfigure the display to fit a given colour space, white dot, gamma, or brightness.

The Pro Monitor XDR supports custom reference modes, enabling users with custom colour gamut, white point, luminance, and more options to build setups for their workflows. For the Pro Monitor XDR, custom reference modes require a firmware update.

Apple offers controls for fine-tuning the built-in calibration of the Pro Display XDR with macOS Catalina 10.15.5 by changing the white point and luminance to more accurately fit the calibration target of the display.

Each display is placed through the colour calibration system of Apple, and each of the 576 LEDs is calibrated with its own stored light profile individually. An algorithm developed by Apple uses the data to decide the exact light intensity at which each LED should be modulated to produce the best image.

"localized luminous fluctuations, blooming artefacts, as well as noticeably grayer blacks."localized luminous fluctuations, blooming artefacts, as well as noticeably grayer blacks.

Compatibility

The Pro Display XDR is designed to be used alongside the Mac Pro, but it also works with 2018 or later MacBook Pro models (15, 16, and higher-end 13-inch versions), the 2019 iMac, and the 2020 MacBook Air.

It can be used with the 2017 iMac Pro, but only at a 5K resolution as it is not powerful enough to drive a 6K display.

Pricing

There is a price tag for the Pro Monitor XDR that suits the Mac Pro it is intended for use with. The Mac Pro starts at $5,999, while the price of the Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999.

The $4,999 price tag without the matte Nano-texture option is for the regular Pro Monitor XDR. The Pro Monitor XDR is priced at $5,999 with Nano-texture.

The price does not include or include the optional VESA install, priced at $199, for the Pro Stand, which costs $999.

How to Buy

You can buy the Pro Show XDR from the online Apple Store and from certain retail stores. Within a week or two, most orders ship out.