Apple Studio Display

A closer look at the new Studio Display, including the "highly advanced" webcam

- Cliff Joseph

It's using the same type of display panel as the now-discontinued 27-inch iMac

Key fact

The Studio Display isn't a complete all-in-one computer like the iMac, but its A13 Bionic processor does offer some useful processing power. The A13 supports Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio for the built-in speaker system. It also enables the webcam to use Apple's Centre Stage to follow you around during video calls, and you can use Siri voice commands too.

The new Mac Studio, with its M1 Max and Ultra chips, has attracted mostly rave reviews ever since it was unveiled at Apple's special launch event in March. And, of course, the new Apple Studio Display was launched at the same time, in order to provide an external display for the Mac Studio - which, like the Mac mini, is sold without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. However, the Studio Display hasn't been welcomed with quite the same enthusiasm.

All the reviews of the Studio Display point to its high price. In effect, it's using the same type of display panel as the now-discontinued 27-inch iMac - but it's being sold almost at the same price as the iMac itself, without the powerful processor, graphics card, memory, and storage included in the iMac (and a recent tear-down of the Studio Display conducted by the brave souls at iFixit.com has confirmed the similarity in the designs).

Clearly, that's not a bargain in terms of value for money, and it didn't help that the Studio Display also ran into technical issues soon after it launched. Apple boasted about the "highly advanced" webcam that is built into the Studio Display - only for many users to report the webcam seems to provide pretty poor image quality... Apple stated this is due to a 'software issue' and released an update to fix the problem, although it doesn't yet appear to have done the trick.