Designing on Apple’s Pro Display XDR

I have seen and read a ton of reviews for the ProDisplay XDR online from the vantage point of a Youtuber, content producer, professional colorist, etc… mostly people working in video all day. There hasn’t been much chatter about how a designer/developer like myself feels about this new monitor, so I thought I’d throw my 2 cents in the ring.

A little background on myself. I’m a UX designer, and I work primarily in Adobe Illustrator, Xcode, and Keynote. I help build apps for iOS, Android, Web, and a bunch of IoT platforms. I use Sketch as well from time to time, and spend a ton of time in Zoom meetings, Outlook, and on websites in general.

Since 2010 I’ve been using the same Apple 27" LED Cinema Display (the Mini Displayport kind, nearly identical to the Thunderbolt Display). This is a significant upgrade in both pixels, color quality, and size for me.

The price

It’s a lot of money

Let’s just get this out of the way: I think it’s insane that the monitor costs this much money.

So the biggest barrier to this monitor is definitely the price. My configuration cost $6,916 including tax. The monitor was $5k, stand was an additional $1k. I also purchased AppleCare for $500, and 7% sales tax makes up the rest. I “saved” $1k by not getting the nano-texture glass, and I’m really glad I made the choice that I did. More on that later.

The pricing scheme is dumb.

I can definitely understand that the monitor should ship with the stand being optional. (The stand is super heavy, and I’m glad they don’t force everyone to buy them). I do think it’s dumb that the monitor doesn’t come with a VESA mount out of the box. For $5K you can’t mount it anywhere without adding an additional $200 item to your cart. They should have marketed the monitor as a $6,000 monitor, with an option to save $800 should you choose not to get the stand, rather than treating the stand and mount like add-ons. I realize these all result in the same $$$, but it’s how it’s phrased and presented that brings this to ridicule.

But tools are important

Even though it’s a lot of money, I’ve found that spending money on tools to better your craft is super important. I use my computer for 8+ hours a day, and sometimes a lot more. My last monitor lasted me for 10 years, and is still totally functional today (will likely be passed on to a family member or my spouse). Most importantly to me, this caliber of monitor is likely to future proof me for quite some time.

There are other options out there

There definitely are.

We are at a point with computers where 5K displays have existed for years, yet very few standalone monitor options exist. The 27" Retina iMac was announced in October of 2014, a little over 5 years ago. We’re still in the single digits of options for standalone 5K monitors in 2020, and they each have their own set of unique issues.

So just buy a retina iMac! (I can hear that voice in my head too.) Problem is I have a work-issued laptop with secure software, so I need to be on that machine for 8–12 hours a day. It’s painful to spend that kind of money for a monitor knowing you could get an 18 core iMac Pro for the same price. If I ran my own IT department, I’d be writing this with 18 cores powering it. But I don’t have that option.

I really wish there was an option to use an iMac Pro in target display mode, because that would be a solution I would pick over the Pro Display XDR. If they announce that in a month, I’m going to feel a twinge of purchase regret.

I’ve had friends who have made all sorts of decisions regarding their monitors and workstations, and I’ve tried to learn from their decisions over the years. Some observations that led me to the decision I arrived at:

• I have a good developer friend who bought LG’s 27" 5K display. I very nearly pulled the trigger on buying one of those. 2 big things held me back. 1) it’s really ugly (I realize this is a matter of personal opinion) and 2) when I typed at my coworker’s relatively stable desk, the monitor had the slightest springy bounce to it. That would drive me nuts. Monitor stands have to be rock solid. Also, the launch of the LG display was fraught with issues, including problems when placed too close to WiFi stations, and cable confusion. No thank you.
• 4K displays have a trade-off. 4K displays at 24" are fine, but when you scale 4K retina up to larger sizes, your MacOS window assets get unnaturally large. This article is a bit old, but it has a great chart in it that illustrates the PPI function and what it calls “The bad zone”, and seeing that helped me articulate what I could sense I didn’t like about other 4K monitor options.
• All iOS development now targets Retina displays, so to not have a retina monitor means some visual translation will happen. On a non-retina display, what you’re seeing as you’re designing is not what it will look like on a device. Given the percentage of my work that is iOS, I honestly should have made a switch to a Retina display sooner.
• UX designers at tech companies tend to fight over keeping their Apple Thunderbolt displays. Apple makes really good monitors. I don’t know if it’s the color balance, the case design, or what, but everyone I know picks those Thunderbolt displays over the other options. Even the non-Apple fanboys.
• 6K is a huge step up from 4K and even a significant step up from Apple’s other 5K displays. 6K resolution has over 20 million pixels, which is a 115% increase from the ~9 million pixels in a 4K display, and 38% more than the ~14 million pixels in Apple’s 5K displays. Pro Display XDR is greater than a third more image than the already incredible 5K displays.

The good

It’s a perfect size

32" is an amazing size. I’ve got some breathing room with Xcode now. Adobe Illustrator windows are large, and can show me several screens at once. I can see my desktop files at all times. Life is good.

Color pops

The color is phenomenal. The deepest blacks. The uniformly bright whites. It’s a wonder to look at. I have some comps of screens I’ve opened in Illustrator where I find myself somewhat in a trance. The black levels are so deep that it becomes seamless with the bezel of the monitor where there aren’t any pixels.

The display is also incredibly bright. I have it set to 40% brightness, and it can hurt the eyes if there’s too much white on the screen at once.

Razor sharp text

Text is incredibly crisp. You see a similar clarity with text working on the laptop screen, but I think the dynamic range of this display really makes the characters pop. All of my Keynote presentations look like they’ve been refreshed and polished.

Video is mezmerizing

Watching video on it is truly immersive. I see these crazy color details I’ve never noticed before. I don’t work on very much video, but I‘ve been known to watch my share of Youtube.

There’s almost no glare

The glare is almost non-existent. I don’t have any windows behind me, but I do have down lights that illuminate objects on the shelf behind me, and they used to be super noticeable in the glare. I don’t mind them so much when the pixels are on, but dark scenes and designs would sometimes have distracting glares. Even on a pitch black screen, the glare on this is not distracting at all.

The stand is easy to use

I like the stand a lot, I know there are a lot of complaints about it. It’s very stable on the desk, and easy to adjust. Some reviewers complain that when you move it up and down the display moves closer and farther away from you, which is true. However, I can just push the monitor closer or farther back on the desk if I find that to be a problem. I also hardly ever adjust the height.

I have not used it in portrait mode, and have no plans to do so. My neck hurts thinking about it. Also, the off axis brightness would be brutal. More on that next.

The cables are nice

Same cable type that the HomePod uses, that fabric weave coat is great for not kinking, feels good to the touch, and doesn’t catch when pulling through tight spaces. Connectors give a very satisfying snap when plugging things in. There’s just the right amount of length for a monitor cable and power cable. Also the fact that both the power and data cable are completely disconnect-able is a very nice improvement over the LED Thunderbolt Display.

It looks great on the desk

There’s something about these CNC milled metal patterns that’s incredibly satisfying to look at and touch. The bezel around the screen is very minimal, but provides enough frame that you have a nice buffer between your screen and the real world.

It works with a lot of devices

I’ve seen some false info going around about this, but the Pro Display XDR is at least partially compatible with a lot of machines, and full 6K resolution is available if you have one of the following:

• Mac Pro (2019) with MPX Module GPUs (you’re a lucky dog if you have this)
• 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
• 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019)
• 21.5-inch iMac (2019)
• 27-inch iMac (2019)
• Any Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports paired with Blackmagic eGPU or Blackmagic eGPU Pro

Notably absent is any iMac Pro. I’m guessing this will be rectified in the near future.

My personal machine is a 2016 Retina Macbook Pro, and it also works, albeit in a lower resolution state. You can actually plug a 2018 iPad Pro into it and get it to display content on the screen (again, not at 6K). I think it’s incredible they support lower resolutions for older devices, and adds a lot of flexibility.

The bad

Off-axis brightness

This is honestly the biggest problem aside from price. There’s an off-axis brightness/color effect thats quite noticeable. I was VERY surprised to see this, and it does make me question the purchase a bit. It’s most noticeable in the corners, particularly the MacOS clock, and completely goes away if you move your view to be head-on. I’ve seen several reviews that mention this, and at first I thought it was limited to the Nano texture glass versions, but it indeed afflicts all of the Pro Display XDR types. Interestingly I don’t see it as much by the Apple Menu in the upper left hand side, which is at the exact same viewing angle as the clock on the opposite side.

The good news about this is that it doesn’t affect what I consider “working area” of the screen. You’re not checking colors of things in those corners, or viewing designs up there. There’s a huge canvas of workable pixels in the middle of the screen, so I don’t notice the off-axis issue in my work per se.

The stand has some flex

The stand has quite a bit of play in the rotation, which is useful if your desk isn’t perfectly level. There are way better fixes for that problem though, like actually leveling your desk. I find the play in the mechanism annoying, particularly given that the stand is marketed like it is some grand mechanical innovation.

There’s no camera

I knew this buying the display, but it is disappointing to mount some Logitech wart to the top of my beautiful screen. The plus side to this is that not having the camera in the display ultimately makes the camera upgradable, so you can get whatever nice 4K resolution camera you want. I’ve opted for the recently released Logi StreamCam.

There are no speakers

This one kind of caught me by surprise, and in retrospect it shouldn’t have. I don’t listen to a ton of audio that’s not a Zoom meeting, and I use my headphones for meetings, so it’s not a huge deal, but eventually I’ll have to get some decent computer speakers.

The USB-C ports are USB 2.0 speed

I didn’t realize this until way late in the game, but just because there are USB-C ports doesn’t mean you’re getting those USB-C speeds. Most of the cable’s bandwidth is eaten up with the 20 million pixels, so that leaves very little for your ports. Originally I wanted to make the monitor a dock of sorts with “one cord to the laptop and that’s it”. Ethernet speeds are important to me, so I’ve opted instead to have a second cord plugged into my laptop with some high speed connections.

HDR isn’t everywhere yet

MacOS is a bit inconsistent with HDR content. Certain apps support it, like the TV app or Quicktime, but most don’t. To see the peak visuals, the monitor is ahead of the OS by a bit.

The fans spin up more often

My 2018 Macbook pro is right at the cusp of not being supported for this monitor, so I hear the fans run more often than I used to. Eventually I’ll get a new computer and this won’t be as much of a problem, but it can be somewhat annoying.

MacOS has some bugs

When I first plugged the monitor in, MacOS identified that it was a ProDisplay XDR, but the monitor settings page had almost no controls in it. There was no brightness slider, or toggles for True Tone. Weirdly some of the controls would show up if I opened the lid to my laptop (I usually operate in closed lid mode). I decided to restart before calling tech support, and thankfully that fixed it, but I’m curious if that bug is going to return in the future.

Overall impression

I think it’s a terrific monitor, and just in the past few days that I’ve had it, I can sense some areas where my work has benefited from it greatly. Just today I built something that I’m not sure I could have done as well or as fast without the added clarity and color pop I saw from this display.

That said, it’s not perfect. I don’t feel as solid in my purchase choice as I have about other mac product purchases in the past. My ideal product would be a 32" 6K display that has fewer color and HDR features, but comes with a camera, speakers, and a smaller price tag. Even with its imperfections, I feel like this monitor is the best choice at this time if you can get the budget for this kind of tool.

I’m curious to see how this product evolves both from a price and feature standpoint over time. If you have questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me on twitter @adammillers