 Could Apple have single-handedly disrupted an entire industry with the Pro Display XDR? Because here's the thing, to mere mortals like you or me, $5,000 for a monitor might seem like madness, but compared to the professional-grade displays that Apple has directly in their sights here, it's a steal of a deal. So, let's experience it together and see for ourselves. But first, we need to experience this segue. Ruggable rugs are spill and stain resistant and machine washable, and they'll stay in place with their non-slip pads. Use code LINUS15 to get 15% off your order and free shipping at the link below. [♪ Music playing. Clicking sound effect. Music playing. Starting on the outside, the Pro Display XDR's box is robustly built, and like its partner in crime, the Mac Pro has a fabric carrying handle that makes the whole thing feel decidedly sturdy and premium. And that's a good thing, because at $5,000, this thing ain't cheap. Once you open it up, you're greeted by a power cable, a Thunderbolt cable, and a little note saying that you should be thankful that you even got that. I'm just kidding about the last bit. But it is true. Apple stuffed their guns in spite of the criticism they faced and included no mounting hardware whatsoever in the box. Let's look at the sold separately mounting hardware. The $200 VESA mount adapter simply slots into place. Twist the lock clockwise to secure it, and then you mount it like any normal VESA display. Done. I can actually see why Apple wanted to do their own mount for this, because it is seriously easy to use, and it's rock solid if you want to roll your own monitor arm. We've actually got affiliate links for a couple of recommended ones down below. The bottom line here is that while it annoys me that Apple doesn't include anything, I can also respect that they didn't want to throw in pricey accessories that won't be used. And given that they are going up against displays that cost tens of thousands of dollars, another 300 bucks isn't going to be a difference maker for a pro who wants a top tier display with great ergonomics. Then there's also the Pro Stand option for a thousand dollars. And the cold hard truth here is that this is a product for sucker wannabes who buy pro things to flex on their buddies. I mean, most of the professionals I know are not into less functionality for more money. And while Apple's claims of weightless adjustment and stability basically hold up, I suspect that most real world deployments of this display are going to use the VESA adapter and a proper monitor arm, which is probably why Apple opted to make this stand available separately at a luxury item price rather than just put it in the box. But let's take a closer look at it anyway since I am stuck with one now. Adjustments can be made with a single finger. If you're a designer who's sick of moving around your iMac to show your work to curious observers, by the way, that design Lloyd's working on is available on lttstore.com. But unfortunately, there are a few problems with this. First, there's no horizontal adjustment available whatsoever. So tilting the display left or right is going to require you to move the entire stand, which can be particularly annoying with a multi-monitor setup, especially if you need to angle one of them. Second, the height adjust is not on a slider. It's on a lever instead, and this might seem like a non-issue, but as you adjust the display up and down, you're also moving it back and forth, which means you might need to fiddle with how it sits on your desk. It's just not that elegant. Now, some people here didn't like the amount of play in the pivot mechanism, but I didn't mind it. You never know when your desk is going to be, you know, not quite level. And I really appreciated the simple latch mechanism, smooth rotation of the display, and the satisfying click when it goes into place. So that's all fine and good, but what's it like to actually use? On paper, out of this world. It's factory calibrated, and Apple is one manufacturer I actually trust to do a bang-up job of this. It's got 576 local dimming zones, and it's got reference modes for HDR, print, digital cinema, and more. It boasts incredibly deep blacks with advertised sustained brightness of 1000 nits and peak brightness of 1600 nits, and in person, honestly, it just kind of looks stunning. The only thing that I felt I needed to change out of the box was true tone. This is an Apple feature that changes the on-screen colors according to ambient light, and I get having it supported, and thankfully, it is disabled in any of the reference profiles, but I find it obnoxious enough on a phone, and even for casual computer use, I would prefer not to have the distraction. Fortunately, it's easy enough to turn that off and change any reference modes that you want via the display applet in system preferences, but that is going to be a problem. The only way to control this monitor is through Apple's system preferences. There are no buttons or OSD whatsoever, so unlike the Apple Cinema displays of yesteryear, on Windows, your mileage with this bad boy will vary considerably. Now, a Mac running bootcamp does allow you to control the display with all the features you'd expect as in macOS, but that little widget is not available for PC scrubs like us. What's more, the Pro Display XDR's Thunderbolt link makes use of Apple's custom timing controller that utilizes two simultaneous display port links on a single type-C cable. That's how they're achieving that astonishing 6K resolution. So just like with LG's UltraFine 5K, yeah, you might be able to get it to display a picture with a Thunderbolt-equipped PC by jumping through some hoops, but good luck running full res using any of the selling points, like all the pre-calibrated mode switching, and I mean even adjusting the backlight. So what that means for a PC shop like us is that right out of the gate, even though they could have made it work, Apple has eliminated the option of upgrading all of our editing workstations to Pro Display XDR's. So then, make sure you guys get subscribed because we've actually worked out a deal to drop in on a local production studio with Mac workstations to see what they think of it. For today though, we do have editors of our own, and we do have a Mac Pro, so let's see what they think. So, as soon as I opened Final Cut and it loaded all the HDR stuff, I was like, I'll never be satisfied with anything else ever again, because this is the first time that I've seen like real HDR on any system. The Windows implementation of it is total crap, so I feel jealous. On this monitor, I did not notice any bad fringing around stuff. It looked great. The only thing that really does annoy me about it is off-axis on the darker colors. It does change brightness quite a lot, but overall, it's really nice. No, I don't think the color accuracy was sacrificed to get the HDR working. I mean, they built it for HDR. If Linus Media Group had to start doing HDR, I mean, I guess we already have this monitor, so we might as well use it, but I just really don't want to have to use Macintosh. I don't know the system very well anymore. I don't wanna! So there are a couple of things to note that we didn't originally plan for in this script. It doesn't really like to run on a PC. The other side of the coin is in Mac OS. It's pretty much the only way to get HDR on your machine. Now, there are external boxes. AJA makes one, but for whatever reason, Apple's got it locked down, and that's no good. I've seen a couple of pictures showing that, compared to the higher-end displays, it's really bad for, like, halos and rings around bright objects. But that's only really how it looks on camera. To my eye, and to Teren's eye, and to most other people, it's kind of difficult to notice in the HDR proofing mode. Honestly, I can see it being a problem in, like, pin-light types of situations. That being said, the amount of bloom is very low. Objectively, there are some problems with the Pro Display XDR. First and foremost is uniformity. While it's reasonable most of the time, brightness does taper off pretty noticeably around the edges, giving it kind of an artificial vignette effect that's especially visible with solid colors. More disappointingly, on a 25% gray tone, the panel displays a worrying amount of texture on what should just be a solid color, and that's without the fancy glare reduction coating. We opted to leave that off. So, large vertical bars mean that, in spite of the panel's deep blacks, it'll definitely be a little bit more difficult for artists and colorists to do their jobs on darker images. Interestingly, this test also shows a pretty big variation in viewing angle on these gray tones, in spite of Apple's claims of super wide viewing angle. I mean, with that said, this 25% gray is a worst-case scenario for the display, and most of the time these things aren't noticeable. But, it is there. Thankfully, as brightness drops, all of these effects become less visible, and the built-in reference modes all dim the screen accordingly anyway. And they do a lot more. From what we can tell, the reference modes do a damn fine job of maintaining color accuracy. It's worth mentioning that getting accurate results out of this thing with a colorimeter or a spectrophotometer is a bit of a chore right now, but from what we've been able to glean with the tools we have, it's safe to say that it's as accurate as they say it is, with Delta E's reliably below 1 in the reference modes. Now, you do lose access to brightness controls while running in these modes, and the Pro Display XDR's standard modes are definitely going to be better for content consumption, even if they sacrifice some balls-to-the-walls accuracy, but guys, when you flip this thing into, I'm creating now, ladies and gentlemen, look at me, I'm an artist, mode, you can expect an accurate Pro-level experience. So, the Pro Display XDR seems like it lives up to its promises. And I mean, when the competition's price tag has five digits, a four-digit one like this looks pretty darn good. But, Apple also isn't alone here trying to disrupt that industry. Asus' ProArt PA32UCX costs $1,000 less, and not only comes with a stand to make that $1,200 to $2,000 less, but it has Adobe RGB support instead of Apple's P3D50 for print work, and it has double the number of local dimming zones thanks to its mini-LED backlight. It's only really missing the Pro Display XDR's impressive peak brightness and 6K resolution. So, let us know in the comments below if you want us to get Asus to send one of those over, so we can compare this against the PC World's Pro Display XDR. For today, all that's left to say though is, it's a flawed gem, but the flaws are pretty minor, and it's definitely still a gem, so good job Apple. This product makes professional-grade HDR mastering more accessible to small and mid-sized studios everywhere, and that's a great thing. Well, as long as they're running macOS. You know what else is accessible? FreshBooks' cloud accounting solution. With FreshBooks, you can work anywhere thanks to their mobile app. FreshBooks allows you to create professional-looking invoices on the go, snap pictures of your receipts so that you don't lose track of them, stay on top of important conversations, see when your client has viewed their invoice or when an invoice has become overdue, and all kinds of good things so you can spend more time running your business instead of more time doing paperwork for your business. So start a 30-day free trial at FreshBooks.com forward slash tech tips. We're gonna have that linked below. Thanks for watching. If you guys are looking for something else to check out, maybe flip on our Mac versus PC editing face-off between iJustine and our very own Taron Van Heemert. I'll see you guys over there.