Hands-On With Apple’s $4999 Pro Display XDR and $999 Stand
Alongside the Mac Pro, Apple launched the Pro Display XDR, a 6K professional display that’s designed to be used with the Mac Pro and other high-powered Apple machines.
We picked up a Pro Display XDR alongside our Mac Pro, and it arrived today, so we thought we’d do an unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions video for MacRumors readers.
As a display designed for professional use, the Pro Display XDR has a $4,999 price tag that’s not exactly consumer friendly, and Apple is charging an additional $999 for the stand that we have here, which has resulted in endless jokes.
Basically, if you want a functional display, you need to shell out $6,000, because unless you’re going to mount the display using the $200 VESA mount, this is the only available stand at the current time.
The Pro Display XDR ships in an all-white pull tab box like the Mac Pro, and it comes with a microfiber cleaning cloth, a braided power cable, and a braided Thunderbolt 3 cable.
We’ve got the Pro Display XDR without the matte nano-texture, which is $1,000 more expensive and not shipping yet, but if you do buy that nano-texture version, it’s worth noting that you can only clean it with this included cloth if you don’t want to damage it.
The Pro Display XDR connects to the standalone stand using super strong magnets, and the whole setup feels sturdy and high-quality, as it should at this price point.
Design wise, the Pro Display XDR has the same lattice design as the Mac Pro for the back of the display, used for ventilation and cooling. There are four USB-C ports on the Pro Display XDR, with one serving as a Thunderbolt 3 port for connecting to the Mac Pro.
You can swivel the Pro Display XDR into portrait mode or landscape mode using a little button on the monitor stand, which is handy for those who prefer to use their displays in vertical mode. Tilt and height are also able to be adjusted.
The display itself is 32 inches in size with a resolution of 6016 x 3384, and unsurprisingly, it looks fantastic. It features 1,600 nits of peak brightness and 1,000 nits of sustained brightness, along with a super wide viewing angle and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. In a nutshell, it’s an incredible display.
The color accuracy is impressive and suitable for professional use, and the HDR paired with the 1600 nits of peak brightness is excellent for those who are editing HDR content.
Apple is charging a minimum of $4,999 for this display, which sounds outrageous, but it is a display for professional use and when it comes to the quality and the feature set, it is a solid deal and competitively priced compared to other pro-level monitors.
Reference monitors used by Hollywood studios for TV and film editing, for example, can cost five times more than the Pro Display XDR with the same specs as the Pro Display XDR.
The Pro Display XDR was designed to be used with the Mac Pro, but it is also compatible with 2018 or later 15-inch MacBook Pro models, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the 2019 iMac models. You can also use it with the 2017 iMac Pro, but not at the full 6K resolution.
What do you think of the Pro Display XDR? Let us know in the comments.
