Apple drops Cinema Display prices across the board

59 Comments

1. I have to put in my real world experience here to back up the quality debate. My company last year replaced every monitor in the company (about 500 people) with LCDs. Most people (HR, Accounting, IT and everyone in AutoCAD production) got Dell 24 inch models. Yes they have all the features already pointed out. Lower price, bigger, media reader etc. The other 50 of us in design, graphics, print and marketing got Apple 20 inch displays. NO ONE complains about them being smaller and this is why. We use Gretag-Macbeth color spectrometers to calibrate printers, laser printers, wide format color plotters and monitors. We have custom built Colorsync profiles for use in our Adobe workflow to insure Pantone accuracy on screen and match to printed output on every color device in the building from any Mac and when we send jobs off to press. Before we rolled out the displays we bought one of each and tried to calibrate each of them. The Dell didn’t even come close to the accuracy of the Apple display. Not even close. And it was incansistant from display to display. We went with the Apple displays, calibrated them and now have a desk to desk, everyone who works on it sees the same color and prints the same color workflow. That is worth the extra money. Plus they are sexy as hell!

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2. At this very moment, the 23″ costs $1536 in Germany.

   YES, you heard right:- $1536

   As far as displays go, Apple have completely priced themselves out of the market here.

   But why !!! ? I just don’t understand it.

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3. I’ve had a Dell 20″ for a while, and I’m happy with it, cause I bought it for $300 back when they were going for over $500. Thanks, to all of those Dell coupons. Anyhow, as happy as I am with it, it does have its flaws. The screen is way too bright, and isn’t uniformly bright, which makes it not particularly good for photo editing.

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4. Now where is my 16GB Nano?!? 🙁

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5. Jay… I second, wholeheartedly Majikthize’s opinions. I’m a pro prepress/photographer, and they are a good mid-range pro monitor, either Apple or NEC.

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6. @Trooth –

   Display specs mean almost nothing except to marketers. It’s similar to the situation with audio equipment. There are crummy cheapo amps, even boomboxes, that boast “0.05% THD!” and “800 Watts!” Thing is, the numbers bear no relation to sound quality, and they’re doctored anyway.

   The contrast ratio is a case in point. It can be measured in various ways, is heavily influenced by the brightness level used, and says absolutely nothing about the display’s ability to render a wide range of tones from black to white with detail and subtle tonal differentiation. Early LCDs had specs around 400:1. Now, some boast 900:1. But, take a look at the specs for digital projectors – some boast over 2000:1. If you’ve ever displayed photos on a digital projector, you know they’re terrible. In fact, the super-high-end CRTs used by prepress houses for retouching and proofing on big-budget jobs had contrast ratios well under 300:1. On a 21-step scale from black to white, a good display will show the difference between the last two steps at either end of the scale, and this has absolutely no correllation to the claimed “contrast ratio”. Apple, NEC and Eizo LCDs do very well on this test, despite having contrast ratios of “only” 400:1 or 500:1.

   Ultra-brightness, likewise, is of little relevance unless you’re working in a very bright environment. For photo retouching, the standard target brightness is around 100-120cd/m2, well under the ACD’s relatively low 250cd/m2 max brightness. In this case, the 500cd/m2 Dells are a liability, because the backlights cannot be dialed down to the target luminance. What you end up with, then, is a display that will always look much brighter than your printed photos unless you hold the latter under a 1,000-Watt light or the mid-day sun. For other work in most normal working environments, 250cd/m2 is more than sufficient. Almost all but the very cheapest LCDs meet this requirement.

   As for viewing angle, many different models with claimed specs of 178 degrees show significant differences in off-axis contrast and color. There simply isn’t any good standard for measuring this performance.

   Remember, too, that two brands that use the same OEM panel may take very different approaches to circuitry and backlighting, yielding very different image quality.

   Since the specs don’t mean anything, we’re pretty much dependent on informed user reports and our own eyeballs to determine which displays are best.

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7. You might have persuaded me that specs mean nothing, except that Dell displays have consistently been ranked very well and you have conspicuously failed to include Dell monitors in your personal list of best-made LCDs.

   If brightness, contrast ratio, response time, viewing angle, resolution, pixel pitch, and screen type mean nothing in estimating the quality of a monitor then what else determines the overall quality of the display? It’s not magic or wizardry that converts an series of digital inputs into a discernable projection of hues, values, and chromas. Some physics have to be employed. How else can an engineer determine how to design and build a monitor? Good grief, this is applied science, not alchemy.

   You haven’t made a convincing argument that none of the six previously mentioned specs has any impact in determining the overall quality of a monitor. If none of these specifications has any influence on what I see, then what measurable property does influence what I do see? You have convinced me that you really are ignorant on the subject of what specifications influence viewing pleasure.

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8. Here’s a comparison of the prices of Apple’s displays from what they were when they were first released in June 2004 to where they now are today…

   30″ 6/04: $3,299 Now: $1,799
   23″ 6/04: $1,999 Now: $ 899
   20″ 6/04: $1,299 Now: $ 599

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9. Apple has a one-year warranty on its cinema displays; other companies offer three-year warranties.

   Now, who do you think thinks makes the better monitor? Why would anyone purchase an Apple monitor expected to last only a third as long as a competitor’s product?

   Yeah, I’ll buy a Mac for the OS, but I’m not so inclined to buy a monitor from Apple.

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