“The display has in-plane switching (IPS) as well, so colours remain bright and vivid even at tight viewing angles. The picture is bright and pinsharp – text looks fantastic and you can see every detail in a photo,” Cable writes. “Gradients display well too and there’s a clear distinction between 0% and 5% black, as there is between 95% and 100%. Colour gradient bars are smooth, although single-colour consistency isn’t as good as we’d hoped for a display of this price.”
“And, lest we forget, the screen is glossy. This means the picture looks stunning, but you do get a fair amount of reflection… keep this in mind, especially if you intend to do a lot of graphics work,” Cable writes. “It would have been nice to see Apple offer an antiglare surface, like it does with the 15-inch MacBook Pro.”
Cable writes, “All this connects to your Mac via a single cable with three connectors on the end – USB, MagSafe power adapter for MacBooks and a Mini DisplayPort. This means it’ll work with most Macs from 2009 or later, including the whole current range.”
Read more in the full review here.
Never cheap because they last & last & last, unlike rival products that date quickly deliberately to force you into early upgrade cycles. Thank goodness that is no longer the norm thanks to robustly built top quality kit fairly priced from Apple inc.
Glossy sucks.
That’s why I bought a Samsung monitor instead for my new Mac Pro. And this is the only reason!
The reviewers seemed to like almost everything about the ACD except the price, single-color consistency, and lack of height adjustment. It was not clear how high their “hopes” were for single-color consistency, but one would reasonably expect top-notch performance for a premium price.
I am not a graphics professional or an expert in displays. But I really love my iMac 24″ display and I can only assume that the 27″ ACD is as good or better in terms of performance. If you have the money, then you will probably find the 27″ ACD to be a fine product.
Did this guy even try to compare prices of proper specs?
The Dell UltraSharp U2711 27-inch display is also about $980.
His comparison, “you can pick up a decent 27-inch LED display for under £400, though admittedly with fewer pixels.”
So less pixels.
Is it IPX?
Does it have a camera?
Does it have built in sound?
Do a little research, unless his sole effort was to bitch about the price.
I would like to remind Laurence Cable that in 1992, a 14″ color CRT display connected to a Mac Quadra cost $1199 and had a resolution of 640×480.
@montex: I like to forget the days of small and/or back-breaking CRTs, thanks. Please, feel free to not dredge up painful memories.
No Matte – No Sale. There are plenty of high quality third-party monitor makers out there – and, unlike Apple, they take the pro graphics user seriously.
@Think
If a tech writer were to claim that the price of an Apple product compared favorably to something with similar specs, they’d risk the universe imploding.
What is the utilitarian value of a 27″ ACD as opposed to a similar sized iMac? Both have the same screen size, except one has an in-built computer in it for not much more in price terms. Both can accept DP connectors to act as external monitors. Why not just plump for the iMac?
Twenty Benson
“No Matte – No Sale. There are plenty of high quality third-party monitor makers out there – and, unlike Apple, they take the pro graphics user seriously.”
No there aren’t, there are very few screens in that league.
And I am sick of this idiotic banter from uninformed (likely adolescent?) nubes that “graphics professionals” prefer matte screens. Buy a clue, no we don’t. Only someone who hadn’t actually worked in the industry would say that. (and no doing PS or AE work for some local web developer out of you house does not really count as “graphics industry” experience)
Virtually anyone who works with critical imaging works in a dimly lit room (some even with blinders in a dimly lit room), and we for the most part DO NOT LIKE MATTE SCREENS! Matted screens cause considerable luminescence bloom, gloss screens do not. Simple as that.
There is no way around the luma bloom, to combat reflected light you simply use dim lighting.
@BLN: It is a great 2nd monitor and also a great primary monitor for a closed-up laptop.
Although you can call me an Apple fan boy – I must say that Apple products not always are long lasting. My MBP 15″ early 2008 died just after 2 years & 2 months use. AASP said it’s logic board and called the price of a new MBP 13″ for repair. The MBP was mostly used at home, never dropped or anything. So claiming that Apple products are long lasting just annoyes and irritates people. Another thing: you can’t use iPhone 4 with Tiger. There are many examples to prove wrong the claim.
@ @Crabapple
Sorry your system died. I have a 2007 15″ MBP that died last year, but Apple fixed it since it was still covered by AppleCare at the time. I was very crabby when it died, but happy that Apple fixed it right away.
The iPhone 4 also forced me to upgrade my old PowerMac G5 (replaced by a MacPro last month) and 12″ PowerBook (still going strong) to 10.5. The upgrade was a pain for the PM, but worth it in the end.
I would love to have a Cinema Display but it’s just to expensive, More expensive than my new 2.66 Ghz Mac Mini. Plus I hate the fact that it’s glossy. Had the 21.5″ iMac but I returned it partly because I just couldn’t stand the glare.
Thats why I make do with a $159 21.5″ Acer with true 1080P
( 1920X1080 Res ) VGA & DVI input, touch sensitive buttons, & the whole Bezel is finished with a Black metallic gloss so it’s a classy looking display. To make it more apple looking, I used some black tape to cover the Acer Logo & put on 1 of those white apple stickers. You see in the background of my vid on YT
Unboxing vid
& I bet it could last longer than the Cinema Display too.
My only major beef was the stand (replaced it with a third party one that was much more adjustable) and the multicord connector cable. Apple has given it a Mag-Safe connector about 12 inches long to connect to a laptop – which is fine. But what about those of us who have both a desktop and a laptop? If that MagSafe cord was separate, longer, or if there was an adapter extension cable for it, it would allow us to use it to charge our laptops on our desks without hauling out the power brick. As it is, it hangs unused behind my desktop, unable to reach or do anything useful.
I have a PowerMac G3 tower that still works great. It’s now my kid’s computer, and he loves it. It’s running Panther, BTW.
Plenty of arguments for that longevity, too.
@Uncle Fester’s Cousin
Nope – us true graphics pros wouldn’t touch a glossy with a barge-pole. Shows where you are coming from Uncle Fester’s Cousin. I’ll bet you have some brightly coloured picture of tropical fish as your desktop – rather then a neutral flat 40% grey.
No Matte – No Sale. True pros know their tools (beware of fakes).
Twenty Benson,
I can tell you have no clue whatsoever, Every image critical pipeline app I use is full screen, so desktop pattern has no effect (and if you are interested I typically use a still from a particularly good scene of a current project as my desktop background as a sort of inspiration (I am a compositor (contractor)))
Matte (frosted) display screens cause luma bloom, you simply can’t trust them for critical work. Virtually all high end professional monitors are gloss, I use a pair of color edge monitors and As I recall matte wasen’t even an option and were only available at the low (prosumer) end of Ezio’s line.
Twenty Benson is spot on! No serious graphics professional would be caught using a glossy screen. It just doenst happen. Anyone who says they use glossy here is a pretend professional.
Hey Apple! No Matte = No sale!
@ The person who is afraid of using their own name.
Out of every product that is manufactured, there will be a certain percent of the products that will fail before their scheduled useful productivity cycle.
In others, some of the components will fail within days of use, I include resistors, chips & capacitors in this category.
If as an example more than 30% of the product fails relatively quickly, then that product can be easily classified as being cheap, unreliable and not long lasting. Hence my thoughtful comment comparing Apple’s products to it’s rivals as opposed to Apple’s other products.
Take the iPod for example, their have been several iterations of the iPod the majority of which have been relatively trouble free, but with the advent of the iPod Touch and now iPod Touch v2, a number of problems have arisen as a result of 1st gen iPod Touch owners performing a software update that has reset the iPod Touch to factory settings. That situation doers not render the statement that iPod Touches are cheap & unreliable, does it?
@Uncle Fester’s Cousin
Color Edge monitors are matte, you dunce – get back to playing with your mirror glass-slab Apple toy screen and stop wasting the time of us graphics pros. Jeez – Apple even advertize the light pollution across their monitors as if it’s a ‘must-have’ feature.
No Matte – No Sale.