Max & Linus Review the Pro Display XDR

Both Max Yuryev and Linus Sebastian give more in-depth reviews of Apple’s 6K monitor than we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on YouTube. Max points out that when connected to the new Mac Pro, because of its older graphics card, the USB 3.1 ports on the XDR behave like twenty-year-old USB 2.0 ports, while Linus laments that PC users will not be able to take advantage of many of the display’s features, such as being able to adjust the backlight or viewing the screen at full resolution; that viewing angles are not quite as spectacular as claimed by Apple; that screen uniformity, while not perfect, improves considerably when engaging any of the monitor’s reference modes; and that a flat 25% grey tone is marred by undesirable texture. Anthony Young regrets that PC owners will need to purchase a costly I/O device for HDR. As for the most pressing concern with the 576-zone backlight display, no one on the team feels haloing is a real problem, while Max Yuryev discredits photos of horrific blooming of the XDR disseminated on Twitter and elsewhere taken with cellphone cameras, which he alleges vastly exaggerate the appearance of haloing. I think it would be fair to say that in spite of niggling grievances, both tech reviewers were seriously impressed with Apple’s first HDR display. Meanwhile, both Linus and Max hint at future videos comparing the Pro Display XDR to Asus’s PA32UCX.