We’ve had the Apple Cinema Display on the desk for a day now, and we’ve spent a good 23 hours of the time since then staring at it. Just gawping at it. But if you’re going to spend £650 on it, you need to know if it works too. We’ve jotted down our thoughts after a whole day of staring at it, so find out after the jump if it’s worth your hard earned – plenty of pics too!
You’ve got to hand it to Apple: it knows how to make user friendly gear. There’s nothing in the box other than the monitor, a plug, an instruction booklet and a cleaning cloth. The Cinema Display works straight away once you’ve plugged it in, no drivers needed (And no power brick by the way – it’s all internal), and all three connectors are tied together to prevent tangles.
You’ve seen some of the photos of it in action, but we thought we’d put it through its paces a bit more. First up, we popped a DVD of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in to see how it handles colour (No, we don’t have Wall-E yet). Even if there is no upscaling, it looks godlike – see for yourself below. The sound from the internal speakers is unsurprisingly far bigger than anything a MacBook can pump out, although still raspy when the decibels go up. If you plan on watching an action movie on this at any point, you’ll still want external beatboxes.
We thought we’d better make it work a bit harder though and push the 1920×1200 resolution as close to the limit as possible with some 1080p video. There’s not much to say, other than it’s beautiful. Colours are bright and vivid, and you can make out every nook and cranny of the rock climbing video we watched. It’s got an 178 degree viewing direction so you can position it at any angle on your desk – the only distraction is the glass overlay, which reflects a bit too much in natural light.
Who’s it for though? That’s what has us puzzled. Right now, it’ll only work with the new MacBook and MacBook Pros unless you pick yourself up a DVI-I to Mini DisplayPort converter (Around £20). The vast acres of screen space it provides are a great addition for when you’ve got the MacBook at home (and a far better combination than the Amilo and GraphicBooster box we tried out yesterday). You can see what you can fit on there in our shots. But for £650? That’s two thirds of the price of the laptop itself. The cost is a real shame, as the other extra benefits it provides – speakers, USB ports – would be a boon. It’ll be perfect for Mac Mini and Mac Pro owners when the new ones arrive, especially for Photoshop and video editing.
The real problem: we know that Jobs has been touting DisplayPort, but we’ve still got to lament the lack of HDMI. Think of all the things it could have been, could have done. Put it in the same room as a Blu-ray player, PS3 or Xbox 360, and you’ll start trying to think ways of soldering them together – we usually let Apple’s closed shop approach slide, since it ensures all its kit works seamlessly, but we can’t help but feel that unlike the iPods, it really is missing out on customers because of its insistence on exclusivity here.
Out now | £649 | Apple
