Second Chance Apple Studio Display (with VESA mount adapter)

This monitor makes my work behind a screen much more pleasant. The sharpness, the good colors, the great viewing angle, the brightness, the limited reflection and the seamless experience with a MacBook Pro make it worth the investment for me. I once had an Apple Cinema Display. I've enjoyed that for years. And it was hard for me to say goodbye to that. I hope it will be the same with this monitor.

Recently I was able to use a Studio Display for a few weeks, but I shouldn't have done that. What a picture! Great to hook up my Mac and have everything on one monitor: A super resolution, generous workspace and a camera and speakers for meetings (where I always had to open my Mac for this). This was a copy with a height-adjustable foot. Very pleasant, but also a very pricey option. In the end I changed tack and ordered one as well.

Photo editing
Besides 'office work' I also have photography as a hobby. This screen is ideal for editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. Truly a delight. The disadvantage I experience is that my 24 megapixel photos from the Sony A7 II are now suddenly viewed very quickly at 100%. A photo then seems out of focus, but that's because I'm already looking at 100%+ unnoticed. I'm not a pro or an expert so maybe I'm 'quickly' satisfied, but it's beautiful and a big upgrade over my Dell P2720DC.

Cons
Disadvantages for me are that, first of all, there is obviously no HDMI port or other inputs, so that I could also use this as a casual game monitor. That would have been nice, especially because of the built-in speakers. This was known so I consciously chose this myself, but it would have finished him. Another downside is that the FaceTime camera isn't the best ever, but it does a great job and is way better than a lot of other cameras.

Adjustability
I myself have had several iMacs without an adjustable stand and have never had issues with the height, so I dared to choose the savings over adjustability for my own copy. For me, the tilt is enough. I recommend testing and comparing this yourself, because this is of course different for each person.

TL;DR
If you have the money and want to enjoy working with a Mac (mini or MacBook Air/Pro) every day for the next 10 years, then it is definitely worth the investment!

Before buying this screen I used a 4K 27" screen, but I'd like to switch to a 5k 27" screen for sharper display of text and to a screen with automatic brightness adjustment. I came to the Apple Studio screen because it is one of the few 27" screens with 5k. The image quality is excellent, 5k is very sharp, the screen is very bright and the screen seems nicely uniform. Also the automatic brightness correction Very nice in combination with TrueTone. As a result, the screen is never too bright or too dark. The only small downside of the screen itself is that it does not offer a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz (so no ProMotion).

Installation is very easy with macOS. After plugging in, the screen works immediately and the firmware is updated by macOS. It is also nice that the screen has USB-C ports, so that you can simply hang peripherals on the screen. It would have been very nice if the screen had a downstream Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port. The only Thunderbolt connection is used to connect the display to a Mac.

Based on most of the reviews, I'm a bit concerned about the webcam's quality. But after performing the update (which improves image processing) I've had nothing but positive comments on video quality on video calling.

My main criticism of the Studio Display is the price. The screen is very similar to that of the 5k iMac that until recently sold for a comparable price and you can also expect a height-adjustable stand for such an amount (after all, some screens have that for 1/5th the price). already). But that doesn't take away from the fact that the Studio Display is a great screen that you wish every Mac user.