The Apple Thunderbolt Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2011 2:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
- Mac
- Apple
- Thunderbolt
- Thunderbolt Display
The Changing Role of Displays
Thunderbolt carries PCIe and DisplayPort, which enabled Apple to change the role of its display. The Thunderbolt Display is no longer a passive monitor, but it's a full fledged docking station.
Thunderbolt can carry PCIe x4, that's four lanes, which gives Apple the ability to put four PCIe x1 devices in the display itself. Apple chose wisely and included a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller (BCM57761), a FireWire 800 controller and a USB controller. The FaceTime HD and integrated audio codec both use the internal USB controller. Just to be clear, these controllers are present independent of what you connect to the Thunderbolt Display. If you have a Mac with an integrated Gigabit Ethernet controller, hooking it up to the Thunderbolt Display now gives you two GigE ports - and you can use them both in tandem if you'd like. The same goes for FireWire 800 and USB.
Apple doesn't see the Thunderbolt Display as a way to offer more expansion ports, but rather a way to shift those ports to a different location. Chances are you won't need GigE while mobile, but you would like it while at your desk. The same goes for FireWire 800.
What's particularly awesome about the Thunderbolt Display's integrated controller farm is what it does to MacBook Airs. The 2011 MBAs ship with two USB ports and a Thunderbolt port, that's all you get in terms of high-speed IO. With their internal SSDs capable of moving data at up to 200MB/s, you're quickly bottlenecked by the MBA's 802.11n WiFi stack. Had Apple included a Gigabit Ethernet port on the MBA it would ruin the thin form factor. The Thunderbolt Display takes care of all of this. Connect a MacBook Air to a Thunderbolt Display and not only do you get more pixels, but you get more connectivity. Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire 800 are now retrofitted to the MacBook Air. For those notebook-as-a-desktop users who migrated from old MacBook Pros to the 13-inch MacBook Air, the Thunderbolt Display is a must-have. The biggest feature for me is Gigabit Ethernet. For large file transfers 802.11n just doesn't cut it.
While connected you can use the Thunderbolt Display with your MacBook Pro/Air closed or open as a secondary display just like you could with last year's 27-inch LED Cinema Display.
These aren't just ports, they are backed by controllers physically located within the display
The Thunderbolt Display not only adds functionality but it also simplifies cable management as a result. Users who are constantly docking and undocking their notebooks now only have to deal with two cables: power and Thunderbolt. Whereas today I have no less than seven cables plugged into my notebook.
The Limitations
What's missing from the Thunderbolt Display's port repertoire? For starters, there's no analog audio out. While the display does feature a pair of integrated speakers, they don't produce the best sound in the world. Thanks to their diminutive size and unusual enclosure, the speakers don't cover a lot of dynamic range and you can forget about any ultra low frequencies. If you like bass, you still need a sub. Unfortunately there's no way to use the display's integrated audio codec to drive external speakers. You either have to plug a 1/8" stereo cable into your Mac or buy a USB sound card and connect your external speakers to it. In my opinion this is a pretty significant oversight. It either defeats the purpose of the simplified cable setup by requiring you plug in yet another cable into your Mac to use external speakers, or it defeats the purpose of having an integrated audio controller since you need another USB audio controller to get audio out. This is something Apple could've easily solved by just including a 1/8" jack on the back of the display.
Apple has done a great job of including SD card readers on most of its Macs (although I'd love one on the 11-inch MBA, ahem #waystomakeanandhappy). The Thunderbolt Display oddly enough doesn't include an SD card reader. If it weren't for this and the missing 1/8" jack you'd have almost no reason to reach over to your Mac once at your desk.
There's also no USB 3.0 support. While Thunderbolt does enable some very high speed IO, there are still far more USB 3.0 devices than Thunderbolt devices. Not to mention that you likely won't see Thunderbolt enabled flash memory sticks but we already have quite a few portable USB 3.0 drives. USB 2.0 is just ungodly slow today and I'd much rather have Apple introduce USB 3.0 support with its first Thunderbolt Display instead of introducing it with an updated version down the road. The controllers are available on the market today, although it won't be until next year with Ivy Bridge before Apple considers enabling USB 3.0 on Macs.
The final complaint shouldn't come as a surprise, but the Thunderbolt Display just doesn't have enough USB ports in my opinion. The MacBook Pro & Air come with two, while all desktop Macs have at least four. The Thunderbolt Display only gives you three. USB hubs are easy to come by, but I would've preferred to see at least 4 or 5 on the display.
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repoman27 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Well, the display itself is driven by DisplayPort. The ATD does require Thunderbolt though, otherwise they couldn't have included all the other stuff. Apple is releasing this as an accessory for new Macs that have Thunderbolt ports. It does not make anything obsolete. You can continue to use pretty much any display on the market with either an older Mac that only supports DisplayPort or a new Thunderbolt equipped Mac although you might need an adapter or three. Most display manufacturers are probably not going to go the Thunderbolt route, and will stick with HDMI for 1920x1080 panels, DisplayPort for the higher resolution jobs, and DVI ports until the cows come home.Apple may soon cease production of discrete DisplayPort sink devices, but that in no way means that they've turned their back on the standard. Thunderbolt ports are indeed backward compatible with DisplayPort devices, but DP ports have no way of being forward compatible with Thunderbolt devices.
I find it odd that there are a lot of folks asking where all the Thunderbolt devices are, and then when one is released, everyone complains that they would need to buy a new Mac in order to use it. Thunderbolt devices are designed to be used with Thunderbolt enabled PC's, you're either in the market for them or you're not, end of story.
eureka_swe - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
If you have say 2-3 FireWire 800 disk connected to the Display, do i need to Eject this on the Macbook Pro evry time i will disconnect the Display or is it just to pull out the Thunderbolt cable and the disk is still good ?its a big question for me that have 7 FW Disks :)
Constructor - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
That you need to unmount volumes which are about to be disconnected doesn't change.The external FireWire controller is basically indistinguishable from one on the motherboard for the OS. And the file system is still the same.
So unmounting any external FireWire, USB and (directly) Thunderbolt device is a must and will remain so until the file system is fundamentally altered in that regard.
iSayuSay - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Agreed on some Anand's points. Hooking a Macbook Pro/Air with Thunderbolt onto that display may looks cool, it might instantly look like a desktop. But the real performance is never going to be excellent, it only become acceptable - very good range.If I going to cash in such amount of money (consider basic 11" MBA for $900 + 27" Apple Thunderbolt display for another $1000, and for elegance purpose .. don't forget TrackPad/MagicMouse + Wireless keyboard for another $140) ..
In total you already spend same amount with hi-end iMac 27" which performs much better, yeah sure .. it's not portable, but I don't carry around my MBA too much either :p
So I say .. while looks nice and cool, I'm not ready to follow world trend to go mobile with today's performance
dgingeri - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
I flat out refuse to buy any Apple products. I have 3 reasons behind this now. At first, it was because they did so much business with Foxconn, and the horrible living conditions of the Foxconn employees who built Apple products. Then I found out about their excessive patent applications on a great many things that have been common habits of electronics manufacturers for over a decade. Now, I add on the excessive legal activity and flat out cheating in court trying to ban competing products.Apple is quite simply an evil company. Do not buy their stuff. Do not support the attempt at becoming a dictatorship of the world under the guise of business.
Mystermask - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
You're a hypocrite if you accuse Apple for what happens in chinese factories.1. Name me one brand that does not go for cheap as possible production. And why? Just have a look at those endless discussions where people try to prove that they can build a PC that has the same specs like e. g. a MacBook Pro but is even cheaper. How do you believe this is possible?Aren't you happy when you can buy a PC for €300 when all other cost 500€? Who do you believe is paying that bill? The "race to the bottom" has a long history that started in the PC industry when almost all HW vendors decided to go with DOS / Windows and vendors could only distinguish themselves in the market by being cheaper than others. And consumers gladly bought the cheapest - unable to distinguish value and price - effectively cutting into their own flesh because this has cost all production jobs in the PC industry in western countries.
2. Have a look at yourself. Do you wear Nike, Addidas, Reebook, Lacost, you-name-it? Do you use Dell, Acer, HP, HTC, Samsung, .. How and where are they produced?
..
All of a sudden, reality looks not as easy and religios blind Apple bashing is certainly neither a solution nor would that change anything for Foxconn or countless other factory workers in China, Vietnam or wherever people have to offer their work for cheap to survive because of western ignorance and greed.
The_Countess - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
i cant help but notice that you could do all this with just 2 cables for far less money and without the expensive proprietary technology.1 display cable + 1 usb3.0 cable connected to a USB hub.
it'll even be fully backward compatible with practically every laptop still in operation on the planet!
you could even run the display over usb3.0 although I'm not sure how much bandwidth would remain after that.
repoman27 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
You can get more than 800 MB/s of throughput from a RAID connected to a USB 3.0 hub?... While getting over 780 Mbps over a USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter?... (There are no USB 3.0 ethernet adapters in the wild yet.) While recording 720p video from a camera connected to the hub?... While playing back audio from a USB audio interface?... And how are you going to connect a FireWire device to your USB 3.0 hub? There's no adapters for that, and besides, you're out of ports on your hub because the only USB 3.0 hubs on the market have just 4 downstream ports. Looks like you'll need to get another hub and cable to connect a keyboard and mouse or USB disk.And yes, you could connect your version to any laptop and enjoy all of those devices sharing less than 40 MB/s of bandwidth, or connect it to a USB 3.0 enabled machine and get less than 400 MB/s. Thunderbolt gives you 2500 MB/s. A 2560x1440 display such as this requires 5.8 Gbps of bandwidth, USB 3.0 can't even hit 3.2 Gbps of real world throughput yet.
Constructor - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
USB ist not remotely capable to drive a display at the same performance level as the built-in GPU in the computer can. Those USB graphics adapters are orders of magnitude slower than that.And both 10Gb/s input + 10Gb/s output at the same time as a high-res display (or even two of those with a small output performance hit) are completely out of range for even USB3.
Add to that the horrible latency problems you've got with USB, which are completely absent with Thunderbolt. (Which is one reason why you couldn't even have a full-performance FireWire port through USB3 since proper FireWire has very low latencies as well, which USB simply can't emulate.)
USB is a very complicated and not too fast peripheral interface.
Thunderbolt is effectively a part of the motherboard channeled through a thin cable to pluggable external motherboard expansions (the "motherboard" in the Thunderbolt display is effectively made a part of the computer's motherboard once you plug it in to the Mac).
Completely different deal.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
You're comparing USB to a GPU? ok..."orders of magnitude"? USB is 5Gbps; apparently the alternative is 500Gbps!! Sorry, it's not even 50Gbps, or even half of that.
"horrible latency problems you've got with USB" - I have no perceivable latency on my USB mouse, and I'm sensitive to it.
"USB is a...not too fast peripheral interface." - 5Gbps isn't fast? No external connection aside from raw video can utilize that!
Face it, you don't know what you're talking about.