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
Final Words
As a display, the Thunderbolt Display is no different than the 27-inch LED Cinema Display. You lose some of the resolution of the older 30-inch panels but you get a much more compact form factor that feels far less overwhelming on a desk. Having the 27-inch display exclusively for the past year I can honestly say that I don't miss the 30. I've mentioned before that I'm more productive on a single high resolution display vs. two lower resolution panels, the 27 continues to suit my needs very well in that regard.
Quality hasn't changed at all since the previous generation. Color temperatures are finally more reasonable out of the box thanks to Apple's pre-calibration on all panels. Brightness and contrast are both good and calibrated color quality is professional grade. Color gamut is about the only blemish, a side effect of Apple's LED backlight. If you're coming from a notebook panel however, you won't notice the difference.
The real improvements here are obviously those enabled by Thunderbolt. Apple is turning its line of displays into docks for its mobile computers rather than just external displays. It started with integrating MagSafe and has culminated in GigE and FireWire controllers now a part of the display. For MacBook Air owners who don't have options for these high speed interfaces to begin with, the Thunderbolt Display is a must-have. If your MBA is a secondary or tertiary computer that only gets taken on trips perhaps the Thunderbolt Display isn't so life changing. For those users who have moved from older MacBook Pros to the 13-inch MBA however, the Thunderbolt Display is a wonderful companion.
For MacBook Pro owners the Thunderbolt Display is more of a convenience than anything else. If you ferry your notebook between locations frequently, having to hook up only two cables vs. several is nice. I don't know how else to word this without sounding incredibly lazy (I promise I'm not), but I'm more likely to move my notebook around if I don't have to unplug/reconnect 7 cables everytime I get back to my desk.
For me the Thunderbolt Display is good but not perfect. I wish it had a 1/8" stereo output, an SD card reader and USB 3.0 support. Give me those things and I'd be ecstatic. There's always next year's model.
Promise Pegasus owners beware. If you're writing to the Pegasus while listing to music via the Thunderbolt Display you'll eventually encounter dropped/corrupted audio frames. The problem seems confined to the Pegasus, so we'll have to wait on Promise for a fix. The Thunderbolt Display itself doesn't seem to be the cause of any issues.
Even with its limitations, the Thunderbolt Display is one of a kind. I do hope it's the start of a much larger trend. Short of a CPU and memory there's a bonafide motherboard inside the Thunderbolt Display, featuring many of the components we're used to seeing inside systems but now encased in a display. Thanks to SSDs, Turbo Boost and Thunderbolt the only thing holding notebooks back from being true desktop replacements is GPU performance. Sony has already toyed with the idea of sticking a GPU in an external box connected to their notebooks, perhaps that's something we may see more of in the future.
There are still significant concerns over the adoption of Thunderbolt in the future. While it may be free of royalties, there's only one company that makes Thunderbolt controllers: Intel. Not to mention the licensing fees for using the Thunderbolt logo. What made USB and PCIe successful was the ability for many companies to produce and integrate the necessary controllers. I believe we'll need to see the same from Thunderbolt for it to truly become ubiquitous.
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TegiriNenashi - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Justification for yet another cable seems rather weak. Why do one needs sound card -- to reduce main CPU load by 0.001%? Next what is this Ethernet controller thingy?The main reason why 27" Cinema display sucks is its "full-HD" 16:9 ratio.
Constructor - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
1440 pixels vertically suck less than any other resolution, regardless of that other resolution's ratio.With the sole exception of the 2560*1600 of a much more expensive 30" panel (and utterly esoteric displays even beyond that).
Iketh - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
for better sound quality silly... you must have never watched a movie on a decked out PC... it's better than the theatersWolfpup - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I would have bought one ages ago as I'd love a quality IPS or MVA/PVA panel with LED lighting...but I MUST have controls on the display itself, and I must have multiple inputs. Dell's...well actually Dell's lower end monitors have more inputs. Their higher end ones have tons of inputs, and actually start astonishingly cheap now.Geez...I just noticed they finally have an LED + IPS line, but it only goes up to 23" before switching over to florecent. I've currently got a 24" Studio one that's LED + TN (but it's very, very good for a TN panel) that I'll keep using until Dell or someone releases something at least as good and at least as large with IPS.
jecs - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
What I read and understand is LED is not good for color accuracy at lower cost unless you get the 3 LED matrices (RGB) or real LED which is very expensive and not suitable for entry level professional monitor like Dell or even Apple. So don't expect too soon to see the real quality LED adopted on desktop use.You will find real RGB LED on very high end TVs.
Apparently low cost white LED lamps produce a bluish white and the why on higher end monitors you wont find it. The advantages in low cost LED comes from better power consumption efficiency and higher brightness.
repoman27 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
How did you arrive at the conclusion that this is Eagle Ridge? It's clearly got 2 Thunderbolt ports, one just happens to be internal to the display. It's also a flip chip package and looks to be the exact same die size as all the other Light Ridge chips we've seen (none of which have had the same, or even decipherable markings.)I also don't quite grasp your block diagrams. These chips (as far as I can deduce) have connections for 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes (bi-directional), 1 or 2 DisplayPort 1.1a inputs, and 1 or 2 Thunderbolt ports (2 or 4 channels, also bi-directional). Showing "TB In" opposite of "TB out" doesn't make any sense, those should be "PCIe Lane 0-3". I'm also going to wager that there are connections for 1 onboard DisplayPort output. It does make sense that when a TB port on the host PC is operating in DisplayPort compatibility mode, that the DP signal can bypass the Thunderbolt logic. I believe the controller can pass through a DP input to either a TB port operating in DP compatibility mode or to the onboard output. Thus the 13" MacBook Pro being able to drive its built-in display and one external, or two external displays but with a dark built-in.
Now, if a TB controller needs a DP input to drive a TB port in DisplayPort compatibility mode, devices that don't generate a DP stream themselves will need to come up with one from somewhere. Perhaps the TB controller uses the onboard DP output to feed it's own input in such situations, and then the signal bypasses the TB logic and passes through to the TB port with the DP display attached to it. This would explain why the ATD cannot drive a DP display in compatibility mode--it's already using the onboard DP output to drive the built in display, and thus there is nothing to drive one of the DP inputs.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I think you're actually right here. I had assumed it was Eagle Ridge due to the fact that you couldn't get DP out of the Thunderbolt port on the display but upon closer examination it looks like there's an eDP connector on the motherboard, not LVDS. If that's indeed eDP then it means Apple is routing the one DP output to drive the internal panel, which doesn't allow any more DP devices to be connected directly to the display.Give me a few and I'll clean up those diagrams as well :)
Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Corrected, thank you for helping me see the light :)Take care,
Anand
repoman27 - Sunday, September 25, 2011 - link
Thanks for following up, that made my day! (There are still a few lingering references to Eagle Ridge sprinkled throughout the article though.)I threw together a theoretical Thunderbolt block diagram of my own, which you can check out here: http://i54.tinypic.com/8zdwci.jpg Of course this is all just based on speculation, as I'm not a Thunderbolt developer.
Also, I was curious as to the identity of the SMSC USB hub device that didn't get a close-up, and was too blurry to make out the markings on in the full PCB shot.
jmmx - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I see a couple of problems As you mention, no audio out jack. Why get half way there and quit? It changes the 2 necessary cables to 3. In other words - why bother.Price is also a bit of a killer.
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On your presentation: You may be cute, but the video is really boring with no changes. When you give statistics, e.g. screen res, how about displaying them? When you showed the board layout, show full screen and leave it up for more than 10 seconds.
You obviously put a lot of time into this. A little more with some post production overlays of the monitor from different angles, etc.
Good production tho with good quality image and sound.
You do have a great site. One of the best!