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
Testing the Pieces
Before we get to the display and Thunderbolt specific testing I wanted to confirm that the individual controllers in the Thunderbolt Display were just as capable as those in the Mac it was connected to. For the most part, they are.
Following in Brian Klug's footsteps, I created two RAM disks - one on a MacBook Air and one on a MacBook Pro. I connected both systems to my local GigE network and copied giant files between them. I measured over 780Mbps going from the MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro, and 832Mbps in the other direction (images below). That's about as good as it's going to get.
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Next I tested performance over FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. For FireWire 800 I used a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II configured in RAID-1 and measured peak read speed from the device. For USB testing I turned to a Corsair Flash Voyager 3.0 (USB stick) and a SF-2281 SSD connected to a SATA-to-USB bridge. In both of the USB tests I measured write speed to the USB 2.0 devices. Apple appears to have chosen its FireWire controller well as performance was only off by 2MB/s compared to the FW800 port on the 15-inch MacBook Pro. USB 2.0 performance wasn't nearly as good however, I maxed out at 16.4MB/s and saw typical rates closer to 15MB/s:
| Transfer Rate Comparison | |||||
| FireWire 800 | USB 2.0 (stick) | USB 2.0 (SSD) | |||
| Apple Thunderbolt Display | 70.0 MB/s | 14.1 MB/s | 16.4 MB/s | ||
| Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2011) | 72.0 MB/s | 21.2 MB/s | 32.2 MB/s | ||
Both the audio controller and FaceTime HD cameras interface via the Thunderbolt Display's internal USB controller. It's likely that one of those devices is forcing the controller to negotiate at a lower speed and thus ultimately limit peak USB 2.0 performance through the display. Note the gap in performance is much smaller if you're looking at transfers to a USB stick vs. an SSD. I happen to have a lot of SSDs around so I tend to use them as glorified USB sticks, I suspect the majority of users won't notice much of a difference due to the lower overall performance of standard USB sticks.
FaceTime HD Camera
Although Photo Booth in Lion captures at 1080 x 720, using iSightcapture I was able to confirm that the sensor in the Thunderbolt Display appears to be able to capture 1280 x 720 natively. Quality is what we'd come to expect from the current generation of FaceTime HD cameras.
I tested the camera both in Photo Booth and in a FaceTime chat with our own Brian Klug. The experience worked fine in both cases.
FaceTime seems to have issues when one party is in a noisy environment but that doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Thunderbolt Display hardware as I duplicated the issue on a MacBook Air as well. If you're curious, the problem I'm talking about occurs when the party in a quiet environment is trying to talk to the person with a lot of background noise. The quiet party will hear audio just fine but the noisy party will get a lot of broken up audio from the other side. It seems like FaceTime is trying to do some active noise cancelation that ends up doing more harm than good. I confirmed it's a FaceTime software problem by calling Brian via Skype without any issues.
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CharonPDX - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I had HOPED to buy either a Mac Mini or a MacBook Air this year. Finances aren't allowing that.But, it looks like sometime mid next year, I should be able to upgrade.
At this point, if Anand's wish comes true:
I'll be getting an 11" Ivy Bridge Air and a Thunderbolt Display.
Death666Angel - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
"capable of at least 350 nits at full brightness"Just wanted to say that Apple actually advertises 375 cd/m² on their website. :-)
tzhu07 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I wish Anand would've addressed the issue of the glossy-only screen option in the video review. Why did Apple and some others continue to seemingly promote this type of screen? There are many people that consider it a deal-breaker, including myself. How much of a hassle is it for Apple to have two variations of the same product?repoman27 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
"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."According to Apple's specs, the ATD has a 2.1 speaker system, so it already has a sub of sorts. Also the claimed power for the audio system is 49 watts, which is pretty staggering for something built into a display. Actually it's good compared to most compact PC desktop speaker systems. It's too bad that it impresses more on paper than it would seem to in real life.
dunce - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Can I use that Thunderbolt port on the back to plug in a second computer (MacMini/PC)? I am looking at this and the Dell 27in but would like multi computers inputs.Constructor - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
No, as far as I'm aware there can only be one master (CPU) on a Thunderbolt chain.kalistan919 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Will Thunderbolt connections be available for the new 28nm gpus that are coming from AMD and Nvidia? Or will Ivy Bridge channel your discrete gpu from the gpu to motherboard to display through a thunderbolt connection on the motherboard? Does anyone know if Apple will come out with a 30" Thunderbolt Display like they did just recently with the 27" display?These are three questions I tried to find but couldn't. Here's another one...would a minidiplayport on the GPU card work with an apple thunderbolt monitor? Anyone have the lowdown on this? Thanks in advance.
ggathagan - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
The GPU's themselves do not dictate what type of connection is used; that's up to the video card manufacturer.Remember, however, that Thunderbolt is not a GPU-specific interface, so a discrete video card with a TB connection would require the manufacturer to add the TB controller and its associated circuitry to their video card.
I doubt that'll happen.
Ivy Bridge will not have integrated TB, so the answer to your 2nd question is also "no". The motherboard would have to take the video output, whether from the CPU or from a discrete GPU, and route it through an on-board TB controller.
30" displays are going away in most market sectors, so I doubt you'll see a 30" with Thunderbolt.
More specifically, I doubt you'll see *any* 30" display from Apple in the future.
As to your last question; from the article:
"A Thunderbolt cable can only transmit a Thunderbolt signal. Although DisplayPort is muxed in, if the display on the other end is expecting Thunderbolt and it receives DisplayPort it won't know what to do with it. It's possible Apple could have built in logic to autosense and switch between Thunderbolt and DisplayPort as inputs, but Apple traditionally employs clean breaks rather than long technology transitions. If Apple wants to ensure Thunderbolt gets adopted (at least by its users), this is the way to do it. "
According to this discussion at Apple's site, someone tried using a non-TB MBP and MBA and were not successful.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3199231?start...
What I would expect to see is someone marketing a Thunderbolt adaptor that converts a DP input to TB output.
In fact, I would expect to see Apple create this eventually, but it'll be atrociously expensive from them.
Since the whole point of TB is the ability to bundle multiple types of data traffic through a single interface, the only scenario where using a TB-equipped monitor currently make sense is one like this article describes; as an alternative to a docking station for a laptop.
It *would* make sense for a display manufacturer to make a TB-equipped monitor that could auto-sense with the input is DP or TB, but only if you're taking the same approach as Apple and include LAN, USB, audio and FireWire connectivity in the monitor.
If, for instance, Dell were to create a line of TB-equipped monitors with all the connectivity I described above, they could market those monitors in conjunction with a TB-equipped desktop and/or laptop series.
The desktops would only require the TB cable and a power cable; the monitor would handle all the peripheral connections.
Essentially, however, you end up having to decide if you want all your connections at the monitor or at the computer itself.
Historically, people prefer to limit the number of cables hanging off of their monitors and leave the rats nest at the computer.
Where I think TB hold the most promise in relation to desktop systems is in the area of external storage, like the Promise Pegasus Anand mentioned.
Impulses - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
Usually I skip video reviews entirely unless it's something that's just not communicable easily in text (factory tours and game trailer for instance)... They just tend to ramble on and/or provide very little info.However, the video on the first page of this review was excellent! You should've started doing these long ago, I actually read the entire review first even tho I'm not even remotely interested in the display (I am curious about Thinderbolt's future tho), and I started front to back as I often do (by reading the conclusion first and then skipping to other interesting parts). Having read the whole thing previous to watching the video I feel like the clip actually did a better job at summing it all up than the conclusion or Final Words, which is very impressive, great job!
ppayne - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
I'd love to see mods for this appear. Imagine 2 2.5 inch hard drives wired inside somehow and accessible through Thunderbold?