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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dsumanik - Sunday, September 25, 2011 - link
Lemme guess, you have a macbook?My original post was not to tear down the display so much as to point out the blatant bias in the review.
Sorry man, its blatant.
Also
You have taken my qoutes as literals instead of sarcasm..obviously people with more than 2 brain cells would stack the display on some books instead of buying a height adjustable desk.
C'mon dude!
I kept bringing that up because anand used that as a way to offset the obvious shortcoming due to his bias toward this and apple products in general.....its a laughable excuse that was even mentioned!!
He could have said :
"The screen has no adjustable height, why did the engineers miss this one? You are going to have to stack your 1000 dollar display on some books in some instances, ruining the design goal of less clutter and a clean workspace that apple had intended to achieve"
He instead implied it was no biggie cuz you can get a height adjustable desk and chair...
LOL
There is no reason the display couldnt have adjustable height, NONE.
In your opinion..this would be "impossible" ok fine, you go with that.
In my opinion:
Someone in management thought the display would look cooler without it, and they could save some production costs while charigng the same pricetag.
The bias was too much for me in this review, it distracted me from the actual product review...its all i could hear after awhile...there is a reason for that.
Not because the display sucks or doesnt suck.
There was a whole combined 60 seconds spent of the shortcomings of this diplay followed by a 14 minute praise apple and heres a blowjob for being so awesome commercial.
I think the display is nice, thunderbolt is an interesting technology that could provide some awesome tech in the future......
BUT
I just dont see why this display was recommended as "a must have item"
It was a commercial, plain and simple, because anand loves apple products and this is in his opinion one of the more interesting ones to come out this year.
my original summary still stands with some corrections
-no sound OUTPUT (sorry!)
-no usb 3
-incompatible with anything but 2011 MACS (right now)
-1000 dollars (i could buy 5 TN 1920x1080 displays for same price)
-you need to buy an adjustable desk and chair (joke!)
I didnt list firewire as a pro because since the conception of this technology i have not ever used a device requiring it, nor has anyone else ive ever known. Yes I am sure poeple out there in internet land might need it somewhere.
But do you think it would it be awesome if they included an ISA slot too????
LOL
I guarantee you and every single person you know could make use of a USB 3.0 port far more often.
the resoultion is nice, but doesnt justity 1000 bucks.... Built-in speakers, microphone and HD webcam....no problem you can find a 200 monitor with that too.
Also your macbook likely has all these things already!!!!
LOL
Go buy the display youve already made up your mind, this review sealed the deal for you...stop wasting your time and get down to the apple store....HURRY...there might be people camped out to buy one....run quickly!!! They are all gonna be sold and youll be left without this must have item for 2011!!!
BWAHAHAHA
repoman27 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Lemme guess, you have an American car?I'm pretty sure Anand realized that the engineers didn't "miss" the adjustable height or swivel options. They've opted not to offer these features for some time now on both the iMac and the Apple Cinema Displays, so it's nothing new. There are plenty of sound engineering reasons why they have chosen their current design. A single solid piece of aluminum looks cool, costs less, and is way less prone to failure than something more complex. The latter reason being a lot more of an issue with a 23 pound, $999, glass clad panel than with your cheap plastic 1920x1080 TN garbage.
I'm guessing you don't have many friends if you've never known anyone who uses FireWire. Almost everyone I know who has a Mac uses it, even if just for the occasional FireWire Target Disk Mode transfer. I use FireWire external enclosures because I do a lot of disk imaging and I value my time. I also know a lot of audio professionals who have quite a bit of FireWire audio gear. Yeah, I get it. If it's not useful to you, it has no value.
USB 3.0 hasn't even been shipping for 2 years yet. In it's first year it had an attach rate in the PC market of 3.5%. The projections for 2011 peg it at 18%. So even though far more PC's will ship with 1394 interfaces this year than USB 3.0, you still believe USB 3.0 is vastly more useful. Have you bothered to notice that there isn't a hell of a lot of device silicon available yet, so the only USB 3.0 enabled devices currently on the market are external drives and enclosures, bulky flash memory sticks, hubs, and a couple of memory card readers? That's it man. Not to mention that the drivers are also far from polished at this point.
You object to the bias in this review, yet you have clearly demonstrated that you have zero ability to objectively gauge the quality or inherent value of anything.
dsumanik - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Actually i own a an american truck and a japanese motorcycle.ford ranger
yamaha R1
I also own an iphone4, and previously a 3gs... if youd like me to facetime you ill gladly prove it.
Im not anti apple...or anandtech...the reiview was mother effing biased.. That was my point and i think you've heard it. I wouldnt have posted my initial comments otherwise....you think im imagining this all in my head????
And im sorry but usb3 is backwards compatible...you can use it with anything from the last 10 years, 3.5% market penetration??? When was the last time you saw a PC or notebook or macbook ship without USB support?
How you gonna install lion on your mac without USB? Doesnt apple ship it's OS on a thumbdrive??? Guarantee it would install faster on USB 3!
That says it all.
If FW was so great why didnt they ship it on a FW flash drive?
Have you ever even heard of a firewire flash drive??? I think there was like some kangaru branded ones or something but they were super expensive.
Also, with ssd's saturating the sata 3 Gbps bus already...why waste time using USB or firewire to disk image? Firewire never took off, never will, and has been succeeded by esata, USB3 and now thunderbolt..Whether you like it or not.
But hey you can go on pretending like its not a dead interface.
Also, some food for thought....why are you trying to change my mind about this???? I'm not going to magically "see the light of day" and agree that this monitor is the best thing since sliced cheese
Im at peace with your reasoning..faulted in my view...but its no skin off my back...and your mind is made up....so go buy the monitor...
Apple and anand have spoken and this is a must have item!!!
You need to get down to the mac store like now instead of arguing with an idiot like me...the lineup is already huge and there are campers everywhere...buy it now before its too late!!
p.s.
Dont forget to grab a height adjustable desk!!!!
repoman27 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
I never mentioned my feelings about this display one way or the other. I also made no attempt to change your mind in regards to whether the ATD was desirable. I joined the argument because you made several inaccurate or irrational statements.I also never disagreed with you about the article being biased. However, objectivity and impartiality are not the same thing. If the data presented is verifiable and accurate, whether or not Anand arrives at the same conclusions as you should be somewhat immaterial.
I will keep bombarding you with reality regarding I/O interfaces though...
First of all, the attach rates I included were quoted from data presented by the USB-IF and, as I clearly stated, were for USB 3.0, not all revisions.
USB is very useful, more than 3 billion USB devices will ship this year. However, only 84 million of those will be USB 3.0 devices, all of them will still function with USB 2.0 or 1.1 interfaces, and not a single one currently offers any functionality that is unable to be duplicated by other interfaces.
There are far more than 84 million FireWire devices in the wild that have functionality that simply cannot be achieved using USB of any revision. It's a different architecture with a different set of capabilities.
eSATA is not a general purpose I/O, it can only be used for mass storage devices.
USB and FireWire are very complementary and exist side-by-side. Every Mac or PC to ever ship with 1394 also has USB. If you can't use USB in a given situation due to it's limitations, you pay for the device with the FireWire controller in it. I imagine that in time Thunderbolt will supplant FireWire and sit alongside USB 3.0. Once again, if you need a device that isn't possible using USB 3.0, pony up for a device with a Thunderbolt controller.
dsumanik - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
psssst....above top secret classified news bulletin:
Firewire's dead bro and the review was biased!
Constructor - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Nonsense. FireWire isn't "dead". There are quite a few interfaces which have no alternative to using FireWire for several reasons, notably latencies among them.Thunderbolt is now the first possible alternative which can actually replace FireWire in every case (the sole exception: devices can potentially draw even more power from FireWire than even from Thunderbolt).
As to "bias" in the article: The article primarily demonstrated what the tested device can actually do in practice and how the technology behind it works, complete with numerical measurements.
All that with clear qualifications on which kinds of use cases it will support and which ones it won't.
If you think that only thoroughly negative reports on a tested device could be "unbiased" (or maybe just when we're talking about Apple's products, specifically?), then you probably have a very distorted view on such matters yourself and little understaning what "unbiased" even means.
repoman27 - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
psssst... If you weren't just trolling you'd realize that I never disagreed with you about the review being biased.1.4 billion FireWire devices shipped... more than 200 million in 2011... Continued strong support from Apple... Yeah, death rattle, bro. 86 FireWire.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
repoman27, dsumanik is absolutely right. If you spend $1000 on a monitor, it had better have height adjustment!Think of it this way; that's 4x a normal display cost. So if you buy a 4x cost car ($60k), it had damn well better have steering wheel height adjustment.
FW flash drive, LOL. I didn't even know those existed.
Apple didn't add proper monitor adjustments because they put style over functionality. And that's why they will always be at a disadvantage even beyond the price premium.
As for me, I've been enjoying my monitor for about the last 5 years...it's 3" more diagonal, it has 1600 vertical pixels, full height and swivel movement, and SD/CF card readers! How about that...look how much we've advanced in 5 years.
btw I don't get Anand's comment "These aren't just ports, they are backed by controllers physically located within the display" - is he saying they're not just fake ports and they actually work?
dsumanik - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
amen brotha,those ports arent just ports...they have controllers to back them up...
so watch out...
if you dont give this display the height adjustable desk it deserves...
The TB display will download your gigabit ethernet into the HD webcam and facetime your arse into a FW drive!!
(but only at USB 2.0 speeds!)
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Apple should have the height adjustable desk as an accessory.And advertise on their site "we have controllers to back up our ports".