| IMO, ASUS is taking the right path here. Everything besides the panel doesn't matter. This particular model or lineup might not be the best, and maybe the QA sucks, but it's not like the 69% of people on Amazon giving it 4+ stars have gone crazy. I see this another way: these ASUS displays are a firmware update away from being a better buy, and ASUS is just one competitor. My prediction is that the Studio Display pretty quickly becomes a questionable purchase as more competitors enter the space and mini-LED displays become more prevalent. It's going to be a great webcam and speaker and a mediocre monitor at that price. Also, if webcams and speakers are so important I wonder why the Pro Display XDR doesn't have either? Honestly, that question lines up with my original claim: that the Studio Display is an aspirational purchase for non-creatives who have a lot of money and want a nice home office monitor for fiddling with spreadsheets and taking Zoom calls. The actual professionals (Pro Display XDR) don't have any need for some impressive for their size but not studio monitor built in monitor speakers and webcam. Someone producing semi-professional video content is going to go with a display that supports HDR, especially considering that our consumer-level phones already record HDR footage. |
>This particular model or lineup might not be the best, and maybe the QA sucks, but it's not like the 69% of people on Amazon giving it 4+ stars have gone crazy.
Just glancing on Amazon, if you filter by 1 star reviews you get a listing of all the problems I mentioned. Your argument assumes that all the people praising it did not just base their review on initial impressions. You only notice most of my problems after living with the monitor for some time. Since all of my issues are cropping up in the 1 star reviews, I suspect that at least some of the positive reviews are people who were wowed by the initial panel quality.
>I see this another way: these ASUS displays are a firmware update away from being a better buy, and ASUS is just one competitor.
A firmware update that will never happen for the existing models. I checked my monitor in the hopes of fixing this dumb issue with the input detection and one of them actually has updates...just to add promised features after the first few models shipped from the factory without it. The other two? Nothing. in other words, once they fulfilled what the specs say, you are on your own.
I also fail to see how the poor stand/speakers can be firmware updated. That is something a daily user will have to live with.
It would be nice if there were multiple competitors but the real reason I purchased ASUS was due to a lack of competitors. I typically purchase Dell.
>My prediction is that the Studio Display pretty quickly becomes a questionable purchase as more competitors enter the space and mini-LED displays become more prevalent. It's going to be a great webcam and speaker and a mediocre monitor at that price.
This dumb argument is always made by Apple detractors/Android/PC fanboys. They only look at specs and fail to consider the product as a whole. I learned this lesson the hard way after 4 years of terrible Nexus phones.
If you think about it, you are getting exactly what you are paying for: Good panel in exchange for poor enclosure, poor firmware, poor stand, poor speakers. This does not seem like a deal unless you value all of those things at 0 which you are clearly doing. I concede that some low cost studios may adopt this for their workflow although I don't know if these panels are truly Dolby Vision certified given their lighting zones algorithms are pretty lousy in my experience. If you want to ensure you are getting quality, especially as an Apple user, the other panels are a no brainer. They have a reputation you can trust, ASUS does not.
>Also, if webcams and speakers are so important I wonder why the Pro Display XDR doesn't have either?
I'm not sure. The XDR is just a little over 2 years old so it is definitely plausible that it was intended as a 1st gen design to replace the LG display that everyone was complaining about(there were massive failure rates of that display so Apple needed something new for their new Desktop machine which was unveiled with the monitor).