Apple Silver 30" Cinema HD Widescreen LCD Display

Just what I needed

Strengths: Lots of real estate, great picture, full control over brightness.

Weakness: only has one input, would be great if it could do at least one additional vga/dvi

I have been after this monitor for a while now but could never actually find a merchant that had a good price. I was pleased when I found this merchant had it for $100 less than everyone else and with free shipping/no tax to boot. I feel like my studio setup is not complete, this monitor compliments my Mac Pro perfectly!

By mpasilas - Oct 2, 2008

Apple 30" Display

Strengths: Gorgeous picture quality. Clean looks. Firewire & USB ports. Much better stand than the competitors.

Weakness: Expensive compared to others. Gets hot. Big power inverter box. Not VESA compatible.

At first I was conflicted between the Apple & Samsung 30". I really wanted a black monitor, but after biting the bullet, getting this one, and using it for about a week - i must say, the titanium still does look very professional and matches with the rest of my stuff. Dual-link DVI cards are common, and not so expensive anymore - i'm using a PC running a 8800GTS 512MB and a Q6600 quad-core...
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At first I was conflicted between the Apple & Samsung 30". I really wanted a black monitor, but after biting the bullet, getting this one, and using it for about a week - i must say, the titanium still does look very professional and matches with the rest of my stuff. Dual-link DVI cards are common, and not so expensive anymore - i'm using a PC running a 8800GTS 512MB and a Q6600 quad-core processor. Now i just need another one!

By ipacific - Mar 13, 2008

Probably the highest resolution...

Strengths: The highest resolution TFT monitor you could find in the market (to date)

Weakness: Dual Link DVI graphics card for PC is very expensive. Very limited connectivity.

Probably the highest resolution TFT monitor you can find in the market, requires Dual Link DVI graphics card. If you own a Mac, you need a Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra DDL (about £399). Please note, Dual DVI graphics cards are NOT Dual Link. Unfortunate for me, I am a PC user, only options available for me would be to purchase workstation class graphics card, eg. Nvidia Quadro or ATI FireGL....
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Probably the highest resolution TFT monitor you can find in the market, requires Dual Link DVI graphics card. If you own a Mac, you need a Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra DDL (about £399).

Please note, Dual DVI graphics cards are NOT Dual Link.

Unfortunate for me, I am a PC user, only options available for me would be to purchase workstation class graphics card, eg. Nvidia Quadro or ATI FireGL.

Talking about the actual performance of this monitor, you need to sit about 1.5m to 2m back, the screen is really really huge. You will feel much more comfortable sitting a bit further away.

Viewing angle wasn't as impressive as what Apple said it would be. You get slightly washout on contrast when you view it at an angle. Horizontal viewing angle is better than its vertical viewing angle. If you plan to own one of this screen, make sure the screen is exactly at your eye level.

I generally haven't got a problem with the response time. Colour contrast is brilliant when you looking at 90 degree perpendicular to the screen. Red is very red, blue looks very blue. But I have something to say about its brightness, the black isn't black enough. A problem which many manufacturer still having with their TFT screens.

I think Apple initially designed this monitor as a monitor and had no plan to make it into a LCD TV. Therefore, you will find very limited connections. Though not a LCD TV by design, I still find it actually very good for DVD. It looks brilliant. When I mean good, I mean you could even see the MPEG2 compression at work - you can see grains of different coloured tone pixels even when you watch DVD, much because of its very high native resolution and the interpolation done by the graphics card. Perhaps, HDTV signal is better suited for this monitor, just my opinion.

Depending on personal preference, I prefer clarity, even if it means more grainy picture. Others who prefer blurry and nicely toned picture, you probably better off getting a low resolution big screen (e.g. plasma).

Gaming experience: Because the resolution is so high and the screen is so clear, it will really shows the zig-zag, and you really need to turn on very high degree of Antialiasing. I am not a fan of high degree anisotrophic filtering, but this screen totally changed my opinion.

I recommend turning on Anisotrophic filtering too. But to drive such a monstrous screen with antialias + anisotrophic screen, I felt that my graphics card isn't quite powerful enough for the task. I am thinking of adding an SLI configuration for this screen sometimes in the future.

Conclusion: No doubt, this is probably the best monitor you can find in the market, slightly disappointed on a few issues mentioned above.

I am a PC user, so I can only give my oppinion about driving this monitor using a PC. The screen itself is pricey, but in order to drive this screen at a more impressive level, I think you really need SLI configuration. With two workstation graphics card to drive this, you are talking about hardware costs which is more than the actual screen itself.

One workstation graphics card for this screen is acceptable, a little sluggish.

By LordSimon - Apr 6, 2005

Apple Cinema HD Display

Apple Cinema HD Display receives an overall TopTenREVIEWS score of 3.31 out of 4.00. It is ranked the #45 computer monitor of all time. The overall rating represents an intelligent balance of features, value as a function of price to features, and a summary of reviews from a variety of sources. The TopTen REVIEWS' formula gives a picture of important consumer features, market value, and a...
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By TopTenREVIEWS.com - Nov 24, 2008

Apple Cinema HD Display 30 inch

Testseek.com has collected 16 expert reviews for Apple Cinema HD Display 30 inch and the average expert rating is 79 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.
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By testseek.com - Oct 31, 2008