For $999, you get a Mac-niche display with a big, gorgeous screen and very simple set-up and connectivity. The Thunderbolt Display is about a third the price of the Eizo CG245W, and they are very different monitors. The choice between these two is really down to the user and their budget-you get a 27-inch widescreen display with one of the highest resolutions on the market with the Thunderbolt Display, but you're going to pay for it, too. The HP offers more connectivity options, but the Apple has pretty nice built-in speakers and an HD camera. They performed similarly in contrast and color, with the HP performing a little bit better at maximum contrast ratio because of its extremely high peak white, and the Apple performing slightly better on our color temperature test.
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The Apple Thunderbolt Display (MSRP $999) is quite a bit more expensive than the HP ZR24w (MSRP $349), and also has the limitation of being Mac only. While it must be obvious that the Thunderbolt Display would ship with a Thunderbolt cable, we wanted to clarify that this input cable, which also includes a MagSafe charger for a MacBook, can not be removed from the display/swapped between other Thunderbolt-enabled Macs, but is a permanent feature of the Thunderbolt display. The Thunderbolt Displays features a permanent cable that splits into a Thunderbolt input and a MagSafe charger.
The camera is truly HD, however, and balanced light and colors well while still managing not to exhibit any blurring or bad tracking during fast repetitive motion. While we didn't test the microphone very extensively, we can confirm that it works. The Thunderbolt Display has a built-in "FaceTime" HD camera and microphone. We tested a few different styles of audio briefly, including how it handled shifts in dynamics and tracked speech against background noise, and found that the Thunderbolt's built-in speakers were actually not bad, and the subwoofer gave a good resonance to lower-end tones without over-boosting. The Thunderbolt Display has a built-in speaker system, including an integrated subwoofer. This is the kind of thing that some people love, and some people hate. Apple is sticking to their tradition of product inclusion and an almost forced sense of minimalism. In this sense, it is less like a traditional monitor and more like a display enhancement of sorts. It can be adjusted and calibrated from the computer that it is running off of, be it a Mac mini, a MacBook pro, etc. The Thunderbolt Display features no on-site controls of any kind, and thus does not have a built-in menu. It has 3 USB 2.0 ports, a second Thunderbolt input (making it easy to, for example, connect a second Thunderbolt display to the first), a FireWire input, and an ethernet port. Within the world of Mac, however, the Thunderbolt Display is fairly versatile.
This places very clear limitations on the Thunderbolt Display, but only within the realm of less specialized monitors. All of our calibration is done using the X-Rite iDisplay sensor.īefore getting into the connection options available to the Apple Thunderbolt display, we feel it's important to point out, regardless of how obvious it is, that this monitor can only be used with Mac computers. This calibration is used for our color temperature and color curves testing, and is meant to showcase how accurately the monitor renders colors on the sRGB or Adobe RGB spectrum. The second calibration involves optimizing the monitor to a luminosity of 160 cd/m2, quite dark without being overly dark. This calibration is used for our contrast and viewing angle related analyses, and is meant to showcase how the monitor does for more general use, say in an office or living room, somewhere with more and/or brighter lighting. The first calibration involves optimizing the monitor to its own native luminosity, which is usually fairly high.
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To test a monitor's full potential, we use two different calibrated luminosities. While this is surprisingly low, it may not prove to be much of a problem unless you are attempting to view the Thunderbolt display with a group, and its 27-inch screen is wide enough for at least three people to watch at a head-on angle. We found that at 45 degrees, the contrast ratio for the Apple Thunderbolt display fell noticeably, from a contrast ratio of 850:1 to a contrast ratio of 18:1.
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