I fell in love with the 30-inch Apple Cinema HD display

There’s something charming about the Apple Cinema Display from 2004. It’s giant, bold and beautiful in a way computer monitors have moved away from in the past ten years. The huge, chunky bezels might seem offputting, but in a sea of black boxes, they’re a breath of fresh air and I’d argue that they even look modern.

The display panels themselves are showing their age, but the 30-inch model is still technically in the 2k range, so it’s not as far back of a step as you may think. Text might be a little chunky, but gaming and watching content is surprisingly great. The 16:10 aspect ratio is also fantastic, anyone who’s been reading my content knows that I’ll do anything to avoid using 16:9 monitors. I like having extra vertical space and there’s something about it, especially at the 30-inch display scale, that just feels more immersive for browsing the web.

The giant display may be old, but it still feels powerful.

On my desk it also looks beautiful, expressing the aluminum forward minimalism with its large size feeling almost brutalist in its power. Next to a modern iMac, it almost makes the tiny iMac look cheap. Don’t get me wrong, the modern iMac is cool with its white bezels and fun colours, but it just doesn’t feel like the powerful tool the 30-inch Cinema HD feels like. I’d expect that the Pro Display XDR at 32 inches would be the closest comparison, but its lack of bezels and its 16:9 aspect ratio might make it look kind of like any other display from a distance.

That being said, the monitor is by no means perfect. The colour needed a lot of tuning once I got it home, and that’s after I had to wait a few days for a very specific dual-link DVI adapter to ship to my house. Since I’m not using the 30-inch Cinema Display for anything super important right now, I’m not rushing to get it colour-corrected, but I did pay $40 for an app on my iPhone to give it a really basic profile to help remove some of the yellow cast. That said, while I got the monitor for a great deal ($150), the adapter and colour software have added another $110 to the price. And all that being said, the TruHu software can’t quite match my other displays. It looks nice, but the display might be too old to match with a modern 4K display.

The larger dongle is needed for the 30-inch display. The smaller 20-inch can use any DVI adapter.

There’s also the issue of how much power this draws. The 30-inch model has a 150-watt power supply, and it generates quite a bit of heat. The display itself also gets pretty hot, so if you’re really trying to keep your hydro bill down, this likely isn’t the display for you. The smaller ones are a little more efficient, but they’re not quite as majestic, so it’s a trade-off.

Beyond the adapter, you also need to have the USB adapter plugged in to power the display’s built-in USB-A hub. In a modern world, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with easy access to two USB-A ports with 2.0 speeds, but they’re there if I need them, I guess.

I’d also like to point out that while the large and in charge nature of this machine makes me want to use it with a Mac Studio, I need to prop the Cinema HD Display up on a book to allow the Mac to fit underneath it. It’s not quite the clean look I had in my head, but if you have a Mac mini, it will fit perfectly.

After using it for a while, my eyes always adjust to the off-white screen tint, but the part that I find hard to ignore is the greenish-yellow light that it casts over my desk. There’s something nice about how retro it is, but compared to the other lights in my office, it does appear a little harsher.

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