Apple has made products with great displays in the past, most recently with the ProMotion displays found on the best MacBooks. Before that, Apple was praised for its Cinema and Thunderbolt displays, which offered excellent screens at reasonable price points. But those days are long behind us because Apple hasn't designed a great consumer-grade monitor in a decade.

The Studio Display is the closest thing we've got to a dedicated Apple monitor, but it has years-old display technology and an exorbitant $1,600 starting price tag. The price is an issue in itself, but it's all exacerbated by how many groundbreaking monitors are released each day that put the Studio Display to shame. And nowhere is that more apparent than at CES.

We've rounded up a list of three monitors at CES 2024 that show Apple could do a much better job with the Studio Display if it used the latest and greatest tech.

3 LG's unnamed 480Hz monitor

It's just one example of how outdated 60Hz really is

Apple is frequently at the forefront of discussions about refresh rates, mostly due to the iPhone 15, and not for good reasons. We're at a point where even budget Android phones offer high 120Hz refresh rates, and the iPhone 15 is stuck at 60Hz, just like the Studio Display. In 2024, that's unacceptable, and a nameless LG monitor from CES shows us why. LG's new gaming monitor has an unheard-of 480Hz refresh rate, which is a whopping eight times faster than the Studio Display.

Now, we don't know how much LG's monitor will cost, and it achieves this high refresh rate by lowering the display's resolution. But I'm not asking Apple to make the Studio Display competitive with a 480Hz monitor or even other high-end gaming monitors. I'd just like to see a higher refresh rate than 60Hz on a $1,600 monitor, and even a bump to 90Hz or 120Hz would make a massive difference. When other companies are able to produce monitors and display panels that run circles around the Studio Display, it makes you question what exactly Apple is doing with its consumer-level monitor.

2 Samsung Smart Monitor M8 (2024)

It's what a smart monitor should be, and it includes a killer webcam

While there is a resemblance between Samsung's Smart Monitor M8 and the iMac, that's as far as the comparisons go. The 2024 model of the Smart Monitor M8, revealed at CES 2024, has a few advantages over the Studio Display. The first one is the "smart" features, which allow the Smart Monitor M8 to function like a smart TV or streaming stick. This year, the Smart Monitor M8 can pair directly with Samsung Galaxy smartwatches for guided workouts and more. That's what the Studio Display would be if it ran tvOS 17. Since the Studio Display already has a powerful A13 system-on-a-chip inside, the Smart Monitor M8 leaves us wondering what could've been.

However, the lack of smart features on the Studio Display isn't a true deficiency on Apple's part. Most monitors don't have these kinds of capabilities. The real deficiency comes with the built-in webcam, which has been criticized heavily by reviewers. Videos look hazy and lack clarity, which is a big problem when the webcam and speakers are some of the Studio Display's biggest selling points. Considering the Smart Monitor M8 manages to include a great webcam and a set of speakers as well, it's clear Apple can do better here.

1 Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 (2024)

As high-quality OLED panels mature, the Studio Display's backlighting is unacceptable

By far, the biggest problem with the Studio Display is that it uses outdated display technology. The Studio Display uses the exact same display panel as the 27-inch iMac introduced in 2014. That means the display technology used in the Studio Display is almost a decade old. While that panel does have a 5K resolution, older 5K displays are far worse than newer ones due to the advancements in backlighting technology, and new implementations of OLED panels instead of LCDs.

For example, the Studio Display still uses a singular backlight. There aren't any local dimming zones, which means the backlight has the same strength if it's showing all-white pixels or all-black ones. This has the effect of making black colors look more like grays, especially if there are black, white, and color graphics on the screen at the same time. So many LCD monitors support local dimming zones, which separates the backlight into zones that can be individually adjusted. I'd consider local dimming zones the bare minimum for a $1,600 display in 2024.

But when you look at Samsung's new Odyssey OLED G8 monitor, revealed ahead of CES, you'll want even more than just local dimming zones. It uses OLED display technology, meaning each pixel is illuminated individually. That creates deeper, true blacks and more vibrant colors overall. Years ago, when the 5K display on the 27-inch iMac was designed, OLED displays on monitors that big were much trickier. Now, they're the norm, and the Odyssey G8 is far from the only high-quality OLED monitor at CES. The Studio Display has the internals of a monitor from 10 years ago, and it simply can't keep up.

What's going on with the Studio Display?

Apple is rarely the company to try out new technologies, and it doesn't often make announcements at trade shows like CES. But it's also rare that Apple is this far behind the competition. It can't compete with some of the monitors announced at CES 2024, and it's still on sale today for a stunning $1,600 figure that far exceeds the monitor's value. Apple needs to do better with its consumer-level displays because the monitors at CES prove that it can do a lot better.