Apple has officially pulled the plug on the Pro Display XDR, quietly discontinuing the six-year-old monitor alongside the launch of its all-new Studio Display XDR on March 3, 2026.
The Pro Display XDR had a good run. Introduced back in December 2019 alongside a redesigned Mac Pro at WWDC, it was Apple’s dramatic return to the premium external monitor market — three years after the company had abandoned the space when it killed off the Thunderbolt Display in 2016. It featured a 32-inch 6K Retina XDR display and was genuinely one of the best panels money could buy at the time. Of course, “money could buy” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here — the display started at $4,999, and if you wanted the signature Pro Stand with height, tilt, and rotation adjustments, that was another $999 on top. Both the display and the infamous Pro Stand are now discontinued.
What’s replacing it is the new Studio Display XDR, and it’s a notably different kind of product. It starts at $3,299 — with the stand included this time — and while it steps down from 32 inches to 27 inches and from 6K to 5K resolution, it’s not exactly a downgrade across the board. The Studio Display XDR packs in a mini-LED backlight with 2,304 local dimming zones, up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness, and a 120Hz refresh rate with Adaptive Sync — none of which the Pro Display XDR ever had. It also ships with a built-in 12-megapixel Center Stage camera (with Desk View support), a studio-quality three-mic array, and a six-speaker Spatial Audio system. The old Pro Display XDR had none of that — no camera, no mic, no speakers — and its USB-C ports maxed out at embarrassingly slow USB 2 speeds.
Connectivity gets a massive upgrade too, with Thunderbolt 5 on board, offering up to 120Gb/s of transfer speeds and up to 140W of charging passthrough. Pre-orders for the Studio Display XDR opened March 4, with availability starting March 11.
One thing worth noting for prospective buyers: the Studio Display XDR’s 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate is limited to Macs running M4 chips or newer — so if you’re on an M1, M2, or M3 machine, you’ll be capped at 60Hz.
It’s a bittersweet end for the Pro Display XDR. Yes, it was eye-wateringly expensive and arguably overdue for an update. But for many creative professionals, that 32-inch 6K canvas was irreplaceable — and there’s currently nothing in Apple’s lineup that fills that size gap. In a slightly ironic twist, the Mac Pro — the machine the Pro Display XDR was designed to partner with — is still sitting in Apple’s store running the M2 Ultra chip, a chip that first launched back in 2023. Make of that what you will.
