Some backstory - I got to my Mac one morning to find that my 34" ultra wide that I used as my main display had inexplicably stopped working. I had to pick up a replacement quickly because I primarily work from home and needed a new main display to work from. I'd never owned an Apple display before so I decided to give the Studio Display a chance. Either way, I'd have two weeks to return it to Apple if I didn't like it, no questions asked. I got the basic tilt-only model with AppleCare+.
I've decided to pen some thoughts on it after about a week and a half of ownership:
Panel
Panel-wise, it's a very good, albeit standard, IPS display. After several years of using gaming monitors with a rather low DPI, going to a 5K monitor is great. Text is so much easier to read, and high-resolution images practically look like paintings. The glossy panel makes colours vibrant while somehow being relatively resistant to glare.
Even though it's an IPS panel, there's none of the backlight bleed that you'd normally expect from a monitor made by the likes of Asus, LG, or Dell. Black levels aren't quite on the level of the mini-LED panel on my MacBook Pro, but they're pretty close.
There's no hardware HDR support, but macOS renders content using a technique called EDR - Extended Dynamic Range. Simply put - by using data from the ambient light and True Tone sensors, macOS can do a pretty good job at displaying the extended colour range and highlights from HDR content on a display without local dimming.
600 nits is nice, but more than I'll realistically need. I generally have the brightness set to between a third and a half of the slider.
Unfortunately, there's no 120Hz refresh rate here - the panel is caps out at 60Hz. It's definitely a drawback, but playing games such as No Man's Sky and Final Fantasy XIV (using the XIV on Mac launcher) at full quality 5120x2880 is a sight to behold. There's no chance of exceeding 60FPS at this resolution anyway.
To sum up this section - the Studio Display has a terrific panel. A notch below the XDR displays found in MacBooks due to missing support for ProMotion and local dimming, but practically equal for SDR content.
Build Quality
Typical build quality that you'd expect from Apple. Solid aluminium, braided power cable, the tilt mechanism is smooth but sturdy, and there's none of the creaky, brittle plastic that other manufacturers seem to like so much.
Another thing too - this isn't really related to build quality per se, but the Studio Display comes out of standby almost instantly. My other monitors take 5-10 seconds to realise there's a computer connected to them and eventually blink on. This is really appreciated since I have to unlock my computer several times throughout the day when it goes to sleep.
Speakers
Honestly, the most surprising part of this package. These are the best speakers I've ever heard on a display. Not only are they good speakers for a display, they give high-end, full size desktop speakers a run for their money. Strong but clear sub- and mid-bass, forward mids, and super-crisp highs. The highs can come off as a bit sharp, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Even though the speakers are downward-firing, the soundstage is nice and wide, and it gets even better if you're playing an Apple Music track with spatial audio. The display accepts an 8-channel sound input, so you can use spatial audio in any app that supports 5.1 output (i.e most games or video players).
I'd compare the sound quality to a pair of AirPods Pro 2, but with the physical thump and rumble that only full-size speakers can create.
Overall, I'd say it's a pretty good all-round package. The panel itself is as good as you can get as far as IPS goes (without stepping up to a Pro Display XDR), it's in an enclosure that actually looks good, and the built-in speakers easily outperform a much clunkier set of desktop speakers or sound bar. It's definitely not cheap, but I haven't been able to find an equivalent on the market that meets the Studio Display's combination of screen, build, and speaker quality - plus first-party integration with macOS.